Peng Liyuan, First Lady of China - Best First Lady in the World

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As the media of the world has finally recognized, President Xi Jinping of China has a great partner in his wife of 25 years Peng Liyuan.  More than anything else, she has helped President Xi Jinping bring the Chinese into the modern era and to address the many problems facing nations aspiring to be the best in the world.

China is one of the largest nations in the world and has a deep, rich history. Some of the things that make China so popular are its ancient traditions, rich culture, and medicinal practices.  China's alternative and traditional medicines are adapted in western countries and are supported and practiced by western health care professionals throughout the world.

The country's ancient and historical structures are also renowned around the world. The Great Wall of China is considered one of the wonders of the world and attracts tourists from all over the globe. China also holds the largest and most famous snow festivals.

Aside from tourist attractions, the country is also famous for its inventions. The Chinese invented gunpowder during the ninth century, and China is the producer of many famous and potent teas. China remains as the largest exporter and producer of green tea in the world.

Then there is the remarkable rise to power by President Xi Jinping and his success in guiding China into a role as an emerging world superpower and responsible member of the world community.  His wife is a powerful companion comfortable in the role she can fulfill for her husband and her country.

Remember, China has a written record back 4,000 years, and then a couple of mystical cultures and civilization dating back 7,000 - 8,000 years ago. That is pretty old.

Chinese philosophy, religion, medicine, herbs, and other attributes have withstood the test of time and once again are gaining worldwide acceptance.

Here she is in a video to help victims of AIDs.

Here are excerpts from a story about the First Lady by The Daily Telegraph in the UK that offers great insight into her rise in China.  

The First Lady of Mexico, Angélica Rivera de Peña and the First Lady of China, Peng Liyuan, 

visit the children of the Hospital Infantil de México Federico Gómez in Mexico City

The Daily Telegraph - London

China's first lady Peng Liyuan: a perfectly scripted life

China's new first lady has dazzled the world, but who is the real Peng Liyuan

03 Apr 2013By Malcolm Moore, Beijing

After decades of stiff and inscrutable leaders, whose wives have been obediently invisible, China's Communist party has finally revealed a softer side: the gracious and elegant Peng Liyuan.

But while the new first lady was almost unknown in the West until she emerged on Xi Jinping's first presidential tour, in her homeland she has been a superstar for three decades.

Well before she met Mr Xi, Mrs Peng was arguably the most famous singer in China. Even today, an old joke still does the rounds in Beijing: "Who is Xi Jinping? He is Peng Liyuan's husband."

"It is a mission impossible to find someone more appropriate to represent the image of Chinese women than Peng Liyuan," gushed the Southern People Weekly magazine in 2005.

"She has a face like a full moon, shining eyes and white teeth, and she is upright and straightforward, frank and friendly".

Her dazzling appearance in Moscow last month, in a well-tailored coat and sky-blue scarf, was merely the latest act in a drama that has been meticulously scripted by the Party since she was just 15-years-old.

"I felt very excited when I saw her get off the plane. I think she deserved it after all these years of hard work. I even cried a little bit," said Wen Sui, a singer who shared a dorm with Mrs Peng for five years at the China Conservatory of Music.

China remains a country where loose talk about the president's wife can land you in serious trouble, so the handful of people who were willing to talk about Mrs Peng were effusive in their praise.

Nor is there a biography of Mrs Peng. The Communist party firmly believes that the less the public knows about its leaders, the better, and has spent years carefully deleting information about Mrs Peng and crafting a narrative so exemplary it is, at times, hard to believe.

Born in Peng village in 1962, in the eastern province of Shandong, Mrs Peng comes from a poor family and the very opposite end of the Communist party to her princeling husband, whose father was a vice-premier of China.

Mrs Peng's father was a lowly official, a schoolmaster who was put in charge of the county Culture bureau. He earned 40 yuan (£4) a month. Her mother, who has been nearly entirely erased from the record, was 25 when she was born and a member of a small touring opera company.

"She spent most of her childhood on the ox cart of the county's playhouse," remembered Wei Zhongping, her father's deputy at the culture bureau.

