Sudden Celebrities

When he was a hot-eyed student leader in the 1930s, Westerners in China described him as "a zealous, devoted, incandescent Communist." Now Peking's ambassador to Canada, Huang Hua is radiating a different sort of incandescence. As the first envoy from Mao Tse-tung's regime to set up shop in North America, he has become the most sought-after diplomatic celebrity in the Western Hemisphere.

No invitations in Ottawa are more prized than the ones that come with the embossed gold emblem of the People's Republic of China. For the legions of journalists, scholars, politicos and adventurers (mostly Americans) eager to get to China, the box office is the top two floors of Ottawa's modern twelve-story Juliana apartments, where the 20-man Chinese embassy staff lives and works. Most visa-seeking visitors are lucky if they can get past the intercom in the foyer, where they are told by a polite English-speaking voice to write directly to the Chinese foreign ministry in Peking. Among those who have approached the Juliana embassy for those coveted tickets to China: Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Adlai Stevenson III and Teddy Kennedy.

Social Swath. The Chinese are hardly unhappy about all the attention. Huang Hua is frequently seen around the capital, riding in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes or strolling across Ottawa's Parliament Hill. This week Huang sets out on a week's tour that will take him to all ten of Canada's provinces.

Ottawa's diplomatic social season has barely begun, but the Chinese have already cut a considerable swath. Nearly 400 guests came to an embassy bash last month to meet the ambassador and his petite wife Ho Li-liang, a severely handsome woman in a man-tailored, dark blue suit and glossy black pumps. Two weeks ago, 350 turned out for the embassy's lavish National Day reception.

Almost every evening, smiling embassy staffers in black Mao suits whisk small groups of dinner guests up to the green-carpeted Juliana penthouse. Before ushering them into an eight-course dinner, Huang might offer them Double Happiness cigarettes from a circular gold tin and a tall, lidded cup of green jasmine tea. As a host, Huang has become known for his determination to keep conversation light and innocuous and for his eagerness to reach out to all sorts of people. But above all, he has become known for his chef, who specializes in the hot, spicy cuisine of Szechwan province. One member of a group of 15 Canadian amateur sportsmen who recently dined at the embassy recalls that toasts were made "to us, to you, to sport, to friendship between our two countries. Every time we took a sip, they refilled our glasses." But, he adds, "they're pretty careful about how much they drink themselves."

Busy Student. At first, the Chinese were startled by high Ottawa prices and offended by the caricatures of Mao Tse-tung that they saw in the political cartoons. Though many staffers are homesick for the parks of Peking, they know that they have an important dual role to perform. On one level they are presenting the image of a reasonable, responsible China that Peking is promoting around the world. On another, Huang Hua is a busy student of the U.S., which could be his next post. American TV is piped into the Juliana penthouse by cable: the embassy takes special care to cultivate contacts who are knowledgeable about the U.S. scene.

So far, of course, those contacts do not include diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, which the Chinese do not "recognize." For its part, the U.S. embassy is pretending not to notice Peking's presence. Says one embassy staffer: "We don't even have a man in Ottawa who can speak Chinese."

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