Time: 1985

Destination: State of Iowa

Post: Party chief of Zhengding county, North China's Hebei province

Mission: Researching the state's agricultural and husbandry sectors.

Moments:

Xi slept for two nights in the bedroom of Gary Dvorchak, who was away at college. He presented a bottle of Chinese herbal liquor to Gary's parents, who gave him popcorn as a parting gift.

Comments:

"We never redecorated it, so Xi Jinping was really staying in a room that was decorated for elementary schoolboys," Gary Dvorchak said.

Time: Twice in the 1990s

Post: Party chief of Fuzhou, East China's Fujian province

Mission: Researching urban construction to aid Fuzhou's development.

Moments:

A US citizen from California, Milton Gardner, who spent nine years of his childhood in Guling, maintained deep feelings for the place. As Gardner was nearing death in 1986, he muttered the name "Kuling, Kuling...," which led his wife to look into Guling later. Xi heard the story in 1992 when he worked in Fuzhou as Party chief, and in that year he invited Gardner's wife, Elizabeth, to visit Fuzhou and Guling.

Comments:

Former US defense secretary William Cohen said the Guling story "was evidence to me (he is) a man with a good heart, and wants the best for his country and for our relationships".

Time: May 2006

Destination: Washington, New Jersey, New York

Post: Party chief of East China's Zhejiang province

Mission: Strengthening closer economic cooperation between the US and the province.

Moments:

During the trip he met the management of large US companies, including Henry Paulson, who was then CEO of Goldman Sachs. In September 2006, Paulson visited China as the US treasury secretary, and the first stop of his visit was Zhejiang.

Comments:

Chiling Tong, a former official with the US Department of Commerce, who met Xi during the visit, said that Xi had a good memory of numbers and made an unscripted and emotional speech.

Time: February 2012

Destination: Washington, Iowa, California

Post: Vice-President

Mission: Enhancing China-US relations

Moments:

He met a number of officials, including US President Barack Obama, revisited people in Iowa whom he had met in 1985, and watched a basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns in Los Angeles.

Comments:

"...he truly seemed like a warm, caring, listening person who could tell stories. He is a personal person you like," said Sarah Lande, a member of one of the host families who received Xi's delegation to Iowa in 1985.

Time: June 2013

Destination: Sunnylands, California

Post: President

Mission: Building a new type of major country relation between China and the US.

Moments:

It was an informal summit and US President Barack Obama gave Xi Jinping a bench made of California redwood as a gift for the Chinese people. The redwood species contains some of the tallest and largest trees in the world and can live for thousands of years. Former US president Richard Nixon presented California redwood seedlings to the Chinese government when he visited China in 1972.

Comments:

"They both have tried to distinguish themselves as can-do, get-it-done sorts of people less bound up with ceremony, less bound up with ritual," said Clayton Dube, director of the US-China Institute at the University of Southern California.

Liu Lunan / China Daily

(China Daily USA 09/22/2015 page4)