Under the Double Cherry Blossoms, Young Master Liao [1] and Elder Brother Han [2] of the
Mayflower (Qiao Guanhua [3])
Don't say my achievements are small; I made a lot of money selling newspapers in Beijing.
(Mao Zedong)7

6 The couplets comprise two phrases each of seven characters.
7 After Nixon's visit to China, relations between China and the United States began to ease, and in 1973, the
two countries began preparations for the establishment of a foreign affairs liaison office. In order to discuss the
details, Nixon dispatched a liaison named Jenkins. When he came to China, the negotiator in charge of
receiving him was Qiao Guanhua.
At that time, shortly after Nixon's visit to China, the two sides were in the "honeymoon period", so the talks
went very smoothly and an agreement was quickly reached.  After the negotiations, Qiao Guanhua was very
happy, showing his trademark smile and hearty laughter, and improvised a limerick: "Yae Sakura under Young
Master Liao, Mayflower Big brother of China and South Korea. Joyful Jenkins,......”
Young Master Liao was Liao Chengzhi, then an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who had in April 1973,
just been to Japan and South Korea as the head of the delegation of the China-Japan Friendship Association.
The visit promoted the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations.
Elder Brother Han refers to Han Xu, an official of the Protocol Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in
charge of the Americas and Oceanian foreign affairs. After China and the United States decided to establish a
liaison office, Han Xu went to the United States as a Chinese representative to prepare for the establishment of
a liaison office and stayed in a hotel called "Mayflower". It was named after the first ship bringing the English to
what became the US.
In the poem, Qiao Guanhua first talked about the deeds of two colleagues in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
and it can be seen from the two titles of "Young Master Liao" and "Elder Brother Han" that he respects the two
very much, and also affirms and praises their contributions to China's diplomatic cause.
After talking about the two colleagues, the third sentence of the poem is the negotiation with Jenkins. The
word "joyful" intuitively shows the happy result of this negotiation. However, in order to liven up the
atmosphere, Qiao Guanhua stopped after reciting the third line, asking everyone to use their brains and help
think about the fourth sentence.
This eventually reached Chairman Mao’s ears. Chairman Mao has always attached great importance to Qiao
Guanhua and personally named him to represent China at important diplomatic occasions many times. Hearing
that everyone had joined in the competition, Chairman Mao, who had outstanding literary talent, decided to
continue writing this poem himself.
Unlike others, Chairman Mao did not just add a fourth sentence, but deleted the third sentence and wrote the
last two sentences directly: "Don't say that our achievements are small, I made a lot of money selling
newspapers in Beijing!"
It turned out that after the beginning of the ten years of turmoil, Qiao Guanhua was dismissed from all
positions, and sent to the street to sell newspapers, and he was not allowed to go home if the newspapers
were not sold out. Every time he received the newspapers, he would find a place where no one was there and
threw them all into the trash can, and then found a quiet place to study, and when the day was about to end,
he pretended to be very hard-working and went back, taking out from his own money his earnings from selling
newspapers.
In this way, Qiao Guanhua was the fastest and most profitable of the newspaper sellers, and later the story
spread, and even Chairman Mao knew about it. In 1971, after Chairman Mao appointed him to represent China




























at the United Nations General Assembly, Qiao Guanhua was reinstated and revealed to everyone the little trick
he played when selling newspapers.
Chairman Mao used this matter to complete Qiao’s poem, as a kind of support for Qiao Guanhua, so that
opponents did not dare to trouble him again.
(Rewritten from an anecdote on the Zhuanlan website – Trans.)