My delegation is shown a model for the development of a coastal city in Guangdong.
My Guangdong story began in 1983, when I first traveled by train from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.
The contrast was unforgettable. Behind us stood the modern high-rises of Hong Kong. Across the border lay rice paddies, villages, ancestral tombs and open countryside. Shenzhen had only recently become one of China's first Special Economic Zones under Deng Xiaoping's Reform and Opening-up policy. Much of the city we know today still existed only as a vision.
We were accompanied throughout our visit by senior members of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, who had traveled from Beijing to receive us. Many still wore the traditional Mao suits. They introduced us to China with warmth, simplicity and a quiet confidence in the future.
In Shenzhen, we were taken to see a large model of the city they intended to build. I remember looking at this ambitious plan and wondering how such a future could possibly emerge from the modest landscape around us.
What impressed me most was not simply the planned factories and industrial zones. We were told that Shenzhen would need universities to train engineers and scientists and new sources of energy, including nuclear power, to sustain its future growth. At the time, this seemed preposterous.
More than 40 years later, whenever I return to Shenzhen, I still visualize that model. Unimaginable!
Over the years, I made the train journey between Hong Kong and Guangdong many times. Gradually, the sharp contrast disappeared. The rice fields gave way to roads, factories, universities, research centers, apartment blocks and office towers. Shenzhen became a major international center of technology, manufacturing and innovation. For more than four decades, I have witnessed development not through statistics, but through the window of a train.
My first visit to Guangzhou left equally vivid memories. We stayed at the newly opened White Swan Hotel on Shamian Island. In China in 1983, it seemed astonishingly grand: the indoor waterfall, the jade boat and the view over the Pearl River. Those features remain symbols of the hotel today.
I remember seeing many Western families staying there while completing procedures to adopt Chinese babies. Today that scene has disappeared. It shows me that countries change, and so do societies.
Throughout Guangdong, local friendship associations received us generously. There were visits, discussions and banquets where relationships were formed. From such contacts grew an enduring friendship between Foshan and Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, and the two became sister cities.
That taught me something important: international relations often begin with ordinary human encounters.
My family's ancestral village in Meixian
But perhaps the most emotional part of my Guangdong story was the journey to Meizhou and Meixian, the ancestral homeland of many Mauritian Chinese families. Returning there was not about tourism. It was a return to our roots.
As children in Mauritius, we grew up hearing about these villages from our parents and grandparents. Families overseas never forgot relatives who remained behind. Money, food, clothing and goods were sent whenever possible. Especially at Chinese New Year, even modest families tried to send something home.
This was part of the shared history of the Chinese diaspora. The Meizhou I first knew was very different from the city of today. We stayed at the Friendship Hotel. Foreign goods were scarce and available mainly in Friendship Stores. Foreign visitors used special Foreign Exchange Certificates. The streets were filled with bicycles; gray and dark-blue uniforms predominated; there were few motor vehicles.
Today Meizhou has modern hotels, shopping centers, highways, electric cars and fashionable shops. Not every change necessarily impresses me. I sometimes regret the spread of Western fast-food culture, given that China has one of the world's richest culinary traditions. Modernization should not mean abandoning what is valuable in one's own civilization.
In Meizhou, we also visited places associated with Marshal Ye Jianying, a native son of the region and a heroic comrade-in-arms of Chairman Mao during the Long March. For my generation, that history was deeply personal.
Our parents had told us about the harsh oppression and humiliation endured by the Chinese during the Japanese occupation. We gathered our meager resources, raised funds and sent assistance to China. Long before I first visited Guangdong, China already lived in our family memory.
That is why, looking back today on 1983, Guangdong's transformation moves me so deeply. I have seen, within a single lifetime, a society move from scarcity and bicycles to high-speed trains, electric vehicles, advanced manufacturing, universities, nuclear energy, digital technology and artificial intelligence.
But the greatest lesson is not the skyscrapers. It is what people can achieve when they possess long-term vision, invest in knowledge and infrastructure, remain open to learning and work persistently across generations.
The transformation went far beyond what many of us who stood before that Shenzhen model in 1983 could have imagined. Yet amid all that change, something else endured: friendship. Today, as President of the Mauritius-China Friendship and Cultural Association, I see it as our responsibility to sustain that human bridge.
Friendship between countries must be more than official speeches. It must live through sister cities, cultural and sporting exchanges, education, scientific research, youth exchanges, tourism, business contacts and direct relationships between people.
Guangdong has changed almost beyond recognition since my first journey. The hosts who welcomed us in their Mao suits, the model of a future Shenzhen, the White Swan Hotel, the banquets in Foshan, our ancestral villages in Meizhou and the relatives who welcomed us home: one thread connects all those memories.
Progress transformed the landscape. Friendship connected the generations. My Guangdong story began on a train in 1983. More than 40 years later, the scenery has changed beyond anything I could have imagined. The friendship has endured.
The author is Kee Chong Li Kwong Wing, President of the Mauritius-China Friendship and Cultural Association.
