Guilin school helped educate many, including some of Vietnam's leaders

Even after half a century, Lu Meinian, 80, vividly remembers the time she worked as an interpreter at Guilin Yucai School, where many Vietnamese students received their education in China from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Lu began working at the school in Guilin, a city in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, in 1971. During her three years there, she was mainly responsible for interpreting for senior officials from Vietnam.

More than 10,000 Vietnamese students received their education at the Yucai school in Guangxi, which borders Vietnam, during Vietnam's war against French occupation, from 1945 to 1954, and during its war against United States aggression, from 1955 to 1975.

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Many of these students later took up leadership roles in Vietnam, including Le Kha Phieu, former general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, according to organizers of the Vietnam School Memorial Hall, which was later established on the site of the school campus.

"China provided unprecedented support for the school," Lu told China Daily, recalling how the Chinese government even built a swimming pool — the only one in Guilin back then — for Vietnamese students and teachers.

As a living witness to the China-Vietnam friendship, Lu attended a special gathering of Vietnamese and Chinese alumni in March in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.

At the event, To Lam, general secretary of the CPV Central Committee, emphasized the important role of students in shaping bilateral relations, as this year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Vietnam, and is also the China-Vietnam Year of People-to-People Exchanges.

In 2010, Guangxi Normal University established the memorial hall on the Yucai school site to commemorate history.

At the inauguration ceremony, Nguyen Thien Nhan, then deputy prime minister of Vietnam and its minister of education and training, who is also an alumnus of the Yucai school, said that Vietnamese students have studied in different parts of the world, but there is only one memorial hall of the Vietnam school.

Bi Yanlong, curator of the Vietnam School Memorial Hall, said that the hall is "a historical testament to the traditional friendship between China and Vietnam".

"It serves as a link for the alumni to connect with their alma mater …and a bridge in the new era for educational exchanges between China and Vietnam, and for the building of a China-Vietnam community with a shared future," he said.

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Ngo Tue Quan, a museum guide at the memorial hall, said she feels proud each time she tells visitors about the school's storied history.

Quan was among the first group of Vietnamese students who pursued higher education in Guangxi. After graduation, she married a Chinese man and was recruited by the university as a teacher and interpreter.

"Since I became a museum guide, I got to know more about this chapter in the history of China-Vietnam relations," she said, adding that "some people even cry when they hear the story".

Contact the writers at kelly@chinadailyapac.com