The next week is special for the board of AYY. We are having quests from China’s top university, Tsinghua University!
Cooperation between AYY and Tsinghua University Student Union (SUTU) started almost ten years ago. The cooperation was unformal until year 2013 a memorandum of understanding was signed. In the memorandun the student unions decided the forms of cooperation. AYY visits Tsinghua every second year and Tsinghua delegation comes to Finland every year. You can read more about the history and meaning of cooperation here: /blogi/2015/08/03/tsinghua-university-student-union-visits-aalto/?lang=en.
In the and of May AYY board visited Beijing and ever since we have been waiting and planning the visit of Tsinghua students. They arrived early Friday morning 5th of August. The theme for the first day was to get to know each other, Aalto University and Otaniemi campus.
The day started with a lunch with Ilkka Niemelä, who is Aalto University provost. Ilkka introduced Aalto and the student unions had short presentations.
After lunch we had a tour around Otaniemi campus. We saw a lot the architecture by Alvar Aalto and also one of the highlights during the tour was a visit to acoustics lab with no echo. It was a nice way to get to know little bit about our beautiful campus here in Otaniemi.
Walls in the acoustics lab.
In the evening we gathered to Tieto-sauna. At first Mikko Puustonen, who has been living in China for 15 years, told his observations about Finnish and Chinese cultures. We discussed that it’s difficult to say which thing actually are cultural differences and which things result from for example the differences in population density or work life. Anyhow, people are quite same all around the globe.
Mikko Puustonen telling his expriences on Finnish and Chinese cultures.
Unfortunately sauna wasn’t hot so in the end we decided to go to Demo day, an event held at Startup sauna. There was plenty of people, saunas and hot tubes, welcoming atmosphere and a huge ball pool. What a great place to spent the first evening in Finland!