Xi Jinping: profile of the man born to lead China "He could have stayed in Beijing and given his background he could have chosen any job," said Gao Zhikai, who was the personal translator to Deng Xiaoping, the former Chinese leader. "But he went to the countryside, to the very lowest level, and became a county-level official in Zhengding in Hebei," he added. Geng Biao arranged it, but he went very willingly. Only by working at that level, and standing at the bottom, could he gain personal understanding into what life was like. At that time, Shenzhen was beginning to open up and it was a very popular choice for young officials, but he went to this very backward and conservative place, a microcosm of Chinese society at the time. Mr Gao remembers Mr Xi from a meeting in 2007 as someone who "does not stand on protocol." He said: "He is someone you could get along with very closely as a friend, but he handles himself with poise." From a very early age, it seems, Mr Xi has had a clear sense of his future path. Indeed, he seems to have charted a near perfect trajectory as he rose through the Party. Even during his teenage years, as he was sent to a poor village in the countryside during the madness of the Cultural revolution, Mr Xi was astonishingly self-composed, at least according to his official biography. I did the same work as the people in the village, lived in the same way as they and worked hard. They accepted me and began passing by the cave in which I lived," he told a Chinese magazine in 2000. When he studied at Tsinghua university, his classmate Qiao Mu recalled that "most of professors and students around us said he would be an emerging leader for next decade." Tsinghua has since closed his dormitory and turned it into a museum in his memory. After his stint in Zhengding, he was sent to Fujian in the south of China by Hu Yaobang, the party's leader at the time. The province was rampantly corrupt and one of China's most notorious criminals, Lai Changxing, had bought off most of the local Communist party cadres and police. But Mr Xi was left untouched by the scandal and subsequent investigation. "If you go into politics, it must not be for money," he told the magazine. Even if an official does not achieve great things in his career, at least he should be able to say he has not put money up his sleeve. He must be upright," he added. He distinguished himself as a cautious official, averse to the grand projects that his contemporaries favoured. He quietly and diligently went about his job, remembered Yao Liming, a Taiwanese professor who met Mr Xi in the late 1980s. "I was holding a seminar about politics in Taiwan," he said. During a coffee break, someone said a businessman named Mr Bai would like to speak to me. He came in and ask a series of questions about Taiwan's politics, and I was surprised by his knowledge. We spoke for about an hour. Much later, Prof Yao recognised Mr Xi when he saw him on television. From his time in Fujian, Mr Xi gained first-hand experience of China's export boom, said Mr Gao. "International trade, relations with Taiwan, the glories and agonies of private companies: he probably knows these things better than anyone," he said. Sze Chi-ching, a Hong Kong businessman, told the South China Morning Post that Mr Xi lived in a public dormitory and washed his own clothes even when he was deputy mayor of Xiamen. "He also dined at a public canteen and never visited fancy restaurants," he added. Mr Xi's wife, Peng Liyuan, is a glamorous folk-singer and one of China's most popular performers His first marriage to the daughter of China's ambassador to Britain was a short one. He married again, in Fujian, a singer named Peng Liyuan. However, he missed the birth of his daughter Xi Mingze, because he was busy dealing with the aftermath of a typhoon. She is now thought to study at Harvard. After more than two decades in the south, Mr Xi returned to Beijing in 2007 as he was made a member of the standing committee of the Politburo and lined up to be Hu Jintao's successor. Since then, his biography has been carefully scrubbed, his speeches have been carefully scrutinised and his friends have been cautioned not to speak about him. The statements he has made have been enigmatic. A believer in the Communist party, but very much his own man, it is unclear how different Mr Xi will be from his predecessors. Still, many have pinned their hopes on him. "He is a low-key guy, and he is changing the style of politics in China for the better," said Zhu Mingming, an entrepreneur from Wenzhou who met Mr Xi in Beijing in 2008.