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    February 16, 2012

Chinese Vice President Wins Hearts in US Heartland

   VOA News
   Sarah Lande (L) presents China's Vice President Xi Jinping a
   reproduction of the Muscatine Journal newspaper from 1985, when he
   first visited in Muscatine, Iowa, February 15, 2012.
   Photo: Reuters
   Sarah Lande (L) presents China's Vice President Xi Jinping a
   reproduction of the Muscatine Journal newspaper from 1985, when he
   first visited in Muscatine, Iowa, February 15, 2012.

   Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping won the hearts of ordinary Americans
   during a visit to a farming community in the Midwestern state of Iowa
   Wednesday, 27 years after he first visited the area as a mid-level
   official.
   The man presumed to be China's next president spent an hour sipping tea
   with residents in the town of Muscatine, and many said he remembered
   faces and recited events from his previous visit in 1985.
   Among those who met with Xi was local resident Tom Hoopes, whose farm
   Xi visited during that earlier trip to study U.S. agricultural
   practices.
   "I've never been around anyone who worked an audience like he did,"
   Hoopes said, "and in view of the fact that it was a two-language
   situation, he worked it as sincere as my first impression of ever
   having heard him talk."
   Xi, who concludes his U.S. tour with a visit to Los Angeles Thursday,
   stressed his interest in person-to-person contacts during a formal
   dinner later Wednesday in the Iowa state capital, Des Moines.
   At the dinner, hosted by state Governor Terry Branstad, Xi said he is
   in the United States to advance cooperative relations.
   "I'm visiting the United States to help implement the important
   consensus that has been reached between President Hu Jintao and
   President Obama, and I'm here to build the China-US cooperative
   partnership based on mutual respect and mutual benefit," Xi explained.
   "And I want to engage with a broad cross-section of American society to
   help deepen the friendship between Chinese and American people."

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