In 2010, when I was a member of Teochew Association of Kuching, I was “thrown” to join Federation of Chinese Youth of Kuching-Samarahan (wow that's a long name 晋汉省华青团). Well, I'm not going to elaborate on details of the two mentioned organizations, you may read description here http://www.abshost.com/huazong/qtyl.php . Anyway, in short, they were locally ethnic-based, non-political, mainstream Chinese community - with lots and lots of exposure in local Chinese newspaper.
After I joined the association, I was presented with an opportunity for an official trip to China, even better, fully sponsored by the Government of China! The purpose of the official visit was to create a platform bridge overseas Chinese with mainland China. The government would provide accommodation, foods, and would provide transport to us. I was later told this type of event was scarce, it's something available every year and they had limitation of seats available.
Despite not close to the people of the organization, I did not hesitate long to join them. Well, I have no regrets joining the trip! After the trip, I became friends with those who follow trip, and boy I had quite a lot of fun there.
The official event at Guangdong province only covered three places, Dongguan 东莞，Jieyang 揭阳，and Zengcheng 增城。After completing the official event, we continued with our holiday at Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and followed lastly by Macau. We flew back to Malaysia from Macau airport at the end of our trip.
There were seven of us who stick together for the entire trip (including attending official events and later the self-guided holiday). Overall, we were quite satisfied with the trip: it was fun, I made new friends with these mates in the tour, got a chance to live a luxury life (no kidding) under the sponsorship of China government. It was great as we got along quite well with each other, I don't remember having any conflict at all - maintaining good compatibility over the course of over a week was not easy.
We made friends with local China people which I still keep contact until today (since 2010, now already 5 years!), special thanks to existence of social media! In fact, amazingly when I met those China people, the popularity of social media and smart phone was not that high. At that time I had not had my first smart phone yet! I remember asking for their contact by scribbling using pen-and-papers, lucky I didn't lose them. Another thing to take note was, the social media I use to maintain contact with the China friends is not Facebook (banned in China), or Friendster, we used QZone and QQ to keep in touch.
After the trip, we wrote 7 articles which were published in all local Chinese newspaper. I contributed 4 articles, which I cannot believe I could achieve as I was quite bad in Chinese.
Click for Newspaper articles
Official Event 1 - Dongguan 东莞 2010 海外华侨华人青年才俊聚东莞系列活动 CLICK HERE
Official Event 2 + 3 Jieyang 揭阳市第二届特色文化节+ 海外华侨华人企业家座谈会 CLICK HERE
Self tour Guangzhou CLICK HERE
Self Tour Shenzhen CLICK HERE
Self Tour Zhuhai + Macau CLICK HERE
Shortfall of this trip was probably, the whole trip was too rush. We should have planned at least two nights per city, to reduce having to check-in and check-out hotel everyday.