"I was a born singer," said Mrs Peng on a visit to Singapore in the 1990s.

By the age of five, she said, she could sing a complete folk song. "As a singer, I have won the highest honours in China. Actually I am like the panda: we are both national treasures," she added.

What she shares with Mr Xi, however, are memories of the evils of the Cultural Revolution. When she was four, Red guards arrived at her house to denounce her family.

Her mother was called a spy for having relatives in Taiwan. Her father was made to clean public lavatories for promoting culture that was suddenly considered "feudal", a vestige of old China.

Both Mrs Peng and Mr Xi saw their fathers imprisoned. Both of them were sent into exile in the countryside. Mrs Peng was denied an education.

But she had a golden gift to fall back on: her voice. She quickly learned to sing patriotic songs and, as a skinny 15-year-old teenager, she beat competition from 10,000 other applicants to land a place at her provincial art school.

From there, her career has progressed upwards in one straight line. First she was picked for the elite performance troupe of the local People's Liberation Army.

Then she attended the Conservatory of Music in Beijing. According to the state media, she was a "three points and one line" student. In other words, the daily arc of her life only had three points on it – the music room, the canteen and the dorm.

"She was very tough on herself. I used to ask her why she studied so hard," said Wen Sui, her dorm mate and fellow singer. "She would also help out her poorer classmates, buying them food coupons. Her father, who I met, taught her a lot. He used to tell her: 'I do not care how famous you are, or how much money you have, you have to be a good person above all'.

"I said to him he did not need to keep ramming it in because she was already a good person, but he said when you get high and comfortable in life, you can forget these lessons."

Each month in Beijing she received 52 yuan from the army and sent 40 yuan of it home to help her parents and younger brother and sister.

When she graduated, she was headhunted by the most prestigious arts company of all, the General Political Department of the PLA, which essentially laid the path for her to become China's top propaganda singer.

Here is another beautiful performance by the First Lady.

"Even there," said Mrs Wen, "She put herself in charge of organising the housing for the workers there. She is a perfect leader".

Indeed, her career is utterly blemish-free. She had no boyfriends until she met Mr Xi. She never took money for sponsorship or advertisements. The only deception on record is that she wears five-inch platform shoes underneath her costumes on stage to seem taller.

The only critic who has ever given her a negative review, Jiang Li, said she had sought him out after he wrote that the constant and effusive stream of floral tributes to her on stage as she sang was a distraction.

"She was a little angry when she spoke to me at first. She asked what was wrong with people applauding her and giving her flowers. So then she arranged for me to come and meet her. Her brother picked me up and drove me to her teacher's house, where she was cooking dinner," he remembered.

"We became friends. She is an outstanding singer. The difference between her and others is that she does not have any pretension to her singing, or artificiality or techniques. And she does not compromise for the audience or the market."

"I used to see her walking on the street sometimes, even after she got married to her husband. He could easily have arranged a car for her, but she always took the bus and carried her own shopping," he added.

Her place at the top table of the Chinese establishment was cemented in 1985 when she spent 20 days on the front line entertaining troops as they fought a border conflict with Vietnam.

The following year she was accepted into the Communist party and made her first appearance on the flagship Spring Festival gala show.

Her Prince and the Showgirl relationship with Mr Xi was also carefully scripted, the work of a meticulous, but unknown, matchmaker. The marriage of a famous army singer was of course a highly political matter.

They were introduced in Beijing in the winter of 1986. It was bitterly cold and Mrs Peng wore her green army uniform. She later told the state media that she had dismissed Mr Xi as a "xiang ba lao", a coarse country bumpkin.

Mr Xi was rising fast in the Party, and had an impeccable background, but was scandalously a divorcee. He had married the daughter of China's ambassador to the UK but the couple broke up when his wife wanted to return to England to study.

In the end, the courtship was brief. On September 1, 1987, a few colleagues were invited to the Red Lady French restaurant in the five-star Yeohwa hotel in Xiamen, where Mr Xi was the deputy mayor. The dinner was a wedding banquet.

