YANZIKOU, China - He walked the streets with a candidate's finesse, chatting with the locals, buying a round of ice cream, holding a kitten, even kissing a baby or two. It might well have been a campaign stop.
But on this particular Friday morning, Sen. Joseph Biden wasn't canvassing constituents in his home state of Delaware. He and two fellow senators were on the other side of the planet with a more international goal in mind: getting a glimpse of life in China's countryside, where 70 percent of the nation's 1.3 billion people live.
Every American visitor, Biden said, stands to learn from an expedition beyond the burgeoning sprawl of the Beijing building boom.
``There would be a greater appreciation for the incredible - how should I say it? - leap that China still has to make for the vast majority of its citizens,'' said the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, a Democrat, who was accompanied by Sen. Fred Thompson, Republican of Tennessee, and Sen. Paul Sarbanes, Democrat of Maryland.
``I'm struck by the tremendous development in Shanghai, Beijing. But it's good to come out here and put it into perspective,'' Sarbanes said.
Yanzikou - the name means ``Swallow's Pass'' in English - is a village of hand-fashioned brick houses down a narrow road an hour north of Beijing. It sits against jagged mountains near both the Great Wall and the newer Snow Village Ski Park, and its 200 people farm vegetables and pomegranates in the surrounding hills.
What makes it particularly distinctive, however, is the building topped with a cross in the heart of town. Yanzikou is 80 percent Catholic - the government-regulated version of Roman Catholicism, which isn't permitted to affiliate with the Vatican.
The village priest, the Rev. Joseph Zhang Depu, a dead ringer for Uncle Junior from ``The Sopranos,'' welcomed the senators in a whisper to his sanctuary. Biden, who is Catholic, walked among unadorned wooden pews and glanced at the Christmas lights hanging from a chandelier.
``This was a house once,'' Zhang told Biden, who knelt before him.
``For how long were you unable to be a priest, openly ministering to your flock?'' Biden asked.
``I'm too embarrassed to say,'' responded Zhang.
``I'd go to confession,'' Biden joked, ``except you'd have to hear my sins.''
Thompson chimed in. ``It would take too long,'' the former actor quipped.
Outside, Biden cautioned against conclusions.
``The attitude of what constitutes a religion here or in the United States is very different,'' he said. ``I wouldn't extrapolate from this that there's necessarily religious freedom in all of China.''
Then, away from cameras, he slipped back into the empty church and deposited three folded 100-yuan bills - about $37 - into the collection box.
From there, the senators strode through the village. Each person they met, Biden said, spoke to why they came: to help Americans begin to understand China - and help Chinese understand Americans better.
Among the latter were Gao Shan, 11, and Yan Songlu, 7. Biden spotted them playing in the sun-baked dirt and strode up. They seemed average enough, but he saw something else in them: China's future.
``Hello, Mr. President, Mr. Premier,'' he joked good-naturedly. Then, to his staff: ``These two could be running the country someday.''
``President?'' Gao Shan said as his mother beamed. ``I'm happy to hear that.''
The senators ducked under an underwear-laden clothesline to visit Hang Shujun, who shares a two-room home with her parents, younger sister, husband and infant son, who attracted Biden like a magnet. He picked up 2 1/2-month-old Liu Yue, who didn't object.
``This is what politicians in America do,'' Biden said, kissing Yue's forehead. Soot from a coal stove hung heavy in the air.
How much of Yanzikou has electricity isn't clear. Hang had a TV, other villagers no power at all. Regardless, Biden said, it felt a world away from the marble lobby of the senators' plush Beijing hotel, where staff in topcoats ask every few seconds if you're being helped.
``You're talking about this as the norm rather than the lobby of the St. Regis being the norm,'' Biden said. China's Yanzikous, he said, can ``put into perspective some of the actions of the Chinese government.''
A bit later, the Americans boarded their air conditioned bus and were hustled off to see the Great Wall, leaving behind a flock of smiling children and a thicket of bemused adults.
And the future president and premier of China? They walked away happy: Joe Biden gave them his address and invited them to America.
More importantly, he bought them Popsicles.
AP-NY-08-10-01 1439EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.