'My job is to serve the people,' Xi tells villagers

WENCHUAN, Sichuan -- "My job is to serve the people," President Xi Jinping told local villagers in suburban Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan province, on Monday.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks when a senior resident of the Zhanqi village said with excitement, "You are our good leader and the lucky star of the Chinese people!"

"Thank you. I am a servant of the public. My job is to serve the people," the president replied.

Xi was in the village to see their achievement in using the Internet to help sell local products. An elderly woman wanted to give a pair of her hand-made shoes to Xi as a gift, but the president smiled and insisted on paying for them.

Before coming to the village, Xi visited Yingxiu, Wenchuan county, the epicenter of the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Sichuan on May 12, 2008.

Xi visited the ruins of a middle school and laid flowers in memory of more than 80,000 people killed in the quake and the heroes who died during rescue work.

Xi said the ruins must be protected to become a base for education in patriotism.

He also saw the changes in Yingxiu over the past 10 years after the quake and visited a local tea making workshop and a restaurant, where he helped in making buttered tea, cooking fried crisp pork and grinding soybeans to make bean curd jelly.

During the visit, Xi told local villagers that China would continue to revitalize the countryside.

"The development of the countryside is not just about developing industries or materials, but about spiritual and cultural lives," he said.