M.M.Khanna,
INVC,
Chandigarh,
Today a 15 member, Indo-China Friendship delegation of Yuvsatta-an NGO, returned from successful visit of China. During the visit, which lasted for 8 days, participants went to the beautiful Kunming, Shilin and Dali cities of Yunnan province, where spring stays all year round, this part of the year was of monsoon weather there. Anu Chatrath-a former Mayor of the city who was part of this delegation shared that she came back highly impressed with China and its warm & courteous people. The physical infrastructure in the form of roadways, railways and airports is world-class. The cleanliness and greenery of the cities is eye-catching and in this regard she came back with many new ideas which local Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh can learn from and implement. Discipline, hard-work, focus and punctuality of Chinese people impressed another participant Hanu Dadhwal-an engineering student of PEC. And students of Gurukul Global School can expect to learn Chinese language in their School from this session itself onwards as their Principal, Aruna Bhardwaj came back highly motivated and inspired to bridge the Asian divide of India and China by promoting the language as key to understanding and further increasing the goodwill. “During an open hearted reception, meeting and sports sessions at Yunnan National University the Indian participating youth struck a chord of friendship and new found relationship with local students”, added Prof. Manjit Singh of Panjab University, who shared that the exponential growth of China, in past two-three decades, had broken the myth that for a large country like India it can take years to build infrastructure and other developmental necessities in rural and urban areas. The important need is to build systems first and then one can increase the scale to any level, of which China is a perfect example. Besides exchanging gifts with students, the Indian delegation also presented a gift of books on Indian civilization and a set of books by Mahatma Gandhi to the Yunnan National University library, for which they also received a special certificate of thanks. For young students Sharmistha and Amritya, knowledge about China till date was through books only, but being physically there, was like a dream come true. The inability of the Indian delegates to follow Chinese didn’t came in between and some of their new found Chinese friends could speak English and to their surprise they found some students there are learning Hindi as well. They also saw the World Heritage site of Stone Forest, local villages, picturesque ancient town of Dali, “Green Lake” of Kunming, the busiest zone in the center—“Nanping” street, joined the common people in community dances, learned Chinese Handwriting, tea arts, went for lot of shopping and so on. The whole process was fully arranged with rich contents. Nervous but happy, everyone was excited though maybe being tired.This visit was co-hosted by Yunnan Youth Federation and Chinese People’s Association of Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC).
