Joe Biden: Chinese villagers remember president-elect’s 2001 visit
- America’s new leader handed out ice pops to children and chatted with villagers in Yanzikou during his visit as chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee
- Local man remembers Biden telling him as a nine-year-old how he might become China’s leader one day
In August 2001, now president-elect Biden was chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee when he made an official visit to China and stopped at the village of Yanzikou, talking with people and buying ice creams for the children.
Tang Shaojun, then aged 21, was at home caring for her two-month-old son when the foreign officials came knocking – a rare sight at the time in rural China.
“I think they chose to visit us because our house was the poorest and shabbiest in the village at the time,” Tang said from her home, which has since been rebuilt and is now filled with plants and mahogany furniture.
“We didn’t even have a refrigerator or modern appliances. We had no gas stove and had to cook on a coal stove. Flies were buzzing everywhere,” her husband Liu Changkai, 40, said.
Biden held her infant son in his arms and gave him a kiss – before leaving 200 yuan (US$30) hidden under a kitchen cleaver as a parting gift the family discovered later.