Mr Xi Comes to Town
Deaglán de Bréadún
He wasn’t JFK, Obama or the Queen of England, but maybe the visit of Chinese Vice-President Xi Jinping might be more significant in the long run, who knows? http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/gallery/2012/02/20/visit-of-chinese-vice-president-xi-jinping/
Your humble scribe followed him from his emergence onto the tarmac at Shannon at precisely 4.30 pm on Saturday, through his visit to the Lynch family farm in Co Clare to the pomp and ceremony at Dublin Castle and this morning’s trade and investment forum in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham.
If the visit produces half the results that Government ministers and officials are predicting, we’ll all be lighting cigars with Chinese banknotes before the end of the decade.
The star of the show was James Lynch, the farmer in Sixmilebridge who took Mr Xi on a tour of his land. To the latter’s credit, he smiled broadly when told that a newborn heifer calf was being named after him.
