Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

by Ezra F. Vogel

Woodcock recalls that in Houston, when Deng entered a replica of a spacecraft at the LBJ Space Center, “Deng was fascinated. . . . In that simulated vehicle, apparently coming in for the landing, he was so gleeful—I think he would have been willing to stay there all day.”97 And at a rodeo in Simonton, thirty-seven miles west of the city, Orville Schell reported, “Surrounded by his aides, ministers, and interpreters, pumping hands like a small-town pol, Deng . . . approaches the rail . . . a young girl on horseback gallops up and presents him with a ten-gallon hat. . . . The whistling, cheering crowd watches with delight as Deng theatrically dons his new hat. And in this one simple gesture, Deng seems not only to end thirty years of acrimony between China and America, but to give his own people permission to join him in imbibing American life and culture . . . arresting China's historic resistance to the West.”98 All over the United States, the photograph of Deng smiling beneath his ten-gallon hat became the symbol of his visit. It signaled to the U.S. public that he was not only good-humored, but, after all, less like one of “those Communists” and more like “us.” The Houston Post headline read, “Deng avoids politics, goes Texan.”99