Nanjing/China

Located 250 km east of Shanghai, Nanjing (also called Nanking) is the capital of Jiangsu. This province is one of the most densely populated and one of the richest in China.

Nanjing is one of the four ancient capitals of imperial China and was the first capital of the Republic of China, founded in 1912. It also houses the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, considered to be the father of the modern Chinese nation. The population is currently over 8 million people making Nanjing a rapidly expanding regional metropolis.

A partnership in a range of areas

The two cities have been official partners since September 2013. Cooperation between Nanjing and Strasbourg covers three main areas:

• Culture: one of the highlights was the joint organization of the Chinese New Year celebrations in 2013 with a concert, traditional lantern exhibition in a Strasbourg street and a demonstration of crafts. Artistic exchanges take place in particular in the context of the Strasbourg Sacred Music Festival in liaison with the Alliance Française.
• Youth: school exchanges between the establishments in both cities are encouraged and supported. Particular work was carried out around the Olympic Youth Games in Nanjing in the summer of 2014, with a student studying Chinese being sent to the Pontonniers International Lycée to represent Strasbourg on the young councilors committee set up by Nanjing in preparation for the event. Exchanges between the College de l’Esplanade and Nanjing Experimental International School have taken place every year since 2012 in a partnership between the Strasbourg Rectory and Jiangsu Province.
• Transport: workshops were organized as part of the Franco-Chinese Chair of Research, Action and Education on Innovative Metropolitan Mobilities, created in 2015 by ENSAS (Strasbourg National School of Architecture), Tongji University in Shanghai and the SYSTRA company, involving collaboration with the Nanjing South-East University and the City of Strasbourg.