In order to promote students’ global vision, facilitate cultural exchanges and enhance mutual understanding between Chinese and Japanese university students, on March 13th SFL and Aichi University co-hosted the “2019 Sino-Japanese University Student Communication Meeting”, the major topics of which included career planning and Sino-Japanese gender culture comparison. Attendees included Secretary of CPC SFL Committee Ding Jian, Teacher representatives Zhang Jianhua, Huang Jianxiang, Koshiro Yamada, He Fujia, student representatives of SFL Japanese Department as well as over ten teachers and students from Aichi University.

The meeting was hosted by Koshiro Yamada, lecturer of the Japanese Department, SFL. First, Ding Jian delivered a speech on behalf of SFL to welcome the teachers and students of Aichi University. Then Tsuyoshi Yoshikawa, director of the Career Development Center and associate professor of Modern Chinese Studies Department at Aichi University, addressed the meeting. The two speakers both believed that this meeting would provide students with an ideal platform to share ideas, promote mutual understanding and broaden horizons, and hoped that such event could be carried out on a regular basis in the future.

Senior students from the Japanese Department of SFL presented a student-made short film “Gender Freedom~ At the Bright Side” (じぇん・ふり～光ノムコウ～), and the unique perspectives of the film soon won applause and praise from the audience. Student representatives Zhou Xu, Xu Ningjiang and Zhai Kaige then gave a though-provoking analysis of the gender differences in China from the aspects of national population distribution, higher education, employment and salaries based on their thorough research.

At the second half of the meeting, teachers and students from the two universities were divided into three groups to discuss and share ideas on the issues of young people’s concerns today, such as gender culture and career planning. After the discussion, 1 student was chosen from each group to share the group ideas. In terms of gender culture, both China and Japan have narrowed the gender gap with women getting more and more involved in social issues, but it should be recognized that there still exist some cultural differences on gender culture between the two countries.                 

By the end of the meeting, professor Ichiro Kawabe of Aichi University recalled the friendly exchanges between the two universities and suggested that students of Aichi University shall cherish the hard-won friendship like their predecessors and actively engage in Sino-Japanese communications.

(Students and teachers from SFL and Aichi University)