Leaders chat over simple dinner
Print Edition
AFTER waiting for more than six decades, it was a meal that lasted less than two hours.
Seated next to each other at a round table, to avoid having to choose someone to sit in the “host” position at the top of a rectangular one, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou shared a relatively simple dinner in a Singapore hotel after their historic meeting on Saturday.
Over crayfish, fried asparagus and spicy noodles, Xi and Ma talked politics, education and knives made from old artillery shells, according to an account provided by Ma to reporters on the flight back to Taipei later the same day.
“We did not drink that much,” Ma said. “He said his capacity for liquor wasn’t good and I said mine was not good either.”
Xi brought to the meal a famous spirit from the southwest province of Guizhou, while Ma brought wine and spirits from two groups of islets just off the mainland, which Taiwan forces have occupied since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
“We brought up the cooking knives of Kinmen. He also knew the knives are made from old artillery,” Ma said, referring to one of the islands which was shelled by the mainland at the height of the Cold War.
Xi also displayed his knowledge of the sorghum-based spirit kaoliang for which Kinmen is famous.
“When we got to discussing kaoliang he said actually the production of Chinese sorghum in Kinmen is not enough so they have to import some from the mainland. And I said we already know this,” Ma said.
Ma didn’t say how much the dinner cost, but he said they split the bill.
“We brought our own drinks so I don’t think we spent too much money,” he said.
China Central Television said Ma looked “flushed” after he left, as though he’d had a bit too much to drink.
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