For years, their union was a secret from all but a handful of top Party officials. But Mrs Peng later revealed she had eaten so many snails that night she had made herself ill.

Four days later, she went on a singing tour with the PLA, and the couple lived largely separate lives for two decades. Mr Xi was in the south of China and Mrs Peng was in Beijing or on the road, singing as many as 350 shows a year.

It is not uncommon in China for husbands and wives to live apart, and Mr Xi and Mrs Peng pragmatically pursued their own careers.

"I have never done anything for her work and life, and I am not able to do anything. Therefore how could I demand her to do this or that? If everything is fine with her, I am happy," said a surprisingly tolerant Mr Xi, in 2007, to the Youth Express newspaper.

Mrs Peng battled through severe morning sickness and dehydration to perform on the Chinese Spring Festival Gala, perhaps the most watched television show on earth.

"In a way, she was Kate Middleton before Kate Middleton was Kate Middleton," wrote Martin Macmillan in his biography of the couple Together They Hold Up the Sky.

Mr Xi, meanwhile, missed the birth of their daughter, Mingze, because he was busy fighting floods.

For some, the script was too perfect. A cable from the US Consulate in Shanghai from 2007, noted that High Court judges from Zhejiang province, where Mr Xi had been based "reported rumours that Xi was preparing to divorce his wife".

There were enough rumours that Mr Xi was having an affair that the Chinese media issued articles stressing the couple's enduring love and that their "feelings for each other stabilised" after Mingze's birth. Those articles, of course, raised more questions than they answered.

For her part, Mrs Peng described her husband as a "safe harbour" that she longed to return to, and told folksy tales about carrying a special quilt for him all around China while she was on tour.

When asked about her hobbies, she said she liked being at home, sitting on the sofa, watching television with her husband and cooking. Mr Xi likes watching football and playing the Chinese game Go. China's first family is just like any other, according to the state media.

"She can relate to people, but what is unique here in China for a first lady is the people can connect to her. She has been well known for 30 plus years. An entire generation has grown up with her." said James Chau, one of the few journalists who has interviewed Mrs Peng. "She is a tangible face they can hang their hopes and dreams on".

In 2007, as Mr Xi was anointed as China's next leader, she began cutting back her singing appearances and instead took on more charity work.

Ruby Yang, a film director who shot a series of public service advertisements with Mrs Peng remembered how, stranded in tiny Aids-ridden village in Henan province, Mrs Peng had met a young boy, infected with HIV, who had been forced to live in a pigsty. "She was obviously deeply affected," she said. "As a Chinese American, I had no idea she was such a star. I made her do her make-up by the side of the road. But she was professional about it".

But while Mrs Peng's emergence on the world stage has been greeted with delight in China, there are already signs that the Party is uncomfortable at the enormous buzz around her.

While the Chinese media has been giddily comparing Mrs Peng to Jackie Kennedy, Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni this week, the censors have been wiping her name from the internet. Copies of her clothes that were selling on Taobao, an online marketplace, have been removed.

While her glamour may counterbalance her husband's often gruff appearance, and lend him plenty of popular support, there is a fear that a curious public may question why her official biography is so neat and tidy.

"After this trip, the Party will analyse how best to use her going forward, and how to make sure she does not outshine her husband," said Cheng Xiaohe, a professor of International Relations at Renmin university. "She is probably more influential than Michelle Obama since she will be around for ten years and was famous before her husband came into office," he added.

For Chinese viewers in particular here is a video of her life story.

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Obamaville - February 24, 2014 - What Olympics?

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With the President disappearing from the eyes of the press and politicians one can only assume his golf game has drastically improved and private parties at the White House are dominating his agenda.  I mean, how else could White House expenses under our hip hop and bee bop president exceed $1.4 billion a year?

Finances

 

While saying he has done nothing in five years might be a slight exaggeration the fact we spent about $17.5 Trillion in that time seems almost magical.  Where in the world did it go when we are supposed to be cutting back on everything?  By the way, Obama's second $17 TRILLION act was setting new records for the National Debt, which also passed $17 trillion this year.

