He is the anointed successor to the president of China, but unlike the man who will be elected to govern America this autumn, Xi Jinping will assume office in Beijing without the burden of a stump speech or national televised debate.

Little is known about the 58-year-old vice-president, but to a town in the Midwestern state of Iowa he is more than just another waxwork mandarin.

It was 27 years ago, but the residents of Muscatine remember China's coming leader as a serious-but-charming Communist Party official who led a delegation to their town to learn about raising hogs and seed processing for the province of Hebei in northern China.

Next week, at his request, Mr Xi will return to Muscatine as part of a three-day trip to the United States, when he will briefly relive the time he spent in the town of 23,000 that sits on a series of bluffs above a sweeping bend in the Mississippi.

Eleanor Dvorchak, the housewife who hosted Mr Xi, said that the future president of China was a very unassuming guest, despite the cultural divide.

"I was asked if I had chopsticks, but I didn't have any and to be honest I don't know if I could have found any in Muscatine," she said.

"He was a courteous, hospitable and very serious man who was obviously dedicated to his job."

Mr Xi slept in a bedroom belonging to her sons Gary and Mark who had recently departed for college.

"It had football wallpaper and Star Trek figurines. How did he see that? I don't know," Mrs Dvorchak said. Joan Axel, a lawyer who also helped entertain Mr Xi, was similarly charmed after spending evenings with him eating picnics on the veranda of a farm and on a yacht cruising the Mississippi.

"I found him to be enormously curious, very pleasant. I didn't think it was an artificial pleasantry at all. I remember not feeling like I had to work very hard at our exchanges. It didn't feel stilted, he was very genuine, although somewhat reserved, of course."

Next week 17 past and present Muscatine residents will meet Mr Xi to share tea, champagne and raise a toast to "old times".

The reunion will provide a perfect photo-opportunity for Mr Xi, symbolising the hopes of a warmer, more personal engagement with America at a time when relations are strained over issues such as trade to Syria, sanctions on Iran and human rights.

Mr Xi, a so-called "princeling" who is the son of a communist revolutionary hero, will be striking a careful pose, between the flamboyance of the late Deng Xiaoping - who wooed America in 1979 by attending a rodeo and wearing a 10-gallon hat - and Hu Jintao, the dour and inscrutable man he succeeds.

Diplomatic stage-management and political realities aside, Muscatine residents say they hope that the time Mr Xi spent with them should help, in some small way, to bridge the gap between two countries separated by such a deep ideological divide.

Mr Xi appeared to display some antipathy to the U.S. in 2009 when, in an unguarded moment on trip to Mexico he railed against Americans as "foreigners with full bellies and nothing better to do [than] engage in finger-pointing at us".

"We treated him like another member of the family, so we hope that gave a good impression," said Sarah Lande, 73, who cooked Mr Xi a meal of corn-fed beef, mashed potatoes and apple pie, so "he got a real slice of American life".

Mrs Lande said that Muscatine residents had subsequently read about Mr Xi's life and the hardship he endured after his father Xi Zhongxun fell from favour during the Cultural Revolution.

"If you read the story of his life, he's had some good times, some privileged times, but also some time in the countryside too," she said.

"He often said that he had many new American friends and that relations between China and the U.S. are improving because of the many friendships that have been formed. He seemed to have soul."