Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan visit museum in Washington — Asharq Al-Awsat

US First Lady Melania Trump and China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan visited the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington on September 24. The visit took place during Xi Jinping’s diplomatic trip to the US capital, Asharq Al-Awsat reports.

Museum tour

While Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping held private talks at the White House, their wives toured the museum after the official welcoming ceremony and before the state dinner. People carrying Chinese and American flags gathered outside the museum.

Trump and Peng visited the Peacock Room, a dining room decorated in gold, green and blue that was created by American artist James McNeill Whistler. The room was previously located in a London mansion and was opened to visitors in Washington in 1923. They also viewed an ancient Chinese stone disc and Whistler’s painting “The Princess from the Land of Porcelain.”

Students from Hope Chinese School performed the Chinese folk songs “Song and Smile” and “Jasmine Flower” for the guests. Peng Liyuan sang along to some lines and later applauded the children.

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First public meeting in nearly ten years

This was the first public meeting between Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan in nearly a decade. They last met in 2017 during Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, when they visited the Palace Museum and a school.

Melania Trump arrived wearing a black Alexander McQueen tweed jacket and skirt. Peng Liyuan chose a qipao-style dress with a traditional collar adorned with a silver flower. In an interview with Fox News the day before, Melania Trump said she wanted to show the connection between US and Chinese culture.

According to the museum, its collection includes more than 46,000 objects, from the Neolithic period to the present day. Last year, the institution returned to China fragments of a silk manuscript more than 2,000 years old that had been removed from a tomb.