Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Chinese leader Xi Jinping with a Soviet-era poster dedicated to Moscow-Beijing cooperation, while his counterpart gifted him with silverware and a ceramic figurine following their negotiations in Beijing on Friday
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th April, 2019) Russian President Vladimir Putin presented Chinese leader Xi Jinping with a Soviet-era poster dedicated to Moscow-Beijing cooperation, while his counterpart gifted him with silverware and a ceramic figurine following their negotiations in Beijing on Friday.
After a working lunch with his Chinese counterpart, Putin gave Xi a Soviet-era poster that read "Russian-Chinese cooperation," which was created by artist Isaac Greenstein back in 1956.
The poster depicts workers from the Soviet Union and China greeting each other, as well as a map showing railroads connecting the cities of Moscow, Beijing, Almaty (now a city in Kazakhstan) and China's Lanzhou in the background.
The poster was dedicated to the opening of the section of the Trans-Siberian Railway between Moscow, Ulaanbaatar (now the Mongolian capital) and Beijing in January 1956. It also marked the commissioning of the Peking (a cyrillization of Beijing) Hotel in Moscow.
Xi, in turn, presented the Russian president with a set of silverware used by the Beijing Friendship Hotel, which was built 65 years ago in honor of the close ties between the two countries.
Putin was also gifted with a cup, plate, chopsticks and spoon engraved with an image of an Ancient Chinese beauty and magnolia flowers, which are a Chinese symbol for loyalty and strength of love.
The gifts for the Russian leader did not end there as he also received a ceramic copy of the Legendary Stallion on the Great Silk Road figurine. The original is kept in the National Museum of China in Beijing.
Putin joined Xi on Thursday at the Belt and Road forum in the Chinese capital. The Belt and Road Initiative, launched by China in 2013, aims to enhance "all-around connectivity through infrastructure construction," explore "new driving forces for world economic growth" and build a new platform for world economic cooperation.
