Ruptly
"12-year-old Peng Pai's chance encounter with Russian President Vladimir Putin went around the world and changed the course of his life - and now, 26 years later, they're set to come face-to-face once again in Beijing. "I'm sure I’ll be deeply moved inside when I meet President Putin. I think I'd like to tell him, “President Putin, you’re still as dashing as ever, while I've gone from being a little boy back then to a middle-aged man who’s put on a few pounds," he joked. "[It] should have been completely impossible - [it] never led me to expect that we would have the chance to meet again 26 years later. It really is unbelievable; I feel so fortunate in my life," he said in an interview recorded on Monday. Video also includes THAT image of the two together, snapped by chance on the president's inaugural trip to Beijing in 2000. The young Peng Pai had climbed a railing to wave at the president - and Putin strode past security, lifted him over, and kissed him on the forehead. "It's a moment that has remained etched in my memory ever since," Peng Pai said. "I previously described it as a defining moment in my life; this next encounter may well be the second defining moment of my life." That meeting inspired him to learn Russian - and in 2007 was awarded the Russian Presidential Scholarship, studying bridge and tunnel engineering in Moscow. "I once tried writing him a letter back in 2008, when I was a freshman in college. It just so happened that the Beijing Olympics were taking place that year. I was watching the live broadcast of the Beijing Olympics from my dorm room in Russia when I saw President Putin appear at the opening ceremony," he went on. "In the letter, I explained that I was the child who had the honour of taking a photo with him at Beihai Park in Beijing all those years ago, and that I had now come to Moscow, Russia, to study abroad," he said. He received a masters degree in 2013 and returned to China, becoming head of engineering for a major construction company. Putin is in Beijing on May 19-20 for an official visit. While his head-to-head with Xi Jinping is expected to grab the headlines, this hotly anticipated reunion with Peng Pai is set to go viral once again."
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