BEIJING -- Prince William told a boy he might be able to make his dream of singing opera in a palace come true as he met with young people from disadvantaged backgrounds on Monday on the first official visit to mainland China by a senior British royal in a generation.
In addition to visiting the Forbidden City in Beijing where emperors once resided, William met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of China's legislature.
William arrived in Beijing late Sunday after a four-day stay in Japan. He travels later Monday to Shanghai and rounds off his visit to China on Wednesday in the southwest near the border with Myanmar. Interest in his visit among Chinese was expected to be limited without the presence of wife Kate, who is expecting their second child next month.
Early Monday, William toured a traditional Beijing courtyard residence dating from the 1890s that had been restored and turned into a museum with help from charities related to his father, Prince Charles: the Prince of Wales's China Foundation and The Prince's Foundation for Building Communities.
He spent most of his time chatting with representatives of charities helping children with hearing and visual impairments, whose parents are migrant workers or in prison, and some of the young people they work with.
Zhao Chen, 14, who is visually impaired and undergone six operations to his eyes, and wants to be a tenor, told the prince: "My dream is to go to your palace to sing opera."
The prince replied: "Well, you have met the right man. We might be able to arrange something."
Before he left, the prince was presented with a picture drawn by a 10-year-old of a rural scene, and said he would give it to his son: "That will look nice in George's bedroom."
William's engagements in Shanghai include opening an exhibition showcasing British creativity and innovation and meeting with Chinese business leaders; watching students at a secondary school train with Premier League-trained coaches; and meeting Chinese film industry figures. His final stop in China is Xishuangbanna in Yunnan where he will visit an elephant sanctuary and a nature reserve.
William won't be visiting Hong Kong, which Britain handed back to China in 1997. It was the scene last year of weekslong pro-democracy protests, during which Beijing prevented a parliamentary committee from traveling to Hong Kong to investigate political reform there, saying it did not want Britain interfering in its internal affairs.
Relations between the countries had only recently got back on track after Beijing suspended high-level diplomatic contacts for 14 months after Prime Minister David Cameron met with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in May 2012.
In June last year, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Britain was marked with pomp and ceremony, involving a meeting with Queen Elizabeth II and the announcement of 14 billion pounds ($24 billion) worth of business deals.
William, 32, is expected to be more diplomatic than his grandfather was on the last royal visit in 1986, when China was still opening up to the outside world and most families here didn't have a television set.
Prince Philip, accompanying Queen Elizabeth II, remarked to a group of British students that he met that if they stayed much longer they would be "slitty-eyed." The comment was widely picked up in the British press as being offensive to Chinese and still talked about today, but it did not make a mark in China.