When the Lindblad Explorer entered the harbor of Shanghai at daybreak, three passengers had special reason to stand on the observation deck to command a full view of the city. Senior Writer Michael Demarest, who wrote this week's special report on the People's Republic, was making his first trip to China. The sight, he recalls, was wondrous and unexpected, with "freighters, tankers, junks and sampans set against that immortal skyline." Photographer Carl Mydans and Shelley, his novelist wife, were also thrilled by the panorama, but much of it was familiar to them. As one of LIFE's photographer-reporter teams during World War II, they had covered China being captured in 1942 in the Philippines by the Japanese and sent to Shanghai aboard a prison ship.

The Mydanses were repatriated a year later, and Carl went on to serve LIFE as one of the war's finest photographers. When he returned to Shanghai on the Explorer, 35 years after his release from the prison camp, Mydans found the city's skyline to be precisely as he had remembered it. Says he:

"Perhaps no one else on the ship could understand why Shelley and I felt such a deep surge of excitement. We were back in China. Like nearly everyone else who has lived there, we felt it was a delight to return."

Mydans and Demarest are among the first American journalists permitted to make such an extensive tourist's journey China. Mydans, who shot more than 100 rolls of film his visit, was amazed to discover how receptive the Chinese were to having their pictures taken. "In the 1940s " says Mydans, "most Chinese avoided being photographed because they believed that the camera catches the soul as well as the image; But today they are relaxed, willing and smiling in front of the camera."

Demarest, one of TIME'S most versatile writers and a man who has handled assignments from De Gaulle to gourmet cooking, was as impressed as his companion by the Chinese he saw, calling the country "Communism with a smile." Mike remembers Mydans working day after day as if he wanted to capture that expression on a a billion faces. "Carl chased around China like a mountain goat," says Demarest. "He was patient, inexhaustible and, above all, unflappable "

TIME'S three Americans abroad represent a special blend of journalistic talent and experience, and they treated their subject with enthusiasm and affection. As caught by Demarest's pen and Mydan's camera, todays China comes alive in rare and memorable fashion.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.