Family members of Milton Gardner revisit Guling in 2012. Provided to China Daily

A top administrator of California's largest public university system sent an invitation to Chinese President Xi Jinping prior to his visit to Southern California to strengthen cultural and interpersonal ties between the US and China.

"We are delighted that President Xi Jinping will be visiting our great state and meeting with our president," UC-Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi told China Daily. "We hope we have the honor and pleasure of welcoming the president to our campus in the future."

She has invited Xi and others to the Sept 16 grand opening of UC-Davis' new Confucius Institute, the world's first devoted to Chinese food and beverage culture.

"We share in the belief that people-to-people relationships are the most important form of cultural exchange," she said.

UC-Davis won high recognition in China thanks to a story about a Chinese town named Guling and its links to a now-deceased UC-Davis professor, Milton Gardner.

Gardner, who taught at UC-Davis for 30 years and helped develop its physics department, always remembered being a 9-year-old boy living in the beautiful mountain village of Guling, where his family lived until 1911. The resort town, which is about 13 km from Fuzhou, capital of southeastern Fujian province, has been known since the 1880s for hosting Western diplomats, missionaries and merchants trying to avoid the summer heat.

After 1911, Gardner moved to the US with his family and never got a chance to revisit his boyhood home.

"President Xi helped connect the widow of one of our professor's with the place in China he once lived and remembered so fondly," Katehi said.

In 1992, Elizabeth Gardner decided to try and fulfill her late husband's wish and planned a trip to Guling. Assisting her was Xi Jinping, who was Party secretary in Fuzhou at the time.

During her two-day stay in Guling, the 76-year-old widow talked with elderly villagers who recalled the old days. As an expression of her gratitude, she sent Xi a pair of traditional Chinese vases that Gardner had kept over the years. And in return for this long-time friendship, Xi sent her home with a pair of vases as well.

In February 2012, Xi visited the US and told the story in a speech. Katehi was in the audience and was deeply touched by the story.

She later wrote to Xi and praised his efforts to help Gardner's widow as "heartwarming and wonderful".

It was "a powerful example of how relations between China and the United States can be advanced by one-to-one acts of kindness and generosity, such as those you displayed toward this American family," Katehi said in the letter.

Xi wrote back: "Amity between people is what underpins good relations between countries. I hope UC-Davis will continue to support and promote China-US cultural and people-to-people ties, especially exchanges and cooperation in education, science and technology, and play an active role in building Sino-US friendship."