SINGAPORE - The flowery accolades wouldn't stop as the world's second most powerful leader all but held his nose to welcome the recalcitrant from neighbouring North Korea whom he'd avoided all these years and who now had shown up in Beijing for his first overseas trip as his nation's leader.

At the formal welcoming banquet at the North Hall of the Great Hall of the People, a musical pageant, and at another lunch at the Diaoyutai Guest House, Mr Xi Jinping and Mr Kim Jong Un, watched by their wives, got along like long-lost brothers.