In Iowa, a Reunion With Old Friends

(WSJ)

MUSCATINE, Iowa—Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping traveled to this small heartland city to visit residents he first met here 27 years ago, in a reunion that points up his unusual personal connection with the U.S.

Mr. Xi, expected to become China's top leader later this year, arrived in a motorcade from the local airport at the home of Muscatine resident Sarah Lande, a former stockbroker; she was a host at a dinner for Mr. Xi when he came to the town in 1985 as a junior Communist Party official leading a Chinese animal-feed delegation.

Sitting on a tan striped couch in Ms. Lande's living room while a fire burned in the fireplace, Mr. Xi smiled as he reminisced with residents whom he had met on that first visit.

"You can't even imagine what a deep impression I had from my visit 27 years ago to Muscatine, because you were the first group of Americans that I came into contact with," he said. "My impression of the country came from you. For me, you are America."

Ms. Lande wished him "a successful presidency," and recounted that Mr. Xi was fond of puppies he encountered in someone's backyard during the visit. "We love puppies," the Chinese leader said, to laughs. "We have two puppies as pets now."

Mr. Xi recalled that the daughter of Tom Dvorchak, in whose home he stayed in 1985, was surprised to learn back then that he had seen "The Godfather." Mr. Dvorchak asked if Mr. Xi recalled the gift he had brought on that trip. Mr. Xi, who spoke Chinese during the roughly hourlong meeting, said it was a bottle of Chinese alcohol. "Tell him that it was the strongest liquor that I ever had," Mr. Dvorchak said to the translator, prompting laughter.

After the reminiscing ended, Mr. Xi and many of the Iowans had a group photo on the Landes' stairs, and Mr. Xi exited to get in his bulky black car.

Mr. Xi's stop in Muscatine followed two days of meetings in Washington with business executives, lawmakers and President Barack Obama that were characterized both by calls for friendship and by complaints about Chinese policies on trade and other issues. His trip to Iowa—also scheduled to include a farm visit and meetings in Des Moines with agricultural officials—is designed in part to deflect that criticism by highlighting China's role as a huge consumer of U.S. farm goods.
But the Muscatine stop was aimed more specifically at pointing up a personal touch in the U.S. relationship that sharply distinguishes Mr. Xi from current Chinese President Hu Jintao, the man he is expected to succeed as China's top leader. Mr. Xi's time in the U.S. early in his career, his daughter's attendance at Harvard University, and his regular dealings with U.S. officials and business leaders such as former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson make him more familiar with the West than any of his predecessors.Muscatine, a city of around 20,000 set among corn and soybean fields on the banks of the Mississippi River, is an unlikely setting for a visit by the future leader of the world's No. 2 economy. Aside from the presidential candidates who have buzzed through occasionally ahead of the Iowa caucuses, perhaps its most noted visitor before Mr. Xi was Mark Twain, who spent time here in 1854.In comments ahead of Mr. Xi's arrival, residents of Muscatine embraced their place in the annals of diplomacy, portraying the visit as a chance to move beyond the friction that often overshadows the world's most important bilateral relationship from issues like human rights and intellectual-property protection.

If there are differences, if we worry about intellectual property, let's keep the communications line open, let's try to find a way to work it out," said Ms. Lande, whose Victorian house on a hill was festooned with a red banner saying in both English and Chinese: "Muscatine welcomes back His Excellency Xi Jinping, Vice President of the People's Republic of China."

"His visit to Muscatine isn't about politics, it's not about the economy," said Muscatine Mayor DeWayne Hopkins in an interview on Tuesday. "It's about friendships."

Residents reminisced fondly about Mr. Xi's 1985 visit. Joni Axel, 69 years old, a local attorney, recalled that one of the most memorable moments came during a social event at a hog farm. "We were all having a picnic," Ms. Axel said. "Everybody was having such fun, and Mr. Xi has a very captivating smile."

They said they hadn't closely followed his career since then. "It was 27 years ago when Mr. Xi was in Muscatine and to be really honest I had not been able to find out a lot of information about him over the years," Ms. Axel said. When they first read about his imminent promotion in recent Wall Street Journal articles, Ms. Axel said, she and Ms. Lande "looked at that and said, 'Is that he?' "

Lisa Ferreira, who now lives in the Muscatine house where Mr. Xi stayed on his 1985 trip, said she learned of his planned visit from a colleague at work.

"I was shocked…when I realized it was my house" where Mr. Xi had stayed, she said. Ms. Lande had called Ms. Ferreira to tell her the Chinese delegation wanted a photo of the room where he had stayed. "I was just kind of hesitant because I'm not a public figure," she said. The room has changed since 1985. Ms. Ferreira said only the blinds and the lights are the same as the ones there when she bought the house in 1991.

After the visit, Mr. Xi left Ms. Lande's for Des Moines for a dinner Wednesday evening at the Iowa Capitol with Gov. Terry Branstad and other officials.

Speaking at the state dinner, Mr Xi said he had read the novels of Mark Twain as a young boy, and had long wanted to see the scenery of the Mississippi River.

He said he had explored the footsteps of Twain with his hosts on his 1985 trip.

He also pledged to expand commercial ties with Iowa, and said China had signed 15 soybean purchase agreements worth $4.3 billion earlier in the day.

Mr. Xi planned to visit a farm near Des Moines on Thursday and to attend a symposium on U.S.-China farm ties before departing for Los Angeles.

Not everyone was offering as warm a welcome as the Muscatine residents were planning. Several hundred pro-Tibetan protesters from nearby states traveled to Des Moines to hold demonstrations on Wednesday outside the state capitol, said Gabriel Feinstein, a spokesman for the Midwest Coalition for Tibet, a group of Tibet-focused nongovernmental and community organizations.

Hundreds of Tibetan and other activists, such as ethnic Uighurs and Chinese democracy campaigners, held protests in Washington during Mr. Xi's visit there.
—Jeremy Page contributed to this article.

Write to Owen Fletcher at [email protected]

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