First trip: April 1985

Muscatine, Iowa

As Party Secretary of Zhengding county, Hebei province

Friendly Iowan people

Xi Jinping (center) at a picnic at the farm of Janet Rauch in 1985. Janet Rauch / for China Daily

President Xi Jinping first visited the United States in 1985, not long after the establishment of Sino-US diplomatic relations in 1979. He went to Muscatine, an agricultural center in the US heartland, when he led a delegation to learn about farming technology. Xi showed wide interest in agricultural technologies, including pig breeding, local people recalled.