Premier Wen Jiabao is known for the charm offences he employs on overseas visits, including playing baseball, jogging, drawing and even singing traditional songs.
Yet 'Grandpa Wen' refrained from trying to sing a song by popular Japanese boy band SMAP yesterday. Wen, 69, said he was too old to know their songs and asked the band to sing a few lines to him. He told them they were popular in China and hoped they would play there soon.
SMAP then played a few lines of the Chinese version of The One and Only Flower in the World, one of its big hits. The group - popular across much of Asia, well as Japan - cancelled a concert at the Shanghai Expo in June, 2010, citing security fears over massive crowds of fans.
The band had to call off two concerts at the Expo again in October amid tension after a Chinese trawler collided with a Japanese coastguard vessel in the waters near the disputed Diaoyu Islands, known to the Japanese as the Senkakus.
Yet those tensions were put aside yesterday. 'I hope you can bring the seeds of Sino-Japan friendship to China, and make them blossom,' Wen said.
Last month, Wen impressed Indonesians by launching into a traditional Moluccan folk song Ayo Mama, or Let's Go Mama.