The presidential summit this week brings renewed attention to Sunnylands, a former private estate in California's Mojave Desert that is known as an exemplar of Modernist architecture and an ideal stage for informal diplomacy.

The 200-acre complex in Rancho Mirage, near the resort community of Palm Springs, was completed in 1966 as the home of media magnate and philanthropist Walter Annenberg and his wife, Leonore. Annenberg, who also was US ambassador to the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, died in 2002; his wife died in 2009.

The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, as the site is formally known, has long served as a conference center for high-level international meetings. It is operated by a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Annenberg family trust and has been open for public tours since last year.

"We will greet President [Barack] Obama and China's President Xi Jinping with the same careful planning and decorum as we have always manifested when welcoming dignitaries," Rancho Mirage Mayor Richard Kite said.

"It is our hope that the meeting will result in a strengthened positive relationship between the United States of America and the People's Republic of China," he added.

Throughout its storied history, the estate has hosted seven US presidents, British royals and other foreign heads of state. Frequent guests included Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who are said to have celebrated New Year's at Sunnylands during each year of the Reagan presidency. Nixon went on retreat at Sunnylands after his 1974 resignation. Reagan signed a US-Canada trade agreement there in 1988, and Bush hosted a state dinner for Japan's Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu in 1990.

According to Geoffrey Cowan, president of the Annenberg Foundation Trust at Sunnylands, the Philadelphia-based Annenbergs envisioned it as a "Camp David of the West", where US presidents and secretaries of state could "meet with world leaders to promote global peace and facilitate international agreements".

"We are profoundly honored that President Obama has chosen Sunnylands as the venue for this important meeting," Cowan said.

Janice Lyle, director of the Sunnylands Center and Gardens, told Palm Springs' Desert Sun newspaper that design elements would help provide a welcoming reception for Xi. This is the first time it is hosting a leader of China, but Chinese cultural influences are reflected in the estate, she said.

In March 1974, according to the People's Daily, Walter Annenberg wrote a letter to then-vice president Gerald Ford that explained that the idea for Sunnylands was inspired by ancient Chinese philosophers' respect for nature and Chinese landscape painting.

The estate's art collection includes works of Chinese porcelain, cloisonne (painted metal) objects and furniture, and Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907) funerary sculpture. Sunnylands is now presenting an exhibition of 35 Chinese cloisonne items through Dec 31. Visitors, however, will have to wait until next week to get in - Sunnylands is closed to the public until after the Xi-Obama meeting.

Guo Ziwei contributed to this story.

wangjun@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 06/06/2013 page9)