President Xi Jinping has sent festive wishes to his American friends in the US state of Iowa in a Chinese New Year card that was received with enthusiasm and praised as a sign of their enduring friendship.

Xi's greeting to his friends in Muscatine, a small city in Iowa that Xi visited in 1985 and 2012, was in reply to a letter sent to him earlier this year by his friends there, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Recalling his visit to Iowa 41 years ago, Xi said that he had been warmly received, and that those wonderful memories remain fresh in his mind to this day, according to Xinhua.

The friendship with Iowans began during that 1985 visit, his first visit to the United States, and has endured for more than four decades, continuing to grow through a reunion with his Iowa friends in San Francisco in 2023, his replies to Muscatine High School students visiting China in 2024, and his New Year greetings to Iowa friends ahead of the 2025 Spring Festival.

This year, Luca Berrone, who met Xi during his visit to Iowa in 1985, wrote on behalf of Iowa friends together with Sarah Lande, Gary Dvorchak, Rick Kimberley, former US ambassador to China Terry Branstad and President Emeritus of the World Food Prize Foundation Kenneth Quinn, as well as teachers and students who participated in the "50,000 in Five Years" initiative, which invited 50,000 young Americans over a five-year period to visit China on exchange and study programs. In that letter, they extended Chinese New Year greetings to Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan.

In his reply letter, Xi warmly encouraged friends in Iowa to remain committed to promoting friendship between the people of the two countries, encouraging more young people in the US to be inheritors of the China-US friendship.

"We were very happy to get the reply from the president. It really shows that the friendship that started 41 years ago is still lasting. It's very warm and open," Dvorchak, who is a board member of the group Iowa Sister States, told China Daily. "I especially like the part about him encouraging exchanges among the youth, because that really is the strength and the foundation of a better Iowa-China and US-China relationship."

Dvorchak's house, where Xi once stayed, has been upgraded by the family into the "Sino-US Friendship House" and now operates as a nonprofit museum, standing as a symbol of China-US friendship.

"My goal this year is to have the museum open to the public and encourage more people to do people-to-people exchanges and to send more kids to China," he said.

Quinn, from the World Food Prize Foundation, said people-to-people exchanges between the two countries are meaningful and promote mutual understanding.

"I'm always very, very honored to be considered an old friend of President Xi Jinping, an old friend of China, among that group in Iowa," Quinn told China Daily.

On Feb 14, he drove six hours to Muscatine to attend a special Spring Festival celebration with the Iowa friends group and with students visiting from China, marking the Year of the Horse.

Quinn, who was born in the Year of the Horse, said the trip was both symbolic and deeply personal.

The horse, the seventh animal in the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, is a symbol of energy, strength and success in traditional Chinese culture.

Quinn, who is 84, said he made the journey to show his "support for continued exchanges" and for the friendship they have built over the decades.

"Such meaningful exchanges often happen not only at the national level, but at the provincial, city and even village levels, and these grassroots connections carry deep impact and lasting significance. Iowa has a particularly rich history of such people-to-people engagement," he said.

Travel and firsthand experience remain important, Quinn said.

What touched him most was how Xi once spoke about his time along the Mississippi River, which flows past Muscatine, and his impressions of the US as a young man in 1985.

Quinn said he believes that US students who travel to China today have the same opportunity to see the country with their own eyes and form their own understanding, and to build personal relationships.

mingmeili@chinadailyusa.com