China’s new leader a pure gentleman, says farmer

When farmer James Lynch shared an Irish coffee earlier this year with China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, he thought that he was a “pure gentleman”.

He hasn’t changed his mind and, if anything, he is even more impressed with the man named last week as the new head of the Chinese Communist Party and the First Citizen of a nation of almost 1.5 billion people.

Though arguably the most powerful man on the planet, he is also very down-to-earth, as James and his family discovered last February when they invited the then vice president to their farm in Cappagh, Sixmilebridge, Co Clare.