The Chinese embassy in India usually celebrates its national day at a five start hotel in Lutyens Delhi. This year though, ambassador Luo Zhaohui hosted the party at the sprawling embassy grounds to ensure a personal touch, a source said. The "welcome to my home'' hospitality, was meant to be a salve to the bruises in the relationship between the two countries caused by Doklam. The event celebrated the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
Zhaohui went all out to be the perfect host, and as a surprise, his wife led a group of embassy women to perform an enchanting fan dance on stage. She was later seen at the party, wearing a decorative red bindi with her traditional qipao. Even as other Chinese performers danced to Indian music and Indian performers danced to Chinese music, the envoy said that India and China should dance together. Speaking of the meeting between Chinese premier Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the BRICS summit some days ago, the envoy said that the message of the meeting was reconciliation. He said the two nations should start a new chapter with the same pace and direction.
The ambassador said that last week, he had visited Puduchery, where one of his teachers, Xu Fancheng, had spent several decades at the Aurobindo Ashram (from 1945 to 1978). He was one of the first bridges between the two countries, as he translated ancient Indian texts into Mandarin. The ambassador also spoke eloquently of Rabindranath Tagore and said that standing on the shoulders of these men, Indians and Chinese should do more to improve people to people relations and bilateral ties.
In a not very subtle manner, Zhaohui went on to speak about China's bullet trains—the Beijing to Shanghai one has recently upped its speed from 300 to 350 kmph. He also spoke of China's test runs of the hyperloops. The recent high optics foundation laying of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and Modi has Beijing concerned. Japan's involvement in India's infrastructure development and overall cosying up made the ambassador point out that China was India's largest trading partner.
He spoke of four Chinese inventions—high speed travel, Alipay (mobile wallets like Paytm in India), bicycle sharing and online sharing— and said that these were attempts at bettering the lives of Chinese and of raising the scope of the Chinese dream. He compared these four inventions with ancient China's inventions—paper, printing press, compass and gunpowder.
