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US-China relations
ChinaDiplomacy

Xi Jinping slept here: Iowa house, once a symbol of US-China optimism, weathers tougher times

  • Future Chinese president was an obscure junior official when he visited this small farming community in 1985 but goodwill has faltered in Trump era
  • The home where Xi stayed has gone from museum to empty shell as friendship ties turn to mistrust

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Xi Jinping, as China’s vice-president, makes a return visit to Muscatine in 2012, dropping in on the home of Roger and Sarah Lande. Photo: AFP
Mark Magnier
The nondescript suburban house, once a symbol of warming US-China ties, sits untended and empty in Muscatine, Iowa. Its deck is in need of paint, its foundation mildewing, shutters fading, and decorative flags torn and discoloured.

The modest community of 24,000 people has enjoyed an unlikely role in trans-Pacific diplomacy since the locals realised that a junior Chinese party official who homestayed there in 1985 had gone on to become China’s president.

“This house is emblematic of the US-China relationship. It went from pristine, a showcase, to where it is now, just sitting there. It has the feel of a house slipping,” said Gary Dvorchak, in whose Star Trek-themed bedroom Xi Jinping slept during a two-week visit as part of an agricultural delegation from northern China’s Hebei province.

Bilateral prospects looked far brighter in 2012 when Xi – then Chinese vice-president and heir apparent to the leadership – returned and made a detour to Iowa on his first US state visit, voicing optimism that cooperation between the two countries was on a “course that cannot be stopped or reversed”.

A Washington Post headline read: “Xi visits Iowa, where the diplomatic equivalent of love is in the air”.

China’s then vice-president Xi Jinping presents the granddaughter of his old friend Sarah Lande with a panda doll in Muscatine, Iowa, the United States, on February 15, 2012. Photo: Xinhua
China’s then vice-president Xi Jinping presents the granddaughter of his old friend Sarah Lande with a panda doll in Muscatine, Iowa, the United States, on February 15, 2012. Photo: Xinhua

Feeling that love – and imagining Muscatine as a prime tourist attraction for Chinese bused in from Chicago, possibly paired with a casino stop – investor Cheng Lijun bought the house at 2911 Bonnie Drive in 2013 for US$180,000, which was renamed the “Sino-US Friendship House”.

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