Taiwan student camp builds cross-Strait friendship
Taiwan students try their hands at making pankou, knot button, at Shanghai Sanda University on Saturday.
Thirty students from Taiwan are in Shanghai to build friendships with their peers and promote exchanges across the Straits.
They are attending a weeklong camp organized by the Association for Relations across the Taiwan Strait, Shanghai Sanda University and Taiwan Chinese History Communication Association.
Accompanied by students from Sanda, the Taiwan students from Shih Chien University, most of whom are majoring in journalism and communication, will visit landmarks in the city. These include the Memorial of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Bund, Huangpu River, Huaihai Road and People's Square, and famous Internet companies, including lifestyle sharing app company Xiaohongshu, TikTok's parent company ByteDance and e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Lung Ping-yu, a senior student from Shih Chien University, said it's her second time to take part in such a camp to experience the culture and communicate with peers on the Chinese mainland. In 2019, she joined a group to Shenyang.
"My maternal grandparents were from the mainland and I have a lot of relatives in Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing," she said. "I found there are no barriers to communicate with young people on the Chinese mainland. I still keep contact with my friends in Shenyang.
"I hope I can make more friends in Shanghai and wish our communication can help eliminate misunderstandings across the Strait."
Ling Chang-yueh, another Taiwan journalism major from Shih Chien University, said more and more people in Taiwan are using social media apps like Xiaohongshu, and he was looking forward to having a close look at operations of these companies during the camp.