 

 

Defense

 

This will be the first year since Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize five years ago that we will have no troops at war, (although I suspect the American soldiers still in Iraq and Afghanistan might question the claim).

 

 

The 2014 budget includes $526.6 billion for the Department of Defense base budget, a figure that does not include war costs or nuclear weapon activities at the Department of Energy.  In other words, about half of the defense spending is not in the defense budget.  Real defense spending averages about $1 trillion a year.

 

 

Defense Secretary Hagel says he will cut back $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years.  So according to my math that means we will cut $100 billion a year from our trillion dollar a year spending.  And here I thought we had ended two very expensive wars under the president.  Where are all the savings?  Fuzzy math seems to dominate our nation's capitol.

 

Olympics

 

Of course our hip Obama family spends millions of dollars to bring their favorite musicians and celebrities to lavish White House parties, private parties I might add that we the people can't attend.  You can find Beyonce, Bieber, Swift, Jay Z and who knows who else prowling our White House and giving private performances for the Obama family, at taxpayers expense of course.

 

 

But do you think the President, the First Lady and family, or even a single soul from the 2 million civilian employees of the USA including over 3000 appointed by the President could travel to Russia to support our Olympic Team.  Not even smiling Joe Biden or a single cabinet member had time to go support the team.

 

 

President Putin of Russia was there a whole lot and so were representatives from over 100 countries competing in the winter Olympics.  As a nation we should be ashamed our first family was too busy to support the Olympic team or send anyone else.

 

 

NBC did it's best to trash the Russian Olympics, most likely to help Obama win the world popularity war with Putin.  NBC is the last major media outpost for Obama liberals and the person they helped put in office has collapsed in the polls so it is only logical they would help him.

 

 

Unfortunately for both NBC and Obama Putin delivered, the Russian Olympic team delivered, the people of Russia delivered and the nit picking Americans who tried to undermine the Russian production failed miserably.  The Russians did a great job under very difficult circumstances and terrorist threats.

 

By the way, in the process of staging the Olympics Putin managed to take a seriously deteriorating Stalinist Russian city and transform it into a world class resort on the Black Sea and the people of Sochi will benefit for years to come.

 

 

Mid-Term Elections

 

OMG, after two billion was spent in 2012 on political campaigns, here we are again in the middle of another election year.  I say everyone in America should cancel their television service, local, cable and satellite, and take a year off from the incessant and unintelligible campaign nonsense.

 

 

What would you miss?  Certainly nothing of any value to the future of the world.  No more super-hyped weather warnings to force you to race to the store and load up on pre-storm supplies that have been marked up because the advertisers need more sales, the TV stations need more ads, and no one cares about the lonely consumer who is the target of every crook and creep disguised as productive members of society.

 

As the political parties encourage you, vote early and vote often because it may be the last time you have anything to say about what happens in government.  Long ago our freedoms were hijacked and our rights were trampled.  We are spoon fed lies and falsehoods as if truth no longer counts.

 

 

Neither the news media nor political processes makes any effort to force politicians and political parties to tell the truth and the federal regulatory agencies like the Justice Department are hardly able to enforce fairness on politicians when they can't even send Wall Street crooks to jail.

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Obamaville October 22 - Our Elitist President can't help being Elitist but That's Okay

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Every time the Obama's almost convince us they are just like us common people they go and do something to prove they are not. Call it political naivety or stupidity, once an elitist always an elitist. You will never find Willie Nelson performing in the White House when pop stars like the Jonas brothers (for the Obama daughters) or Beyonce are available. Michelle's idea of catching a show is flying to NYC for a Broadway Production.

On his current campaign swing Barack again demonstrated his propensity for rock star elitism when he decided to show his concern for Main Street America and the small business community that powers our national economy by having a private meeting with the rock star of the mega-corporate world Steven Jobs, founder and CEO of Apple Corporation, the 2nd largest corporation in America.

