In 1974, soon after Richard Nixon opened relations with the People’s Republic of China, Bob Hope began a behind-the-scenes campaign to become the first American entertainer to tape a television special there.

Leaning on a raft of influential government pals including Henry Kissinger and calling in markers he’d been collecting from the government since World War II, he finally received permission to take his show there as part of a cultural exchange program dubbed “Ping-Pong Diplomacy”
by the press.

On June 16, 1979, after a four-hour flight from Narita, Japan, a
Chinese Airlines 707 filled with Hope's merry band of mirth makers eager to get their first look at this hotbed of Communism, touched down at the Peking (now Beijing) Airport.

The group included Bob and Dolores Hope, their daughter, Linda, her co-producer Jim Lipton — with whom the author and fellow writer Gig Henry would share writing credit — Jim’s wife, Kedakai, director Bob Wynn and a support crew made up of pretty much the same gang who had earned their Hope Squadron wings on a two-week  trek to Australia the previous year.

In this two-minute excerpt, read by the author, a crew heading for the Great Wall to tape a segment of the special makes an unexpected discovery beside the road --- a stand of lush, green marijuana plants.  The story is from THE LAUGH MAKERS: A Behind-the-Scenes Tribute to Bob Hope's Incredible Gag Writers (c) 2009 by Robert L. Mills and published by Bear Manor Media.com in both print and audio versions.