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BEIJING - After shaking the hands of two dozen Utah business men and women, National People's Congress Chairman Cheng Si-wei turned to Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and asked a question:
"How do you pronounce your name?" Cheng asked.
"Just Jon," Huntsman said, deliberately misunderstanding and simultaneously directing one of the more powerful men in China to use the informality of first names.
It was an unusual invitation in a country where ceremony and protocol dictate official relationships, but not really out of character for Utah's governor, whose very proper diplomatic training competes with Everyman ways. This week's trade mission to China has returned Huntsman to his professional and psychic roots, to the country where he first learned his trade as a U.S. diplomat more than 20 years ago.
And, as the exchange with Cheng shows, Huntsman and the Chinese love the homecoming.
Utah's governor is in his element. He presents plate after plate emblazoned with the state's logo, washes his hands with warm hot towels delivered by uniformed servers and eats whatever is put in front of him with chopsticks. He waits patiently while government translators interpret his English for a Chinese audience. And then, to their delight, he slips in a Mandarin idiom, delivering what seems to be a private joke and proving he doesn't really need the interpreter.
The Chinese are thoroughly charmed.
"I dare not speak Chinese anymore," said Zhenge Zhao, deputy international relations director general for China's Chamber of International Commerce.
And Utah business managers are happy to hang onto Huntsman's coattails.
"It's wonderful to have a governor who is fluent in the language, [respectful] of the culture and knows the dos and don'ts," said Manny Menendez, a consultant for XanGo.
Huntsman first learned the intricacies of doing business in China as the "lowliest peon" in Ronald Reagan's White House. After serving a religious mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Taiwan and studying Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania, he was hired as Reagan's staff assistant. In 1983, he traveled with the president for Reagan's first trip to China. Several years later, the first President Bush appointed him ambassador to Singapore - the youngest in 100 years. And most recently, Huntsman served as a deputy U.S. trade representative, continuing to negotiate with the Chinese as international business leaders fled in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Finally, he worked on the U.S. team prodding the country into its ascension to the World Trade Organization.
The country's paradoxes - the incongruities of aging, tile-roofed neighborhoods surrounded by steel-and-glass high-rises in central Beijing, for example - fascinate him. He reminisces about riding his "flying pigeon" bicycle through the streets of Singapore; he reluctantly junked it when he couldn't find parts in Utah. When Huntsman checked into his Beijing hotel at 11:30 p.m. Monday, he tried to persuade his staff to go out for Szechuan - they were let off the hook because nothing was still open. Two weeks ago, he attended a lecture on China at his alma mater with his daughter Abby. A self-described "Sinophile," he has watched China change from a Third World country into an economic powerhouse.
He wants Utah to be part of the transformation. "I'm looking at China from a completely different perspective this time," he said. In essence, he is lobbying for Utah businesses, putting his foot in the door for the state's business executives and guiding them through.
Throughout the day Tuesday, Huntsman repeated a common Chinese saying that embodies his goal and thrills his hosts: "Work together, study together, progress together." It's guaranteed to draw nods and smiles from his listeners.
Utah leaders met Tuesday with several high-level U.S. and Chinese government officials - including U.S. Ambassador Sandy Randt; Cheng at The Great Hall of the People, the equivalent of the U.S. Capitol building; and Vice Commerce Minister Madame Ma Xiuhong. "She's impossible to meet with," said Brett Heimburger, Governor's Office of Economic Development Asia director. But, "she's an old and very dear friend of the governor's."
For his part, Randt credited Utah's governor for his role in opening China to U.S. businesses through the WTO agreements.
"He did a terrific job representing the interests of American companies, and we miss him," Randt said.
Lew Cramer, briefly the governor's boss at the Foreign Commercial Service and now his employee as the new director of Utah's World Trade Center, says Huntsman has credentials no other U.S. governor has, including fluency in a language no other state chief executive can speak. Only California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is better known in international circles - and for different reasons.
"[Huntsman is] smart. He's articulate. He's thorough. And they respect him - which is most important for the Chinese," Cramer said.
China's business leaders echo that. "Many Chinese businessmen with the desire to do business with Utah feel very encouraged," said Wan Jifei, chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
As a result, many Utah businesses are willing to let Huntsman do most of the talking for them on this trip.
Propay Chairman Steve Houghton believes the governor's experience and his reputation have led to a schedule of "weighty" meetings with influential bureaucrats. He figures Utah companies hoping to do business in China are that much further ahead of their competitors in other states.
"It was surreal being in these meetings with very, very senior people. It made a huge difference," Houghton said.
Huntsman has paid his own way on this trip - as have the businesses. And Wednesday he will join his brother and father at a Huntsman Chemical Corp. plant in Shanghai before rejoining the trade mission.
A little fatigued by the city-hopping, the governor lamented that he is "out of practice" after his meeting with Cheng. He's no longer living in a diplomat's "perpetual state of jet lag. I haven't traveled for two years."
Whatever changes his job as Utah's governor has wrought in Huntsman, the training comes back quickly.
When a Chinese government handler whispered to him that Vice Chairman Cheng was waiting to leave - it's considered bad form for a Chinese host to leave before a guest - Huntsman hurried down the Great Hall's steps and into a waiting car.
"That's reason to scoot," he said.