A visit to promote understanding and co-op--Canadian Governor General on China trip (2)

On personal relations with china

His Excellency says: I have a personal interest in Canada-China relations. Three of my five daughters have studied in china for considerable lengths. One of them was two years at the Beijing Language Institute, speaking mandarin. The second spent a year and a half one year at the Chinese university of Hong Kong and then a summer in Nanjing and another summer in Hangzhou, studying the language, and then our fourth daughter did four months in shanghai as part of her master of public administration at the Canadian Queen's university. So we have great affection for China in our home. My daughters were so impressed by Chinese calligraphy and taken by Chinese culture. It developed from curiosity to deep appreciation and respect for the Chinese civilisation and culture. When our children came back from China, they wanted us to eat with chopsticks and eat Chinese food because they felt it was much healthier. My first visit to china was 32 years ago and I have been back to China for about a dozen times or so. So we have a long standing affection for the Chinese people. I am anticipating and seeing the benefits of many, many decades of efforts by people to people exchanges that bring our nations more closely together.

So, I expect I would see the same kind of genuine interest in relationship between peoples, including family, and friendship, because the Chinese people are very conscious of family tie and friendships. So whether I am a university president or Governor General I think that the friendship would be a constant.

On co-operation in the field of education

Governor General says: To promote people to people understanding my number one recommendation would be for more Canadian students to do what my three daughters had done. Understanding the great joy of coming to understand albeit for a few month, the Chinese culture and Chinese civilisation. If they are here, they would tell you that their time in China marked one of the most important periods of their lives. Their worlds were opened up and they came to appreciate the civilisation and the long and rich history of China. Secondly, I would like to see more institution to institution relationship that is not just based on students having an interest in studying in another country, but the institution, the professors, the administrative leadership see this as the rich long term collaborations. So on this visit, I'll be in three universities, at least in the south, I'll be at Nanjing, Sichuan and the Sun Yat-Sen universities. Nanjing is the place that has a special place in my heart because I, as its president in the past, University of Waterloo has a very close relationship with Nanjing University, one of your very formidable and impressive institutions. Thanks to the twinning of the province of Ontario with the Jiangsu province, we established a Sino-Canadian college at the Nanjing university about 10 years ago with a programme we called the 2 plus 2 , in which a Chinese student is to spend his first two years at his home university and the last two at University of Waterloo. They will take a degree from both universities. They are taught in China by a few professors from Canadian universities and they are taught in Canada by a few professors from the Chinese universities. From those relationships great good things happen and that co-operation is the reflect of about 25 years work of professors at Nanjing and Waterloo universities on environmental sciences and in particular on coastal environmental issues that they have collaborated to establish whole new environmental planning regime to the coastal development of China. Canada is the largest coastal nation in the world, from coast to coast to coast. China has very large coast as well, and we have so much in common. On that specific beginning came many collaborations. Another area of collaboration between the two universities was environmental studies of the global warming and the ability to have boats pass through the Northeast and Northwest passage. So we have a whole plethora of opportunities and each party has much to gain, particularly when we take that longer term institution to institution approach.