Chas Freeman as a language student in Taiwan in 1970. CHINA DAILY

"I knew China would change, but I never imagined how much and how fast it has changed," said Freeman, who acted as deputy chief of mission in the US embassy in Beijing between 1981 and 1984 and who made sure that his own children were there to see it as China "burst into color".

Carla Freeman, his daughter, who "jumped at the chance to study at the Beijing Language Institute", to use her words, today remembers "exploring the city on my Flying Pigeon bicycle".

Her younger brother, who was given her father's name Charles, spent several of his high-school vacations in the ancient capital. Relishing a historic moment when "the two countries came together on a people-to-people basis", he still harbors fond memories for "the old-timers of Beijing who sat around, drank tea and played with their cricket". He later did his postgraduate studies on Asia and economics at Fudan University in Shanghai.

To this day both remain engaged with China. Carla Freeman, who now directs the Foreign Policy Institute of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, traveled extensively in northeastern China, the heartland of its heavy industry, between 1994 and 1997 doing research on the regional impact of China's economic reform.

The brother, now senior vice president for Asia at the US Chamber of Commerce, served as principal US trade negotiator with China between 2002 and 2005, just after China joined the World Trade Organization.

And both witnessed the very beginning of their father's involvement with China, as he learned Chinese in Taiwan with "a rambunctious young family in tow", to quote Carla Freeman. (The father has another, younger son who was only 1 when the family moved to Taiwan, and who learned Chinese before he did English.)

"Our home was an entirely Chinese-speaking household during this time, with my father translating our story books into Chinese for us,"Carla Freeman said.

"If you wanted anything you had to say it in Chinese," said Charles the son.

"My dad was extremely disciplined. I remember he had these note cards with Chinese characters and usages all over the house."

If you listen to the diplomat himself, it was the family gene at play."Two of my own great grandfathers worked in China. One of them, Chas Wellman, after whom I was named, was hired by the Qing court to help upgrade the Chinese steel industry in around 1900," said Freeman senior. "The other, John Ripley Freeman, taught briefly at Yenching University in Beijing around 1915."

Freeman became interested in geopolitics as a law student in the mid-1960s. One of the books he read was Kissinger's A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822, on the balancing of power in Europe.

"The United States and the Soviet Union were at daggers drawn," he said. "I thought we would have to reach out to China. I wanted to be there when it happened."

Foresight and hard work paid off, allowing Freeman a front-row seat in Sino-US relations, sometimes quite literally. In April 1984, when president Ronald Reagan visited China, Freeman found himself "riding around in the car with the president, probably for about six hours."

He was also a close participant in the difficult and prolonged negotiations that led to the issuing of the 1982 US-China Communique on Arms Sales to Taiwan. Some of the later negotiations were carried out over a dinner table at his residence in Beijing, Freeman said.

Reflecting on the conflicts the two countries had then and now, Freeman said, "They are very different because then the major thrust was toward improved relations and the minor element was the opposition to that. Now, those who want to improve relations are the absolute minority", referring to the hawkishness of the US administration toward China.