Expo stories: CSA Expo good for branding, health cooperation

The 7th CSA Expo opens on August 16.

The 7th China-South Asia Exposition (CSA Expo) opened this morning in central Yunnan’s Kunming city. Over the past decade, the CSA Expo has grown to be a key platform for economic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges. Today we have another two friends sharing with us their expo stories.

Zhang Hongkai, a Yunnan fruit processor

I’m Zhang Hongkai, or rather "brother loquat", from south Yunnan’s Honghe prefecture. I’m so nicknamed because I’ve been in the loquat business for 10 plus years. Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine told me loquat can treat cough, and I was once regretted to see a farmer who couldn’t sell out his fruits. So, my wife and I decided to do loquat deep-processing.

Last year, my company was admitted to the 6th CSA Expo, which excited my family and employees a lot. During the expo, we made friends with business people from Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and others, sharing with them ideas on business running. And such talks turned out to be useful for us to tap the market potential in south-southeast Asia.

Now we pack the loquat cream in the way we learned from our expo friends, and this is already the fifth time that we’ve improved our packaging. Taking into account the eating habits of south-southeast Asian folks, I also turned the loquat cream into a jam suitable for their tastes. As a result, our produce is better accepted in the regions.

I’m expecting to meet and talk with more international customers and business partners at this year's CSA Expo, so that the special products and local culture of Honghe could be better known to them.

Ariful, a Bangladeshi medical worker

I’m native to Bangladesh, but I graduated from Kunming Medical University majoring in orthopedics. Now I live and work in Yunnan.

My parents are both medics. Under their influence, I’ve dreamed to be a doctor since I was a child. Having finished senior high school, I chose to pursue my dream in Yunnan. In the past nine years, I’ve completed a 6-year undergraduate program and a 3-year master program, paving the way for my career as a doctor.

Over the years, I’ve been paying attention to the exchanges and cooperation between Yunnan and South Asian countries. Amid Yunnan's opening-up to the outside world, more South Asians came to the province for study and work, and they thus contributed to folk bonds in the Indian Ocean region.

The CSA Expo in Kunming bridges China and South Asia in economic cooperation and cultural exchanges. During the 6th CSA Expo in 2022, I learned about bio-medicine and general health online. As a medical worker, I care about South Asia-Yunnan cooperation in medicine and health.

I hope more pharmaceutical firms from South Asia could forge long-term cooperation with their peers in Yunnan, and by using AI and other cutting-edge technologies, we can improve health and well-being of the people in the region.

Reporting by Qin Xuedan and Wang Jingzhong; Rewriting by Wang Shixue; Photo by Yunnan Daily; Proofreading by Zhang Ruogu and Wang Huan