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Ivanka's Daughter Sings In Mandarin For China's President

by Morgan Brinlee
Pool/Getty Images News/Getty Images

President Donald Trump's family appears to have taken a few extra steps to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to the United States this weekend. Trump's granddaughter Arabella serenaded President Xi in Mandarin on Friday at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

First daughter Ivanka Trump shared a video of 5-year-old Arabella performing a traditional Mandarin song for President Xi and Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan on Instagram on Friday:

Very proud of Arabella and Joseph for their performance in honor of President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan's official visit to the United States. 欢迎 (welcome)!

In the video, the president and First Lady Melania Trump can be seen speaking with President Xi and his wife just before Ivanka appears with her husband (and Trump's senior adviser) Jared Kushner and two of their three children, Arabella and 3-year-old Joseph. Ivanka can be heard telling President Xi and his wife they wanted to make them "feel at home" while they staying at Mar-a-Lago. The video them transitions to Arabella performing a Mandarin song for the visiting dignitaries.

According to the South China Morning Post, Arabella serenaded President Xi and First Lady Peng with a traditional Chinese folk song titled "Mo Li Hua" (or "Jasmine Flower" in English). Joseph then reportedly joined Arabella in reciting a bit of Chinese poetry, including "San Zi Jing" (which translates to the "Three Character Classic").

Friday wasn't the first time Arabella had been caught on camera speaking Mandarin. In February, an Instagram video of the president's granddaughter performing a song she'd reportedly learned for Chinese New Year while holding a red Chinese dragon puppet garnered high praise from viewers in both China and the United States. Ivanka also captured and shared a video of Arabella reciting poetry and singing songs in Mandarin for her family during a "pre-bedtime #ChineseNewYear party" in February 2016. "It was pretty adorable," Ivanka wrote in the video's caption.

Earlier this year it was also reported that Arabella had helped to smooth things over for her grandfather with a visit to the Chinese embassy in Washington in February, after the White House had failed to issue its customary Lunar New Year greeting to the Chinese government and its people on time.

According to US Weekly, Arabella has been studying Mandarin since she was around 16 months old. "My daughter doesn't speak much yet, but she seems to know as many words in Mandarin — in terms of understanding what they mean — as she does in English," the magazine reports Ivanka told the South China Morning Post in 2012.