Mark Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin; Facebook CEO Studied The Language For Five Years!

American billionaire Mark Zuckerberg had a chat with Mr. Xi in Mandarin at an event in Seattle, reported by The New York Times.

One of the Chinese President's agenda in Seattle was to meet with tech giants. He toured Boeing and Microsoft. He also dined at the home of America's wealthiest man, Bill Gates.

Mr. Xi then flew to Washington D.C., and was received at the White House with a 21-gun salute; and a state dinner.

Zuckerberg has been learning Chinese for five years now. Late last year, at Beijing's Tsinghua University, the chief executive held his own as he answered entirely in Mandarin at a question and answer session.

It was far from perfect but the audience was delighted, according to The Washington Post.

Mark Zuckerberg was invited to join Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management's board in 2014.

This past weekend, he was back at the university in Beijing and gave a 22 minute speech on leading with a mission.

"I just gave my first ever speech in Chinese at Tsinghua University in Beijing -- on why you need a strong sense of mission to change the world", said Zuckerberg on his Facebook post. "This was also my first real speech in any language sharing how I started thinking about Facebook's mission, what has kept me going through challenging times and what our mission means now looking ahead for our community of 1.5 billion people."

Priscilla Chan is Zuckerberg's wife and is of chinese descent. One of Zuckerberg's motivation for learning Mandarin is to be able to communicate with Chan's older family members. The couple is expecting as well.

Mark Zuckerberg has been relentless in charming China. Last year, he hosted China's top internet regulator at Facebook's headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Facebook had been banned in China since 2009.