• Despite US-China relations being at some of their worst, Xi Jinping apparently has a pen pal in Iowa.
• Sarah Lande, 85, met Xi when she hosted him during his first visit to the US nearly 40 years ago. 
• State media revealed that Xi was still getting letters from Lande in a report on Wednesday.

China’s most powerful man still gets letters from an elderly pen pal in the US Midwest.

The interaction was documented in a Wednesday state media report highlighting Xi Jinping’s thoughts on US-China diplomacy. The focus was on Xi’s words, where he highlighted how both countries have achieved diplomatic victories through the “collective efforts” of their peoples, he said.

But the report also mentions that Xi was responding to a letter sent last week from Sarah Lande. She’s an Iowa resident, 85, who state media described as a “friend of his.”

Lande isn’t just some random American. She and her husband, Roger Lande, are from Muscatine, a small city of 24,000 that Xi visited in 1985.

Three decades before he rose to become China’s top leader, a then-31-year-old Xi visited the state to study agriculture as part of a five-person delegation from Hebei province.

A family in Muscatine hosted Xi in their son’s bedroom, and he befriended the Landes during his trip. Sarah Lande, who, per Chinese state media agency Xinhua, helped coordinate Xi’s visit, appeared to remember him fondly.

“He had a smile that would not stop. He was curious about everything and asked questions about everything,” she said of Xi, according to a Xinhua interview published last year.

Xi visited Iowa once more in 2012, this time during a state visit as China’s vice president. There, he reunited with the Landes at their Victorian home in Muscatine. A year later, he was appointed to China’s top role.

“You were the first group of Americans I came into contact with,” Xi told residents of Muscatine, per state media. “To me, you are America.”

Then, in 2023, Xi arrived in San Francisco in November for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. He invited the Landes and several other “old friends” from Iowa to dinner.

“This has been a heck of a journey — we can’t figure it out. We don’t even know why he likes us!” Lande said when she received the invitation.

“But we’re eager to meet with him, too. We’re regular, everyday people,” she said.

The pair have exchanged letters before. Xi wrote to Lande in 2022, also talking about ties between their nations and praising Iowa.

“The Chinese and American people are both great people, and our friendship is not only a valuable asset but also an important foundation for the development of bilateral relations,” Xi wrote.

The Chinese leader has recently been trying to bank on the nostalgia of his friendly trip to the US all those years ago.

While speaking to President Joe Biden at the APEC summit, Xi was presented with a photo of his younger self posing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge — which he visited in 1985.

“Do you know this young man?” Biden said, according to a China Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s retelling.

“Oh yes, this was 38 years ago,” Xi said.

Beijing’s foreign delegates promoted the snippet, which went viral on Chinese social media.

The US-China relationship, however, hasn’t been as rosy as Xi and Lande’s. The past year has seen both countries enmeshed in several tense military encounters that have soured relations to some of their worst levels in history.

In February, the US shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon after it flew over US territory. Then, in May, there was a close encounter between a US spy plane and a Chinese jet over the South China Sea.

The US has also sought to curb China’s technological developments when it imposed export controls for the semiconductor industry in October.

Representatives for China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.