The friendship between China and the Czech Republic goes back to the 1950s. At that time, then-Czechoslovakia gave China a generous amount of farming equipment. To return the favor, China set up a friendship farm in Cangzhou of Hebei Province. After sixty years, the farm is still productive.
These were among the earliest modern farming equipment China had. Over 600 pieces of farming equipment, including tractors, harvesters, and seeders, were given by Czechoslovakia in 1956. Then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai personally expressed his gratitude and saw to the setting up of a friendship farm with these equipment and named it the Chinese-Czech Friendship Farm.
At that time, a group of Czechoslovakian mechanics was sent to China to train Chinese farmers. Zhou Chuanjiang was one of the trainees then. He is 81 years old now, but still fondly remembers the time he spent with these foreign friends.
"We were very happy to see these equipment. Many of them are among the best in the world then. The experts from Czech were very responsible," Zhou Chuanjiang, farmer with China-Czech Friendship Farm, said.
These are the tractors that were given by Czechoslovakia then when China was still a newly founded nation. They have made great contributions to the agricultural production, and people here still keep them here as a way to remember the friendship between the people of the two countries.
Now the friendship farm is a high-tech development zone, and has become a bridge between the two countries. And the friendship now extends to more sectors. Chen Gaofeng is running a aviation school and is working with the Czech Republic's aviation school to train pilots.
"My pilots are receiving training in the Czech Republic now. They will soon get a business license in Europe and came back to train more students," Chen Gaofeng with China-Czech Aviation School said.
The local government is planning to invest 120 million yuan to build a new airport for the aviation school. All the equipment will be imported from the Czech Republic. And the cooperation doesn't just end there -- a Chateau was just built to brew beer using technology and raw materials from the Czech Republic.
"The technology of brewing beer is quite advanced in the Czech Republic, and we are trying to introduce and bring it to China. We are also planning to build three more factories in China -- in Xiaomen, Beihai and Hainan," Zhou Peng, manager of Hebei Zhongjie Nitra Vinery, siad.
The farm has paid the way for a close and constant cooperation in trade, culture and education. It has contributed 13 billion yuan to the GDP and has become the model of international cooperation between China and east European countries.
