A journalist's diary

Antonio Fernandez Arce, still vibrant at 77, evokes a Beijing that feels worlds apart from the city's present-day incarnation.

Seated in a quiet room in Beijing's Peruvian embassy, a place that Arce himself helped establish, the spick-and-span septuagenarian is impeccably dressed. He is accompanied by his Chinese wife, Hu Weiling, 48, and his Peru-born son Antonio Fernandez Hu, 19, who lives in Beijing and studies international relations at Peking University.