During the study tour, which will be held over a period of three weeks, we will visit the surroundings of the cities Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The study tour will start on the 21st of February 2009, and will have 26 participating electrical engineering students, as well as two supervisors from the department. Technical as well as cultural locations will be visited. The ratio between cultural and scientific excursions will be around 40% - 60%. During the 3 week tour 4 days will be mainly occupied by travelling between different regions. The study tour is organized by 7 students of the electrical engineering study association Thor.
The study tour will start with a flight to Beijing. We will spend 5 days in Beijing. During this time plan we to visit some high-tech companies in this region. We hope that well-known companies like Siemens, Intel or Nokia will be among them, but we are also looking to visit some characteristic Chinese companies in this region. Aside from the companies we will bring a visit to famous sights such as the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven. The Forbidden City is the world’s largest preserved palace complex. It and covers 72 ha and is located in the middle of Beijing. It now houses the Palace Museum. The Temple of Heaven is a large Temple set in gardens and surrounded by pine woods. It is a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design.
From Beijing we will travel to Shanghai by night train. We will spend 7 days in Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou, all in the surroundings of Shanghai. Shanghai is the sister City of Eindhoven. We plan to visit some high-tech companies situated here like the Philips Research Lab for example, but we have also planned to visit a typical Chinese mass-production company in here. For the cultural part of the tour we will visit the Oriental Pearl Tower, the tallest tower in Asia. In Nanjing we will visit the Sun Yatsen Mausoleum. As the mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China, it is considered the Holy land of Chinese people both home and abroad. In Hangzhou we will visit the Zhejiang University, a partner university of the TU/e.
Next we will travel into the direction of Hong Kong, where we will first spend 3 days in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, followed by 2 days in the city center of Hong Kong. For the last 30 years Shenzhen has been one of the fastest growing cities in the world and is now a major manufacturing centre. We will use all days to visit some of the many high-tech companies situated here. The last days will be spend in Hong Kong where we will visit Victoria Peak, which will offer us spectacular views over central Hong Kong, the harbor and surrounding islands. Also we are looking if it is possible to visit the Guangdong Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station, the largest commercial nuclear power plant of China with a capacity of almost 2000 MW.
