Fellow passengers report that during the long flight, Deng spent most of his time alert and sober, not reading, not talking, but deep in thought. On some level, Deng must have felt overjoyed—he had not only successfully established formal relations with the United States, but also, on a more personal level, had returned triumphantly from a third purge to become the preeminent leader of China, and was about to become the first Chinese Communist leader to be a state guest of the United States.
