It's where Frank Sinatra Drive meets Bob Hope Drive.

On June 7 and 8, it will be where Beijing and Washington, DC, meet in the first summit of Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Barack Obama.

Sunnylands, the 200-acre estate of the late philanthropists Leonore and Walter H. Annenberg, has served as host for many key and notable figures of the 20th century.

Seven US presidents, starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower, the British royal family, Princess Grace of Monaco and Margaret Thatcher, and many Hollywood stars like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Stewart, Bing Crosby, Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire and Clark Gable have stayed behind the pink walls of the main house that is ringed by the San Jacinto Mountains.

Reagan celebrated New Year's Eve 18 times there; Richard M. Nixon used it as his getaway residence after his resignation as president.

Named after Walter Annenberg's parents' 5,000-acre summer retreat in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, it was completed in 1966 at a cost of $5 million. It was opened to the public for the first time in March of this year. There is a nine-hole golf course and 22 bedrooms are spread among the main house and three cottages.

On the few walls that aren't glass, there are digital reproductions of the Annenbergs' $1-billion-plus Impressionist art collection, most of which was given the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when he died at the age of 94 in 2009. Leonore Annenberg died seven years later.

Annenberg was an ambassador to England under Nixon and made much of his fortune as publisher of TV Guide.

From 1966 to 2009, Sunnylands was where the Annenbergs lived at least five months every year. They never left their estate; their remains rest in a pink mausoleum on a hillside.

The Annenbergs established the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands with an endowment of $300 million. The trust's mission statement cites "permitted programs" for which Sunnylands may be used. At the top of the list:

"For the President of the United States and the Secretary of State of the United States to bring together world leaders in order to promote world peace and facilitate international agreement."

And according to the trust's mission statement, the master bedroom may be used only by the president of the United States or other heads of state.

China Daily

(China Daily USA 05/31/2013 page19)