YORBA LINDA : Envoy Notes Nixon’s ’72 China Visit

As city leaders and business executives looked on, Chinese Consul General Wang Xue Xian on Friday unveiled a tapestry of President Richard M. Nixon’s historic meeting with leaders of the People’s Republic of China.

The ceremony marked the first anniversary of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, and library officials took the opportunity to underscore that the privately funded facility aims to be a tourist attraction rather than a center for scholarly research.

Although a staff will begin assembling an archive including 10 million pages of documents later this year, more immediate plans call for the library to expand an exhibit of First Lady gowns and to add a slab of the Berlin Wall.

“While I wouldn’t say this is a ‘Nixonland,’ I would say it is a much more vigorous look at history rather than a place to sift through documents all day,” Taylor said.

In fact, library officials have asked Caltrans to identify the facility as the “Nixon Museum” on any new freeway signs, rather than by its official name, Taylor said.

In August, the library will put on display a 12-foot section of the Berlin Wall, to be donated by Carl’s Jr. founder Carl Karcher, who was among the business leaders at Friday’s ceremony. In November, an expanded exhibit on Pat Nixon will open, including the wedding gowns of Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox, and gifts the First Lady received during tours around the world.

Over the next year, the library will also feature exhibits on Cambodian treasures, Christmas trees from foreign lands and correspondence between Nixon and President John F. Kennedy.

Visitors gazed at the latest addition, a colorful embroidered tapestry that features Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai and Nixon during his 1972 visit to China. The tapestry will hang in the Structure of Peace Gallery.

“Because of (the 1972) meeting, you saw a new page in relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China,” said Wang, the newly appointed consul general of the People’s Republic in Los Angeles.

To mark the occasion, the Nixons sent a double-sided silk Suzhou cat to the library, a gift they received from the Chinese government on a 1976 visit.

Speaking to reporters after the ceremony, Wang called on the United States to “restore and maintain” relations with his country, particularly in trade.

“What we should do is restore the relations to normalcy,” he said. “Every country, I would dare to say, has human rights problems. I could think of examples of human rights problems in the United States. But it’s not the right of the Chinese government to expound its views on the United States.”