Shenzhen is a familiar city for Belgian Philippe van Cranem, one of the vice mayors of Walloon Brabant Province in Belgium.

Even before the city developed sister-city ties with Walloon Brabant in 2003, van Cranem had been coming to Shenzhen frequently.

Van Cranem is among the few people to have visited Shenzhen on both friendship tours, the second of which is taking place now, aimed at boosting cultural exchange and understanding between foreign students from six sister cities and their Chinese counterparts.

"There were 115 foreign students in the first friendship tour in 2002, two times than this year," van Cranem said, who added that a lack of funds and support from schools in his country was an obstacle to expanding exchange activities.

"I had also been to the China Hi-tech Fair in Shenzhen for several times," he said. Van Cranem expects to enhance commercial cooperation between the two places through similar industrial fairs.

However, not many people in Shenzhen know about the Belgian province.

Walloon Brabant is a province of Wallonia, bordering Flemish Brabant, Liege, Namur and Hainaut. Its capital is Wavre. It has an area of 1,093 square kilometers and contains only one administrative district with 27 municipalities.

Walloon Brabant was created in 1995 when the former province of Brabant was split into three parts. The split was made to accommodate the eventual division of Belgium in three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels). The province is friendly, says van Cranem, who has invited Shenzheners to visit it.

Editor: Donald