Impressions of two weeks in China

The past two weeks I traveled for work in China. The first few days I attended a conference of colleges and polytechnics around the world. One of my dear colleagues, Pat Bowron of College of the Rockies, received an award for internationalization.

There were also colleagues from Brazil. One of them, Chris Brackman (here at the photo), will help organize the next conference (held every other year) to be hosted in Brazil. Parallel to the conference there was a student fair where colleagues from Seneca and Niagara had booths:

Also at the same time there was a "world cup" hosted of ENACTUS, an organization in which 60 countries participate with student teams who present business plans around topics such as green & sustainable business and corporate social responsibility. Each country has national competitions and the winners are sponsored for the annual world cup. However, more teams can come (for example from Canada there were 16 teams competing). Lots of young people in business suits....

Outside the conference center is the Olympic village of the 2008 summer Olympics. One afternoon I had some time to stroll around. The "bird's nest" main stadium was nice to see.

After the conference we toured with representatives of 18 Canadian colleges to a few cities to give presentations and high schools and higher education institutions. Hereby a few impressions:

This was at a private high school where they teach Ontario high school curriculum. The principal wants the students to think also about colleges (and not only about universities) and he came up with this (for colleges) nice banner...

This was a day at a University in Guangzhou ( a city of 14 million people). It was a large gathering during which I gave a presentation on behalf of the Canadian colleges.

A tour with many airports, some traveling with more and others with less luggage (my luggage is on the left)....

We were a few times hosted for very nice lunches. Just an impression with a few pics...

At one of the hosting colleges they surprised us with a short concert of a group at instruments thousands of years old. These big gongs are replicates of one of the oldest instruments found:

All the cities we visited were huge in numbers of people (between 8 and 20 million). Hereby a few impressions from Guangzhou:

In Guangzhou we had time for an evening boat cruise on the river. The lights were very nice during the boat ride of about an hour. Can't get it well on a photo but anyhow some impressions...

We had our last meetings in the northern city of Shenyang where Seneca's President joined us for the day after having presented in Beijing with the Ontario Premier the day before.

As the last photo for this blog the booth of a specialized college for railway training. Something you would not quickly find in other countries but here with 1,3 billion people public transport has an entire different dimension. Of course they also have the world's best functioning high speed train network, so lot of jobs to train technologist and technicians for.

Back home on Sunday evening after the long 13 hour flight from Beijing to Toronto...