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Chinese Lunar New Year greeting by Donald Trump’s granddaughter sparks huge media interest

Computer screens display a video clip showing U.S. President Donald Trump's granddaughter Arabella Kushner singing a Chinese New Year greeting song that garnered almost 20 million views in Beijing, China, Feb 3, 2017. Photo: AP

Computer screens display a video clip showing U.S. President Donald Trump's granddaughter Arabella Kushner singing a Chinese New Year greeting song that garnered almost 20 million views in Beijing, China, Feb 3, 2017. Photo: AP

BEIJING — A video showing the granddaughter of US President Donald Trump singing a traditional Lunar New Year song in Putonghua has attracted huge media interest – both in China and the United States, mainland media reported.

Arabella, aged five, was shown singing a traditional children’s song called “Happy New Year” while carrying a Chinese lion dance puppet in the video posted on Twitter on Thursday (Feb 2) by her mother, Ivanka Trump, the tabloid newspaper Global Times reported. 

The girl was also seen blowing a kiss and bowing to her online audience at the end of the video.

“Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChineseNewYear,” Ivanka Trump wrote in a caption accompanying the 37-second-long video.

“Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration.”

Ivanka Trump then added in Chinese characters: “Happy New Year!”

The post appeared after Ivanka Trump took her daughter to the Chinese Embassy in Washington to attend a reception celebrating the annual spring festival on Wednesday.

The visit and her Twitter message were the only personal new year greetings made by the Trump family to the Chinese community because the US President – unlike his predecessors – has not sent any new year’s greeting on the official White House website.

Ivanka Trump has often shared videos and pictures of Arabella speaking Chinese and celebrating Chinese culture because her daughter has been learning the language since she was 18 months old. Arabella was shown wearing a red Chinese-embroidered dress while reciting a poem in Putonghua in a video posted on her mother’s Twitter account during last year’s holiday.

Donald Trump’s relationship with China has been tense since his election campaign after he called the country a “currency manipulator” in his campaign pledge on trade.

One comment by a reader on the mainland news website news.163.com, who watched Arabella singing in the latest video, said: “Cute girl, good singing. Pure children do not have conspiracies.”

However, other netizens were not happy that the US President had not sent any personal Lunar New Year greeting, saying: “He is just trying to brush us off with this five year old girl.” SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

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