FOREIGNERS IN YUNNAN
“Little white clouds”: International volunteers add colour to CSAE
YANG YAN
With the 4th China-South Asia Expo and 24th Kunming Import and Export Fair suc-cessfully concluded, business people from South and, Southeast Asia and other parts of the world returned home with newly signed contracts and new hopes, while also carrying with them memories of the inter-national volunteers. It was the little white clouds, as the international volunteers were called, who acted as interpreters and assistants for business people in the various halls of the Kunming Dianchi International Convention and Exhibition Centre.
On June 12, 108 volunteers from eight provincial colleges and universities began to serve at the CSAE. Like more than 2,000 other volunteers, they were uniformly dressed in green and white and wore white hats decorated with patterns of colourful clouds. At the CSAE venue, they provid-ed exhibitors and visitors with guidance, information and linguistic services. They were referred to as little white clouds because of the white cloud patterns embla-zoned on their T-shirts.
Hanli(Chinese Name) is a student from Bangladesh. He told the reporter that he has been studying at Yunnan Universityfor more than one year. In his opinion, the CSAE not only provided a big platform for Chinas economic and cultural exchanges with South and Southeast Asian countries, but also gave him a personal opportunity to practise Mandarin with more Chinese people. This helps him better understand Chinese culture while helping the business people from his own country. He took many photos at the event, and shared them on WeChat moments so that more Bangla-deshi people can get to know this annual business expo.
When the reporter came to the Mal-divian pavilion in Hall No. 7 on June 16, Satya, a volunteer and a student from The Maldives, was busy providing shopping guidance and interpreting services for visi-tors. Pointing at the coral, thatched cottages and other typically Maldivian elements in the pavilion, Satya excitedly told the report-er that The Maldives is the CSAE themecountry this year. She was very pleased tointroduce more people to her motherlands scenic attractions and folk customs. She was also more than happy to help Maldivi-an business people introduce their specialty products to Chinese people, and proud to be able to contribute to the economic and cultural exchanges between the people.
Im very happy to work with these international volunteers. We are like a fam-ily, said Xiao Wei, a graduate student from Yunnan Minzu University working as a liaison worker for international volunteers.
In order to highlight the CSAEs character-istics as an international and professional expo-sition, for the first time the organising commit-tee recruited 108 international volunteers from the provinces eight colleges and universities. These included Yunnan University and Yun-nan University of Finance and Economics. The volunteers were from Thailand, Bangla-desh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, The Maldives, Laos, India and Myanmar. The volunteers were a wonderful addition to this years customer service relations.
Just like the 108 stars of destiny in the Chinese classic The Water Margin, the 108 international volunteers each found a way to express their talents and display their youthful exuberance at the CSAE.
