In Beijing, President Clinton smiles down from roadside billboards upon armadas of commuting cyclists. Armies of workers trim hedges and set out extra potted plants by the score along the pavements. Mothers bring their children to gaze in wonder at a huge model of the US Congress building erected in a park.
The number of beggars, prostitutes and pirate CD-ROM sellers on the streets has declined dramatically and traffic police are out in force, seizing cars and bicycles parked illegally. All this is in preparation for the visit to China by Mr Clinton, his wife Hillary, daughter Chelsea, and an entourage of 1,000, which begins tomorrow.
President Jiang Zemin has hailed the visit as underpinning the most important strategic partnership in the post-Cold War world, and something like Clinton fervour has been generated by the media. Television and cinemas this week have been showing a documentary of President Jiang's visit to the United States last autumn, including scenes of the Chinese leader splashing about in the surf at Waikiki beach in Hawaii.
Officially-controlled newspapers have been conducting surveys to find out how much Chinese people know about the visitor and the United States. In a country where advanced age is usually a condition of leadership, more than 64 per cent of people thought that Mr Clinton (51) was "young and promising". Almost 46 per cent agreed he was "handsome, elegant, humorous and gentlemanly".
The surveys reveal a perception of prominent Americans somewhat different than in the West. The best known were listed, in order, as Thomas Edison, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, Bill Gates, Martin Luther King, and Marlon Brando. The three most important events in Sino-US relations were cited as the Korean War (99 per cent), Mr Jiang's visit to the US last year (76 per cent) and President Nixon's 1972 visit (74 per cent).
Mr Clinton's schedule has not been published in the Chinese media but all the cities and sites he will visit have been cleaned up and put on notice. Air Force One will touch down tomorrow evening in the ancient Chinese capital of Xi'an, and the Clintons will spend Friday sightseeing, apart from a visit to a village, before flying on to Beijing.
On Saturday morning Mr Clinton will be officially welcomed in Tiananmen Square, following which he will have two hours of talks in the Great Hall of the People with President Jiang, the only substantive meeting scheduled between the two leaders. Saturday afternoon is devoted to sightseeing, and the evening to a state dinner.
The Clintons have no official engagements on Sunday, which will be taken up with a tour of the Forbidden City and the Great Wall. On Monday the President addresses students at Beijing University, and in the evening flies to Shanghai for two days of meetings with locals and more sightseeing.
Thursday is taken up with a day-long trip to the scenic area of Guelin in southern China. On Friday the President has a number of meetings in Hong Kong before flying home.
Nine days is a long time for a US presidential visit, but when President Jiang visited the United States last autumn, he spent this precise number of days travelling around the country and the US side has been pressed successfully by Beijing to show parity of esteem between the two leaders.
President Jiang did not make any detours on his journey to North America, so Mr Clinton, too, is not stopping off anywhere on his way to and from Washington, much to the annoyance of Japan, supposedly the key ally of the US in the region.
In the interests of making the trip a big domestic success for Mr Jiang, the White House seems to have gone to considerable lengths to fit in with Beijing's agenda.
This could explain the dropping of a number of proposed items on the initial White House schedule in the last week. These include a planned press conference in Shanghai and a private meeting in Hong Kong with Mr Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic Party.
The visual element will be tightly controlled by the Chinese. Beijing officials apparently have told an American advance team that due to "technical difficulties" it will be practically impossible to show live on television the toasts and speeches planned. If this is the case it will mute the domestic impact of tough statements from the US President about China being on the wrong side of history on issues such as human rights and Tibet.
Mr Clinton has portrayed the nine-day visit as crucial in reaching out a hand to China to create a climate for more open trade, human rights and democracy. "We tend to get more done when we work with people, when we disagree with them openly, when we push them, and when they have something to gain by working with us," he said last week.
In Newsweek magazine he wrote, "The more we bring China in to the world, the more the world will bring freedom to China."