CHINESE people tuning in to the television news at 7 a.m. today, heard the announcement of Deng Xiaoping's death from Li Ruiying, a well known newscaster.
The young neatly groomed woman read the official statement from the Xinhua news agency.
Then for a few minutes a black and white picture of the paramount leader was shown against a blue background, accompanied by funeral music.
Following this, Ms Li spent the rest of the 30 minute programme reading out a mind numbing list of the 459 members of the funeral commission, while the Chinese characters of the names were scrolled across a blank screen.
This was repeated every half hour for the rest of the morning. It was left to people on the street to make their own analysis of the most momentous political event in China in a decade. It varied from sarcastic comments from taxi drivers to genuine regret from old comrades.
But most of Beijing was going about its business as usual, though the morning papers failed to appear. There was none of the emotional shock which paralysed China when Mao died and plunged Russia into mourning at the passing by Stalin. Then the people felt abandoned.
They did not know what would come next. But the last communist giant of this century had already retired from public view and set the country on a well defined course.
Deng died at 9.08 p.m. yesterday. By chance I went for a walk in Tiananmen Square at 10.30 a.m. many hours before the first reports of his demise. Unusually, the centre of the famous square was closed off by police but there were no other signs of abnormal activity.
The nearby streets were as usual ablaze with fairy lights and neon advertising. This morning at sunrise a few more people than usual turned up for the daily raising of the red flag with its five stars in the centre of the square.
It went half way and then was left to hang in the breeze of a typical cloudless winter day while the members of the funeral committee work out how best to honour the man who breathed life into the sleeping Chinese giant.