China’s First Publicly Glamorous First Lady

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Peng Liyuan, celebrity folksingerand wife of President Xi Jinping has a chic, elegant anddecidedly local look. Since March 22, when she appeared at aMoscow airport, arm in arm with her smiling husband on theopening leg of his first international trip as China’s new headof state, talk of her has spread across newspapers, blogs andmicroblogs. Especially as compared with her low-key, all-but-invisible first lady predecessors, Peng is a vision of modernChinese times, and modern Chinese people seem to be embracingher.

“Peng Liyuan’s debut trip is remarkable. For a very longtime, Party leaders, and especially their wives, left dowdyimpressions,” tweeted a retired academic in Shandong provincevia the Sina Weibo microblogging service on March 25. “No matterif they were dignified ladies from a high-level background orquiet ladies from humble circumstances, they were never sobrilliant or dazzling on the international stage.”