The Moment

Chinese President Hu Jintao and his wife Liu Yongqing greet US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush at the Great Hall of People on August 8 in Beijing

Guang Niu / EPA

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"We played tennis and lost. George was tired, and I played lousy.'' So wrote former U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush in his diary on June 4, 1975. The George who was tired that day was Bush's son and current President George W. Bush — jet-lagged, no doubt, because the court they played on was in Beijing. "Bush 43" was then fresh out of Harvard Business School, and "Bush 41" was chief of the first U.S. Liaison Office in China's capital — the de facto embassy just before Beijing and Washington re-established full diplomatic relations.

On Aug. 8, father and son were in Beijing again for an occasion that neither would need a diary entry to remember. Just 12 hours before Beijing kicked off the 2008 Summer Olympics, father introduced son at a dedication ceremony for a sprawling new U.S. embassy complex. The Beijing Games was the last stop on President Bush's final tour of East Asia before leaving office in January. And while the trip offered opportunities to marvel at China's accomplishments, Bush was focused not on past triumphs, but on present dangers. In Seoul, he met with President Lee Myung Bak to plot the next phase in North Korea's slow-motion nuclear disarmament. In Bangkok, he praised Southeast Asia's economic progress while slamming Burma for human-rights abuses.

But the most urgent business was in Beijing, where Bush met with Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — both veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council. With world capitals swirling with rumors that Israel might bomb Iran to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon, Bush intended to press China and Russia for stiffer economic sanctions against Tehran, which has consistently refused to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. To Bush, time is critical; not only is his term running out, but the world's ability to keep Iran from nukes through diplomacy is also fading. As the Olympics began, the world's most dangerous game was joined in Beijing, its outcome still perilously uncertain.