【News】OECians @ The 4th Silk Road Youth Tour

    The 4th Silk Road Youth Tour organized by 外交部国际经济司 & 江苏省人民政府外事办公室 ended successfully on November 15, 2017. Approximately 60 students from 11 Chinese Universities of Jiangsu Province took part in the five day long tour. It started on 11 November and the students took part in different kinds of activities ranging from visiting different historical places in Nanjing, Haian County, Nantong and Taizhou to Industrial visits, job hunting competitions and case study analysis. 

    The students and teachers arrived in Nanjing Daobao Temple Park early in the morning on the 11th of November and formed different groups. Each group had their own happy colour dresses and flags provided by the tour organizers. The first task was to name your group. I was part of group A, which we named Red Bull (Hong Niu). Similarly, other group names were Blue Dragons, Orange Tigers, Green Stars etc.  The participants then started to perform warm up activities like dancing and singing. After the warm up activities, each group was lead by a professional tour guide to educate us about the history and beauty of Nanjing Daobao Temple. The temple visit was amazing. I had never seen such a beautiful man made theme park surrounded by natural land marks which were secured to preserve the history for decades. 

    After finishing the beautiful visit of the Nanjing Daobao Temple Park, the participants were dressed  Hanfu clothes for a special kind of thanks giving Lunch in the famous Xuan Lin Yuan Restaurant. I have had a lot of lunch and dinners in famous restaurants of Zhenjiang, Nanjing and Wuxi but this lunch was not the same, it was totally different in so many aspects. Each guest was served with almost 15 different types of food in 15 dishes. Before starting to eat lunch, we were all asked to pray in a certain way. A humble person recited some good words for thanking God who gives us food. 

Group A team members.

Students of Jiangsu University in Hanfu Dresses

    Just after the thanksgiving lunch, the participants were asked to gather in front of Tower Square of Daobao Temple for the formal opening ceremony of the 4th Silk Road Youth Tour. The participants signed the board of memory. Everybody wrote on it to secure their participation as member of the 4th Silk Road Youth Tour. JSU's vice president took part in the formal opening of the 4th Silk Road Youth Tour. Being the student of Jiangsu University, their presence was an honour for the students of Jiangsu University. The opening ceremony was conducted in an amazing way 45 32977 45 14941 0 0 927 0 0:00:35 0:00:16 0:00:19 3457. Five seniors officers poured five bottles of water into a glass which converted into the Belt and Road Initiative map across different regions on the map. After the opening ceremony, the students went to Haian Palace Hotel, in Haian County for dinner.

Group photo after the opening ceremony of 4th Silk Road Tour

    The second day, we were served with an early morning breakfast. Afterward, the participants were taken to different company site visits. The first company visit was Lianfa Textile Company Enterprise (LTCE). During the visit, a professional tour guide briefed the participants about the foundation and products of JLTC followed by brief presentation. The company started its operation in 1955. Through 62 years’ of development, the LTCE had built up a complete industrial chain of its product line ranging from cotton processing to garment manufacturing with world class equipment and machinery. Currently, the company is a large scale textile enterprise comprised of spinning, yarn dyed, printed, solid dyed, knitted and home textiles fabric manufacturing, garment manufacturing, brand operation, thermal power generation, trade, logistic and new energy development. With the 2nd largest yarn dyed fabric capacity globally and 5 billion RMB annual sales, Lianfa is now one of the leading high end fabric and garment manufacturers in the world. These products are sold to over 20 provinces and cities, and exported to 36 countries and areas including the U.S, Europe, Japan and south east Asia countries. We also saw how Lianfa is committed to the social responsibilities of green environment by taking necessary measures to advance their technology. We were excited to see the making of textiles products in their presence and also visited the textile library. I visited such a library for the first time in my life. Textile library contain all the information of the textile products. It was amazing to read some of those like number of the yarns per meter, the thickness of yarn and its raw product etc. The same day participants were also taken to Haian County Museum. 

