New Zealand-Sino Youth Exchange 2011
The Asia New Zealand Foundation and the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) together run a youth exchange programme, which allows young leaders in both countries to pay visits, and build long-term partnerships to promote communication.
Five of our young leaders – Fujun Shen, Herman Visagie, Greg Simmonds, Jeanne McKnight and Anna-marie Luke – were in China from October 12-22. Greg shares his thoughts on their experiences.
Saturday 22 October: Shanghai
Final update from Shanghai! We had a fabulous welcome banquet hosted by the Shanghai People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, which set the tone for another fast-paced programme in China's commercial capital.
We visited the stock exchange and were very impressed with the work being done to support non-government social responsibility organisations at the Shanghai non-profit incubator. We also learned about Shanghai's urban planning strategy and visited the Shanghai expo memorial centre which has been established to further leverage China's investment in the 2010 world expo. On top of this, we've enjoyed visiting Yu gardens, the Oriental Pearl Tower and city history museum. We all thoroughly enjoyed a walk along the bund [waterfront area in central Shanghai] after dinner one night - when the city really seems to come alive.
Two weeks in China has flown by so quickly. We've all gained a much greater appreciation for China and its place in the world.
Wednesday 19 October: Xi'an
We have all been captivated by Xi'an’s relative calmness and beauty.
The heart of this provincial capital is enclosed within the only complete city wall to be found anywhere in the world. It was a privilege to cycle the 13.7 kilometre circuit around the top of the wall, taking in the views. We also visited the Xi'an International Horticulture Expo, which receives around 300,000 visitors a day and is an extravaganza of flora and fauna from all over China.
Of course, no trip to Xi'an would be complete without a visit to the terracotta warriors, which protect the grave of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. We followed up our visit to the warriors with a meeting with staff and students at the Northwest University, which is responsible for training most of the archaeologists who work to painstakingly uncover more buried treasures of the Qin dynasty.
At the Great Mosque of Xi'an we spoke to local Muslims and learned about their long history in China.
The food has been sensational and we particularly enjoyed the vegetarian fare on our last night in Xian – complete with all kinds of mock meat!
Friday 14 October: Beijing
We're having a fabulous time here in China, our programme is full-on! So far we have had good meetings with China's foreign affairs ministry and learned more about China's foreign policy and future goals in the Asia-Pacific region.
We've also had a couple of interesting meetings with the Ministry of Water Resources and the China superannuation fund (interesting comparisons to KiwiSaver). We had a really good meeting with the Beijing Forestry Department, which is doing some pretty cool stuff in terms of tackling carbon emission problems, including community education programmes, micro gardening projects and a significant amount of international collaboration work (though not yet with New Zealand).
We were taken on an intrepid trek through the Qinglonggu forest to an unreconstructed section of the Great Wall. This was amazing and a real highlight of the visit so far. We also spent an interesting afternoon with the New Zealand ambassador. We threw around a number of ideas for improving New Zealand's understanding of China and came away with a pretty cool idea for a project we will consider taking on as a group post-trip.
We've also managed to catch up with the Beijing young leaders a couple of times and we've also met several of the Chinese young leaders during our company visits.
Images:
1. The young leaders at the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai.
2. Xi'an city wall (image sourced from Flickr user Mario Ruckh under a Creative Commons licence (http://tiny.cc/rx1rn)
3. At the Great Wall of China are (left to right) Fujun Shen, Herman Visagie, Greg Simmonds, Jeanne McKnight, Lidan Wang (from CPAFFC), Anna-marie Luke and Ye Zi (CPAFFC).
