Old Acquaintance at First Sight

The stagecoach at the Smithsonian's Museum of History and Technology fascinated her because she and her husband enjoy the western movies newly available in China. The general store transplanted from the hills of West Virginia prompted her to ask if it had been a coop. But it was the reconstructed kitchen of an Italian immigrant of the 1920s that elicited her greatest admiration. Although it was supposed to show the poverty and hardship suffered by America's immigrants, Cho Lin, the warm and plump wife of Teng Hsiao-p'ing, saw it quite differently. "They certainly had high living standards," she marveled.

Cho Lin was born in 1916 to a landlord of the Yunnan province in southern China. She quit college in Peking and joined the Communists after Mao's Long March of the mid-1930s. She soon met Teng, one of the party's rising stars. Teng had apparently abandoned a first wife, betrothed to him by his parents without his consent, and had lost his second wife, perhaps during the Long March. He and Cho Lin were married in 1940.

Cho Lin remained in the background and raised four children during her husband's rise. Both times when he was purged, she followed him into rural exile. But when he journeyed to Japan last fall, she adopted a public role, standing ceremoniously by his side and visiting schools and factories. She also took on a sensitive post in the Communist Party's Military Advisory Commission, reportedly to keep watch on security matters for her husband. But she has no political strength of her own and is not a member of the ruling Politburo.

Only one Chinese woman holds a top post through her own merit or political power, Chen Muhua, the Minister of Economic Relations with Foreign Countries. Said Cho Lin in her toast at a State Department lunch:

"Your striving for liberation has always been admired by women in China.

American women are making a growing impact on change and progress in American society. We have much to learn from you."

Cho Lin displayed a special fondness for children (she and Teng have two grandchildren), particularly Amy Carter. She held hands with Amy during the entire gala performance at the Kennedy Center, visited the Chinese pandas at the National Zoo with her, and dropped in at her sixth-grade math class. She asked that her schedule be changed so that she would have twice as much time at a children's hospital.

With her gracious comments, warm smile, and steel-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose, Cho Lin seemed to reconfirm an old Chinese saying that she quoted: "We become old acquaintances at first sight."

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