It seems a key qualification for a business person to get a personal meeting with the people's president is to be a member of the billionaires club like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Steven Jobs. Hardly Main Street's idea of the common folk but when you are an Ivy League elitist you tend to have a different view of yourself and who should be in your presence I guess.

Make no mistake, Steven Jobs is legendary in the business world and is most certainly the top rock star of the billionaires club but in the midst of the final days of campaigning couldn't our president just once have a meeting with a corporate leader who represents the Made In America by American Workers goal we all want to promote, including our wayward president? I mean Apple has more Chinese employees in China than any other American company?

If I were an elitist and I had their money Jobs would be on my short list as well but why doesn't our president meet with a real American company CEO that epitomizes the Made In America by Americans we all want to see? Obama need look no further than his own state of Illinois for the perfect example, Caterpillar Corporation.

Caterpillar makes heavy equipment in America crucial to construction and mining operations around the world. It is one of the largest exporter of America goods overseas. In spite of the worldwide recession Caterpillar has increased their American manufacturing work force by over 7,500 employees in the last year and significantly increased export sales overseas which helps our balance of trade deficit. I guess it is too much to ask that an elitist president jump in the cab of an earth moving Cat from his home state when he can sip a latté in Silicon Valley with a billionaire.

We love you Obama because you are our president but be honest about yourself when your media people try to paint you as a commoner. John Kennedy never had to distort his Ivy League image to win our love because he knew even Ivy Leaguers can show concern and compassion for everyone and be real.

Barack and Michelle spent the last two years saying one thing and doing another. That does not sit well with the public and only makes you hypocrites. You say Michelle won't campaign then send her out to do million dollar political events. She spends a day on the Gulf Coast and a week at a Southern Spanish resort on vacation.

It's okay for our president to be a little elitist, we expect our president to be a little special. But do it with the style and class of a Kennedy, acknowledge you are different, but be the friend and advocate of Main Street America, along with rubbing shoulders with the billionaires club.
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Obamaville - September 29 - Latest Poll Results

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Thank goodness the politicians in Washington, DC have set a fine example and we are no longer required to tell the truth about anything because otherwise the latest polls would make little sense. However, the die is cast and the truth is lost and we only have about 5 more weeks of nonsense before the elections so here are the latest poll results as I see them.

Obama has slipped so low in the polls 2/3 of all Americans now want him to be Prime Minister of England or Australia.

The leftist liberals are held in such low regard by most Americans that the only TV ratings now recorded for MSNBC and CNN, America's answers to socialist Europe, are the staff of the two networks watching each other.

Of course liberals aren't the only ones having problems as the same poll shows all Republicans and Democrats over 65 and Newt Gingrich no matter what his age need to be sent out to pasture.

At the same time the people also believe the voting age must be raised to 28 years of age since the dumb kids got us into this mess electing Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to lead us out of the darkness and into the night.

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, 80% of all people refuse to believe she is the leader of the majority party as even Democrats can't be that stupid.

Voting for the person the public most wants to see on Dancing with the Stars next season was tied with over 90% wanting Barack Obama and Sarah Palin for the next two seasons, 2011 and 2012, so both will be too busy to run for president.

In terms of education issues, over 70% of the public says the Obama's could not have attended the exclusive Ivy League schools of Columbia and Harvard for Barack, and Princeton and Harvard for Michelle, and still claim to be plain old American middle class folks.

An astounding 100% of the people want to see only one debate in this fall's election, and a team debate at that. They want the team of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck for the right wing against Arianna Huffington and former VP Al Gore for the socialists with the winners decided by whichever team can figure out what the hell the other team is saying first.

The Supreme Court decision to not allow election ballots to offer the choice, "none of the above", which was rejected by the Supreme Court on grounds the public has no right to so directly influence an election, was opposed by 83% of the public.

67% of the public say VP Joe Biden was inconsistent when he admonished fellow Democrats to stop whining the same day Barack Obama was again whining about the endless curses George Bush left him over the past eight years even though George Bush left office nearly two years ago.

