ONE is the daughter of wealth and privilege, the other was so malnourished as a child that her black hair turned yellow.
The first ladies of Britain and China come from backgrounds that could scarcely be more different, but when Samantha Cameron meets Peng Liyuan for the first time during the Chinese state visit to Britain this week they will share a common interest in fashion.
Cameron has dazzled since her husband became Conservative leader 10 years ago. Peng, who is married to President Xi Jinping, one of the world’s most powerful leaders, has broken the mould of frumpy wives of communist heads of state by being both a beauty and a fashion icon.
Peng’s trademark single strand of pearls and mandarin-collared jacket have sparked a stampede among Chinese women seeking to copy her style — just as Cameron’s choice of simple British designs has influenced her contemporaries.
On a state visit that is being given the highest priority by Downing Street, both wives will have ceremonial roles to play in the growing entente between London and Beijing. And each, no doubt, will take a close interest in what the other is wearing.
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Cameron worked her way up from window dresser to creative director of the luxury label Smythson and designed two of its bestselling bags. She has championed British designers such as Roksanda Ilincic, Osman Yousefzada and Erdem.
Peng, a singer, has patronised Ma Ke, a designer from southern China whose designs have been described as a crossover between contemporary art and fashion.
On her maiden outing as first lady, in Moscow, Peng appeared in an elegant fitted dark coat with a leather handbag, both designed by Ma, who has said she feels obliged to dress Peng in domestic designs that befit her status as China’s highest-profile first lady in decades.
After a formal welcome from the Queen on Tuesday and a Guildhall banquet in the City of London on Wednesday, the Chinese visitors will join the Camerons at Chequers on Thursday. It will be an opportunity for the first ladies to compare notes and perhaps to discuss their radically different backgrounds.
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The Chinese media are tightly controlled and what little is known about Peng’s private life is likely to have been carefully filtered. Yet it is a compelling story.
While Cameron was born to wealth — her father Sir Reginald Sheffield, the 8th baronet, is said to be worth £20m — Peng’s story started more humbly amid the chaos of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Born in 1962, she was 14 when Mao died. This ended a decade of family fear and hunger. Her father had been persecuted by Maoist ideologues for his work in a rural theatre troupe.
Peng’s village teacher later discovered that the thin child was a talented singer and suggested she audition at an arts school. She travelled alone for 50 miles to take the exam, only to be forced to admit that she had never seen a piano and knew nothing of sheet music.
Yet when she belted out a patriotic song improbably titled The Sun is the Reddest and Chairman Mao is the Dearest, a star was born.
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Her soaring soprano voice won her a place in a conservatoire in eastern China. By the age of 18 she had joined the People’s Liberation Army arts troupe and by 23 she was the most popular singer in China, a superstar singing to soldiers on border duty.
She travelled the country dressed in her green army uniform and performed on the first broadcast of the most watched television show in the world, China’s New Year’s Eve Gala in 1983. She became known nationwide as the “most outstanding songbird of the century”.
Her life changed with an introduction in 1986 to Xi, the son of one of Mao’s closest associates and then a middle-ranking party official. He was 33 and already divorced when he encountered Peng, then 24. Apparently ignorant of her celebrity, he asked her what kind of songs she sang; she concluded that he was a country bumpkin.
Xi is said to have been instantly smitten and a year later they were married. Their daughter, Xi Mingze, graduated recently from Harvard.
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Since Peng became first lady three years ago she has been favoured with fawning media coverage. The marriage of China’s first couple was recently celebrated in a widely watched video called Xi Dada loves Peng Mama.
Xi has revealed that he addresses his wife by the diminutive Huniu — tiger cub in English. He is said to have phoned her daily during the long years when their careers kept them apart and she kept him supplied with his favourite noodles on trips to Hong Kong.
There have been glimpses of a more forceful edge to Peng. When Xi told her he did not like her stage lipstick, she told him to stick to politics.
Appearing more frequently at her husband’s side than any previous first lady, she lends a softer side to his burgeoning image as China’s most powerful — and ruthless — leader in three decades.
Strict censorship ensures that any rumours of friction in the marriage disappear at once. “They may have a happy marriage,” said one Chinese analyst. “But they have spent years apart and that can’t help a relationship. So who knows?”
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Like Cameron, Peng rarely speaks publicly but she did offer a hint of regret for her former life in a television interview in 2007, the year Xi joined the politburo.
“I love being a housewife and cycling to the market to buy vegetables,” she said. “Sometimes they say I look like Peng Liyuan.”