France24 – AFP, 2 June 2013
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| Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan (R) is seen alongside Trinidad and Tobago PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar (L) in Port-of-Spain, on June 1, 2013. Peng has turned the trip into a media sensation |
AFP -
President Xi Jinping made history as the first Chinese leader to visit Trinidad
and Tobago, but it is his glamorous wife Peng Liyuan who has turned the trip
into a media sensation.
Peng is
stealing the spotlight as she joins Xi on the visit to the dual island country
off the coast of Venezuela, the first stop on a tour that will also take the
couple to Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States.
Neither
rain, the throngs jostling to see the visitors, nor the constant burst of
camera flashes chronicling her public appearances flustered the impeccably
dressed Chinese first lady, a former opera star fluent in English.
"She's
a very beautiful person, very warm, and to chat with her in English was very
wonderful," gushed Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla
Persad-Bissessar after meeting Peng.
Peng
understands the celebrity life: before Xi's rise to power she was a well-known
soprano who toured the world promoting Chinese opera and music. For 24 years
she also starred in an annual Lunar New Year gala broadcast on Chinese state
television.
Pictures of
Peng are prominent in the official handouts distributed ahead of Xi's visit. In
one photo, Peng appears in her army uniform singing to a crowd of People's
Liberation Army soldiers.
"She
began as an ordinary soldier, but with her vocal talent later performed during
frontline tours to boost morale during the Sino-Vietnamese border
conflicts" of the 1980s, according to her official biography. From that
reportedly humble beginning, she rose through the ranks to become an army
general.
Peng has
been compared to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, pop singer
Carla Bruni, but the best regional comparison is Angelica Rivera, the ex-soap
star queen wife of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Both women
were better known than their husbands before they rose to power, and both
brought glamor to first lady positions that had long been relegated to
background roles.
The wives
of China's leaders kept low profiles since the 1970s downfall of Jiang Qing,
Mao Zedong's last wife and member of the Gang of Four, blamed for many of the
Cultural Revolution excesses. Liu Yongqing, the wife of Xi's predecessor Hu
Jintao, often accompanied the Chinese president on overseas trips but did non cultivate
a public persona.
Peng, 50,
met Xi through a mutual friend and married her in 1987, according to the
official biography. Their only daughter, Xi Mingze, was born in 1992 and is
reportedly a student at Harvard University.
China has
been focusing on Latin America in recent years as the world's second biggest
economy taps into the region's mineral and oil wealth to fuel growth.
China has
enormous energy demands, and Trinidad and Tobago is rich in oil and natural
gas, and on Saturday the Asian giant and the tiny Caribbean nation, with a
population of 1.3 million, signed a agreements on economic cooperation and
cultural exchanges.
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| It was the first visit by a Chinese head of state to Trinidad and Tobago |
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