Cheering children - check. Military honour guard – check. Cannon fire and marching band - check.
Vladimir Putin's welcome outside the Great Hall of the People was a near mirror image of the reception for Donald Trump last week.
Two high-stakes presidential visits, just days apart, is exactly the image Xi Jinping wants to project to the world: talking to everyone, tied to no-one.
For China, these visits are proof that because of its massive economy and new-found diplomatic clout all roads now lead to Beijing.
The new era of world affairs is less centered around the West, says Samir Puri from Kings College London.
There is a lot of latent power that China has on the world stage, it's not necessarily using it in its most direct form to settle conflicts, instead, China's style is to try to utilise its stature in a more gradual sense.
The optics were strikingly similar - Xi confident in the spotlight as he played host. But the politics driving the two visits were very different.
Putin, who has been to China more than 20 times, appears to have a close personal relationship with Xi. But the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions have left him leaning heavily on Beijing, which is now Russia's top trading partner and its biggest customer for oil and gas.
It has been an unequal partnership for some time now, and that was reinforced today. Talks ended with 20-plus agreements on trade and tech, but no approval yet for the stalled Russian gas pipeline that Putin has been pushing for years. A lengthy joint statement also yielded no major breakthroughs.
Both China and Russia need each other, but Russia clearly needs China more than before at the global stage, says Dr Zheng Runyu, from the Centre for Russian Studies at the East China Normal University in Shanghai.
Given today's international environment, deep co-operation with China is extremely important for Russia in dealing with many of its current challenges.
The Chinese leader seemed to have a strong hand as he negotiated with the US president too. Stronger trade relationships with the rest of the world and China's dominance in rare earth minerals and advanced manufacturing have given him leverage. Beijing has found itself on an equal footing with Washington in the wake of Trump's unpredictability.
And in talks with both Trump and Putin, Xi faced leaders mired in costly wars that have dragged on longer than anticipated. For Trump, the war in the Middle East has turned into a global crisis that has plunged his approval ratings back home. For Putin, the invasion of Ukraine, now into its fifth year, has isolated Russia and taken a brutal toll even on its own people.
In both cases, it also seemed apparent that now China has the power to set the tone and engage on the global stage.
Xi only mentioned one war - and that was the conflict in the Middle East. He told Putin that a complete end to the war in Iran was of utmost urgency, while making no reference to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
This was jarring and may have consequences beyond the Great Hall of the People. As China calls for an end to conflicts elsewhere, and takes aim at US actions, its silence on Ukraine, where hundreds of thousand have died, will raise questions in Europe about how far Beijing is willing, or able, to act as a genuinely even-handed global player.
Beijing has tried to maintain a neutral stance in the war in Ukraine, although both the US and Europe have urged China to cut the economic lifeline it is offering Moscow.
However striking the last week of high-level diplomacy looks, Xi still has a tall task ahead of him because China's authoritarian leadership, which has only grown stronger under Xi, remains controversial and mistrusted by many.
