VICE President Xi Jinping left Beijing yesterday to pay official visits to the United States, Ireland and Turkey.

    At the invitation of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Xi is scheduled to visit the three nations until Feb. 22.

    During his stay in the United States, which will last until Friday, Xi will visit the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama. He will make a policy speech tomorrow in Washington at an event co-sponsored by the U.S.-China Business Council.

    He then will leave for Iowa, a largely rural, midwest state he’s visited before. Xi is due to meet up with old friends for tea in Muscatine, Iowa, before heading for the state capital of Des Moines tomorrow afternoon. His last U.S. stop will be Los Angeles in California, home of the largest Chinese population in the United States.

    Iowa produces more corn than any other U.S. state. Iowans said Xi will get a warm reception.

    As a local official in northern Hebei Province in 1985, Xi stayed with an Iowa family in the city of Muscatine as part of a delegation to study corn technology. He is scheduled to return to the city on the Mississippi River for a reunion.

    “We feel so honored,” said Sarah Lande, 73, who hosted a dinner for Xi in Muscatine during the 1985 visit. “For us, to have the vice president of China back is flattering. We want to do our country well.”

    Lande remembered that about 10 people including Xi attended the party, where she served beef, salad and corn on “good china (dishes)” with silver. During his time in Muscatine, Xi visited a feed company and a hog farm. The group was especially interested in learning how Iowa breeds leaner pork, Lande said.

    Xi’s visit coincides with an explosion of city-to-city and state-to-province ties between the countries, with a rising number of U.S. local governments setting up trade offices in China and increasing their demand for foreign investment as U.S. unemployment remains at historical highs.

    There are at least 176 “sister city” relationships between China and the United States, plus 38 state-to-province matchups and more than 30 state trade offices working in China.

    (SD-Agencies)