In a Ming dynasty temple at the heart of Beijing’s Forbidden City, tourists huddle around an oil painting, smartphones poised.
On the crimson wall before them hangs the portrait of a Chinese icon: a superstar of stage and screen who rose from humble origins to become one of her country’s most recognisable faces.
“It’s Peng Liyuan,” says Sun Nan, a 42-year-old artist who has paused to admire the canvas. “She is very decent and beautiful.”
Zhao Chengchang, a pensioner also among the adoring crowds, says: “Everyone loves and respects her.”
Peng, 52, is the wife of President Xi Jinping, who this week makes his first state visit to Britain to kick off what officials on both sides call a “golden era” of UK-China relations.
Xi, a feared strongman who some say is China’s most authoritarian leader since Mao, is likely to grab most of the headlines during the couple’s stay at Buckingham Palace. But for years it has been Peng, not Xi, who has hogged the limelight, thanks to her career as a globetrotting folksinger who has graced stages from New York to Vienna.
“She is a complete star,” says Kerry Brown, the author of CEO, China: The Rise of Xi Jinping.
Peng – or Mama Peng as some fans know her – is often compared to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French-Italian singer married to France’s former president Nicholas Sarkozy. Others have drawn parallels with Raisa Gorbachev, Michelle Obama, Jackie Kennedy, Samantha Cameron and the Duchess of Cambridge, with whom Peng will dine at a state banquet on Tuesday.
In fact, Peng’s levels of domestic stardom are closer to those of Mariah Carey, even if her songs contain more than a hint of Mao Zedong.
“Hey, who is going to help us turn over a new leaf? Who is going to liberate us?” the soprano, who is also a major general in the People’s Liberation Army, croons on one track. “It’s the dear PLA. The saving star of the Communist party!”
In another music video, replete with images of Chinese tanks, fighter jets, warships and blood-spattered PLA soldiers, Peng urges the troops on: “Advance! Advance! Advance!”
Peng Liyuan was born in east China’s Shandong province in 1962, the eldest of three children. She joined the PLA in 1980 and, musically gifted, was admitted to the prestigious China Conservatory of Music in Beijing.
In 1983 the army singer was catapulted to national celebrity after performing on China’s CCTV New Year’s Gala, an annual television extravaganza watched by millions. During the 80s and 90s, the pop sensation cemented her status as a household name, touring the nation performing her soaring and patriotic vocals.
And in 1986 Peng met Xi Jinping – then a mid-ranking official whose first marriage to the daughter of China’s ambassador to Britain had fallen apart – on a blind date.
“My heart skipped a beat,” she recalled in a 2011 interview. “Isn’t this the ideal husband for me? A simple man with his own ideas.”
The couple married the following year and had a daughter, Xi Mingze, who graduated from Harvard University last year.
Chinese propaganda depicts Peng as a pop idol of the people. “Over more than three decades, she has given hundreds of free performances for people from all walks of life across the country,” an official biography says, pointing to performances at remote oil fields, mines and deserts.
Fang Ying, a record producer who worked with China’s first lady for more than two decades, says her success is the fruit of a rare musical talent and charm. “She is a very graceful, frank and kind person,” she says. “Her voice, her training and her understanding of art are all impeccable. She is the unmatchable zenith of China’s contemporary vocal music.”
Zhang Tianwei, a fashion writer, says Peng is also a style icon whose clothes are designed by Jihong Mao, China’s answer to the royal dressmaker Sir Norman Hartnell. “She is the perfect representation of the modern Chinese woman.”
But there is more to China’s first lady than music and glamour. In his recent book about Xi, the China scholar Willy Lam argues that Peng was instrumental in her husband’s rise to power. During the 90s she used her military connections to introduce him to the influential “chieftains” of the Communist party’s Shanghai faction, lead by the then president Jiang Zemin.
That introduction, Lam says, helped Xi land his first job as a provincial Communist party chief in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang in 2002. Within a decade Peng’s “simple” date would reach the pinnacle of the Communist party, becoming one of the most powerful men on earth.
“Peng has great political savvy,” Lam says. He describes her as both a “national heartthrob” and “Xi’s secret weapon”.
Brown says the singer’s fame and network mean she is now “an extremely important player in the power politics of China”.
“I think she is a sincere believer in the party and its ambition to create this strong, powerful, rich China,” he says. “And I think she is a very fervent nationalist. Her songs are almost all about the importance of a strong China and a renaissance for China.”
State media describe Peng as a key soft power tool. Her foreign trips are a chance “to show her personal glamour and charisma, as well as that of China” to the world.
But many believe Peng’s star qualities are being squandered, with her overseas appearances heavily scripted and largely low profile. Brown says propaganda chiefs fear China’s most prominent first lady since the Mao era might eclipse her husband.
“She is a very seasoned TV performer and singer and she knows exactly how to play the crowd,” he says. “This is a great asset if you are a political culture that is confident with this kind of display but obviously to Chinese leaders this is a new thing.”
Party spin doctors will be particularly cautious about Peng’s appearances in Britain, he says, after Xi was upstaged by the Pope during his state visit to the US.
“The last thing the Chinese government and Xi Jinping want is for the front pages to be dominated by her and for his great leadership not to get the coverage they feel it merits.”
Officials in Beijing are tightlipped when asked what role Peng will play in this week’s visit. Brown suggests a song. “Maybe she’ll serenade the Queen, who knows?”
During a 1999 state visit to Britain, Jiang Zemin sang a duet with the Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, Brown remembers. “This might be worth listening to.”
Additional reporting by Luna Lin
