Source:
https://scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3109392/joe-biden-chinese-villagers-remember-president-elects-2001
China/ Diplomacy

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
US president-elect Joe Biden shakes hands with nine-year-old Gao Shan during his visit to the Chinese village of Yanzikou in 2001. Photo: AP

Nearly two decades ago, the residents of a small Chinese village near Beijing were visited by a foreigner who is soon to become America’s most powerful man: Joe Biden.

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.

“He said he will come and visit again in future, and remarked that he had a granddaughter about the same age,” Tang said this week, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned “Gucci” and standing below an ornamental picture of chairman Mao Zedong, the founder of the People’s Republic of China.

“We were certainly very excited … I then thought that foreigners were pretty great and didn’t discriminate against Chinese people,” Liu said.

The couple did not realise that the man who had visited back then was Joe Biden, the incoming US president, until being shown photographs of his 2001 visit.

In the decades since, rapid economic growth in China has changed much of the country beyond recognition.

Many of the old stone shacks in Yanzikou have been torn down and redeveloped into two-storey dwellings or guest houses which cater to tourists visiting the nearby Great Wall, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

Most residents had a dim recollection of events, but photos taken at the time show children and adults gathered around a smiling Biden.

He also visited the village church and received mass from the priest at the time.

“He was very friendly and intimate, greeting all the Chinese people … he bought one or two ice pops for the kids,” said Li Hua, a 57-year-old farmer featured in one of the photos.

One of the children, Gao Shan, was nine when he was pictured shaking hands with the US president-to-be – and remembers Biden joking that perhaps Gao would become the leader of China one day.

“Back then, he wished me well and now he will become the next president – that’s awesome,” said the 29-year-old, who works in sales and still lives in the village.

“I wish him luck.”

Liu said he felt “very proud” that Biden visited his village.

“If they don’t cause trouble with China, they can come back any time.”