Group photo at Lianfa Textiles

    Our third day started with an industrial visit to the famous Zhongtian Technology (ZTT). ZTT is a leading global manufacturer of cable system. ZTT group entered the field of optical fiber communication in the year 1990s. With years of experience and strong positioning the company provides high quality cables in different sectors like energy system, power system, telecom system and sub marines. The company management provided us the opportunity to visit the production unit of their wide range their products. Following the company visit, we enjoyed the best traditional food of Nantong in Rosedale Hotel Nantong.

Group photo at Zhongtian Technology (ZTT) Nantong

    After lunch the participant were taken to Nantong University where we participated in a number of activities like a mock job competition and Nantong University International Gala. Participants from different cultures presented their costumes and performed on stage. I performed some kind of tango dance, I don't know how I did it. 

Glimpses of Azerbaijan, Thailand and Pakistan costumes from International Fashion Gala at Nantong University

    The next day morning the trip moved to Taizhou. Upon arriving in Taizhou city, we first visited Taizhou Museum. The Museum is famous for the Chinese Opera art in the past times. The Museum contains different types of past time articles related to Chinese Opera like dresses and information about Mei Lanfang who was the famous artist of the time. He studied a wide range of arts and realized the rich taste of it. He made productive progress in succession, innovation and creation. According to the Museum information catalogue Mei Lanfang visited Japan, USA, Soviet Union and Hong Kong where he performed and brought great joy to the people’s faces. Due to the performances of Mei Lanfang, the west knows that besides western dramas there is Chinese Opera as well. A writing in the Museum states that a Japanese writer wrote in an article, "It does not need to talk about Mei Lanfang's highest performing skill. The beauty of his face makes the beauties of Japan dust." His remarks made Japan seethe with excitement. On April 21, 1919, Mei Lanfang led a delegation to Japan to perform in Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe, having a capacity audience for every show. According to the Japan's statistics, about 60 million Japanese "are crazy abot it". The ticket for this Opera were sold for ten times more than the usual price.

    In May 1956, Premier Zhou Enlai invited Mei to lead the China Beijing Opera Troupe to visit Japan to perform. Zhou pointed out that in the past Japan invaded China, however, both Japanese people and Chinese People were victims of the war and the purpose of the visiting Japan to perform was to communicate emotion, promoting the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries so as to facilitate the economic development of New China.

Taizhou Museum after enjoying live Chinese Opera

    After visiting many places in the Taizhou Muesum, we went to rest at Taizhou International Jinling Hotel. In addition to Taizhou Museum the participants visited Taizhou old Street, experienced paper cutting and many other activities including Ferry travel in middle river of the city. The scenery of that visit cannot be explained in words. The participants went on board Ferries which journeyed along a 4 kilometre river.

Taizhou Old Street

    The next day we were taken to the famous Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Limited. Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group (Chinese: 扬子江药业集团, YRPG) is a Chinese multinational pharmaceutical corporation headquartered in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province in the People's Republic of China. It is one of the Asia's largest pharmaceutical companies by revenues, and was listed in 2014 as being China's second largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, and leading company for technological and entrepreneurial innovation. I had never seen such a big company. It took more than 20 minutes to go around the company by car. After the overall visit the tour guides showed us different milestones which the company has achieved in the past. 

Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group of Companies

    The last night of the event, everybody was occupied due to their presentation on their themetic areas relevant to belt and road project. On the final day, different groups presented their work before the judges and were presented awards for different roles in the five day tour. There were awards for different categories like best presentation, best group award, best individual team award and many more for different task during the five days tour. 

Award Ceremony

    My four colleagues and I who were students from Jiangsu University, received many awards including best team player award, best presentation award and best individual award. The students are very grateful to the administration of the Overseas Education College of Jiangsu  University for providing this multicultural platform to increase their knowledge about different aspects of Chinese history, Chinese culture and of course Chinese businesses in different sectors likes Optical and Electric Cable, Textiles and Pharmaceutical. Thank you to all the participants of the 4th Belt and Road Youth Tour Participants for all your smiles.  

Last group photo after award ceremony

Sometime it happens in movies but I witness it in reality that day

Credits:

Muhammad Imran

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