Oh yes, and 91% of the public believes we are much safer and the economy will recover only if congress and the Obama's stay on vacation all the time.
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The Obama's Disconnect with the American Public - Barack and Michelle continue spending spree

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Though the White House is trying to say the president's appearance on the View, the ABC talk show blabber fest that airs in the afternoon, was good public relations, it was just one of many things the White House would just a soon we didn't talk about as the schedule of the president and first lady continue to baffle experts and agitate the public.

You see, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent every time the Obama clan decide to indulge a little at the taxpayers' expense. After his love fest with the girls on the View which is supposed to make up for the fact he has refused to hold a real news conference for months, he quietly attended two quite private fundraisers in NYC where people paid over $34,000 each to meet the president. So he slams the Supreme Court for allowing campaign contributions then books fund raisers from coast to coast to take advantage of the campaign laws he claims to deplore.



First was a fundraiser at the top-dollar Four Seasons hotel. The second of the two events was at the Greenwich Village home of Anna Wintour, the celebrity editor-in-chief of the American Vogue magazine who was the inspiration for the imperious fashion editor of the movie “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Administration aides said each event drew about 50 people but they provided little other information, including the identities of the attendees, and reporters accompanying the president were not allowed inside because Mr. Obama was not making a speech. While Mr. Obama and his recent predecessors typically have allowed reporters inside fundraisers for a short time, usually when the president delivers remarks to the assembled contributors, the Obama camp has adopted a policy of excluding reporters when he merely mingles with the monied crowd.



According to the deputy press secretary, Bill Burton, he told reporters on Air Force One that Mr. Obama is simply doing “what a president traditionally does, which is helping to raise money for the campaign season.”

Asked about the contrast between Mr. Obama’s afternoon stop with small business owners at a well-known Edison, N.J., sandwich shop, the Tastee Sub Shop, and his Manhattan evening with the rich and famous, Mr. Burton said, “Today is one of those days where he’s wearing a couple of different hats.”



While Obama was hobnobbing with the NYC elite plans by his wife, Michelle, for yet another summer vacation were being disclosed. Now remember on the weekend of Aug. 14, the first family weekends on the Florida Gulf coast, part of an appeal by President Obama and the first lady to encourage gulf tourism in the wake of the BP oil spill. Between Aug. 19 and 29, the first family will vacation on Martha's Vineyard, where they spent part of last summer.

The summer started with a Memorial Day weekend trip to Chicago; the family went to the Camp David presidential retreat before July 4; they weekended in Maine, sightseeing in Acadia National Park, departing on July 16 and returning Sunday afternoon July 18. Mrs. Obama took her daughters and her mom, Marian Robinson, to Los Angeles in June. In March, over spring break, Mrs. Obama with her daughters, mom and some pals hit New York for a round of Broadway shows.



Not cognizant that the masses have already blacked her out of mind, Mrs. Barack Obama has put a media blackout on her latest holiday but word has leaked out that without the president she has still scheduled 40-room reservations for herself, daughter, friends and bodyguards at a five-star hotel in Benahavis, Spain. Most already realize that Michelle’s Girls Night Out holiday in Spain serves as resting up time for the 10-day holiday she will spend on Martha’s Vineyard next month.

It was not the White House but the Spanish press that revealed she will be going to the upscale southern Spanish resort city of Benahavis near Marbella. As for the 30-40 rooms for "friends and staff", the exclusive Spanish hotel room rates are $2,859 a night. Of course there are the Air force jets and Secret Service expenses plus her personal staff, limos and you know the rest that should pump a few hundred thousand dollars into the Spanish economy when our Gulf coast is going broke. But the Obama family will be spending a weekend in Florida.



The globe trotting, jet setting Obama's seem to think Broadway plays, concerts in the White House by famous artists, weeks in Cape Cod and lavish parties at taxpayer expense are part of the perks of office yet no previous president has made such an effort to get away from America and impress the world, especially in tough economic times. Even George Bush used to go to his ranch in Texas to get away.



His campaign demonstrated that Obama was the best candidate money could buy at a cost of nearly one billion dollars and his presidency is demonstrating that common sense and good judgment still seem to be lacking by these so called community organizers from Chicago.

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