Education a key focus of Chengdu's sister city ties in Israel, Denmark

Three teachers in Kaskelotten, a kindergarten in Horsens, Denmark, teach 16 toddlers how to pronounce letters in the Danish language by singing along with them.[Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn]

Huang Lin, a 31-year-old student at the University of Haifa, also hails from Chengdu and studied for seven years at the Chengdu campus of Sichuan Agricultural University before moving to Haifa in 2013 to earn a doctorate in agriculture.

"Israel is strong in farming techniques. It is easy for me to find teachers who study wheat. When I was a student at Sichuan Agricultural University, I focused my research into the field," said Huang, who has finished his dissertation and plans to return to Sichuan, a major agricultural province, after receiving his degree.

Home to some 271,000 people, Haifa has the largest number of students in Israel and is home to three Nobel Prize laureates. There are about 35,000 students and some 5,000 staff members and researchers at the city's two leading academic institutes — the University of Haifa and the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, a public research university.

China and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1992, but the exchanges between the Chinese and Jewish people go back more than 1,000 years, said Zhan Yongxin, China's ambassador to Israel.

"The Chinese and Jewish people are similar because they stress tradition, family and education," he said.

A media delegation that visited Haifa also made a trip to Kaskelotten, a kindergarten in Horsens, Denmark, where they observed 16 toddlers learning how to pronounce letters in the Danish language by singing along with their three teachers.

Danish kindergartens stress learning through lively activities, said Anni Jacobsen, the kindergarten manager.

Danish educational concepts will soon be introduced to Chengdu, which forged sister city ties with Horsens in 2013, with the expected opening of the Chengdu Horsens Kindergarten and Chengdu Horsens Primary School next September.

In November, designers from four architectural firms in Horsens completed designs for the kindergarten, which is planned to cover 5,500 square meters, and the 90,000-sq-m primary school. Construction of the both schools is scheduled to start in June and be completed for an opening in September.