Vice-Premier Wu Yi showed her softer side by joking about her meeting with members of the US Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, during an address to American business leaders.
'Very difficult,' Ms Wu said in English, with a smile, when asked her about her encounters with senators and members of Congress. Business leaders responded with laughter.
The gatherings in Congress were part of this week's Strategic Economic Dialogue meetings and were intended to give Ms Wu and her delegation of 17 senior officials a taste of the growing anti-China sentiment brewing in the American legislature.
Ms Wu jested that the sessions were her 'assigned tasks' from US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. She also described her Wednesday meeting with Mrs Pelosi, one of Beijing's most vociferous critics and third in line to the US Presidency.
'I had read in the newspaper that Madame Wu's meeting with Nancy Pelosi was like entering the mouth of a tiger. However, I was not worried because I was born in the Year of the Tiger, so it was no problem for me,' Ms Wu said.
She added that when she told Mrs Pelosi the story, the Speaker responded that she felt the same way about meeting Ms Wu, known as China's 'iron lady'. Mrs Pelosi then told Ms Wu that she was born in the Year of the Dragon.
