In the hurly-burly of daily reporting and commenting, it is often difficult to put events in historical perspective. This is certainly true of writing about China, where so much has changed in the past 30 years. So the international media conference held by the East West Centre at the University of Hong Kong last month was hugely useful in reminding myself and others of what China was like three decades ago when it first opened up.
The former CNN reporter, Mike Chinoy, showed a 30-minute documentary, Assignment: China, in which he interviewed a number of the earliest Beijing-based American correspondents who had arrived in 1979 in the wake of the official normalisation of China-US relations.
These included Jim Laurie of ABC, Jay Mathews of The Washington Post, Linda Mathews of the Los Angeles Times and the reporter for The Wall Street Journal, namely me.
It certainly brought back memories. The first Chinese official I met in 1979, Yao Wei, told me that nobody in China needed permission to speak to a foreign journalist. The problem was that he didn't tell anyone else. Often, when I tried to interview someone, he would decline, saying that he didn't have permission to speak to me.
I once tried to interview the manager of the International Club, which was renting out office space to foreign companies - a perfect story for The Wall Street Journal. I assured him that he did not need permission to talk to me but he was not convinced. Finally, I had to call the Foreign Ministry and told the person who answered the phone to please tell the manager that he did not need permission. Then, satisfied that he had permission, the manager proceeded to answer my questions.
Almost 30 years later, Beijing unveiled new regulations for foreign correspondents for the 2008 Olympic Games. One provision said: 'To interview organisations or individuals in China, foreign journalists need only to obtain their prior consent.' And so, what Yao Wei said in 1979 finally came true in 2008.
The conference also brought back recollections of the restrictions under which the foreign press worked in those days, restrictions that current mainland-based correspondents no longer have to contend with. For one thing, correspondents were not allowed to travel outside the capital without permission. So reporting was confined to Beijing, and each trip to Shanghai or any other city had to be approved ahead of time, a process that was frustrating and time-consuming.