While US president-elect Donald Trump was bashing China on the campaign trail, his granddaughter Arabella was learning Mandarin.
The 5-year-old has won hearts in China after a video of her reciting ancient Chinese poetry went viral on social media this week. The video was first posted by her mother Ivanka on Instagram in February in celebration of Chinese New Year.
Reposts of the video have taken over China’s internet. On Tencent’s video portal, for example, they have collectively been viewed for more than 1 million times. Here’s a translation of the main poem Arabella recited, “Sympathy for the Peasants,” via the Washington Post:
Hoeing millet in the midday heat,
Sweat dripping to the earth beneath.
Do you know the food on your plate,
Each grain was hard-earned.
Besides the overwhelming number of comments saying Arabella is “super adorable,” some Chinese internet users have credited her Mandarin skills for shaping impressions of Trump.
“After viewing this you’ll understand why Chinese people support Trump,” one internet user wrote on China’s Twitter-esque Weibo (link in Chinese, registration required). “Just imagine yourself in Trump’s place. Would you let your offspring learn a language of the nation you dislike much?”
That Arabella is learning Mandarin at such a young age shows that “China will sooner or later becomes the world’s strongest power,” wrote Michael Huang, a former Taiwanese pop star who’s become known as a China cheerleader, on Weibo. “Speak Mandarin, enjoy the future,” he added. His post has garnered more than 1,700 likes.
Below, an earlier video of Arabella reciting the Chinese nursery rhyme “The little white rabbit is so white.”