To thoroughly study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping's important thinking on doing a good job in the Party's united-front work in the new era, benchmark against best-practice museum construction and operation, further connect the century-long historical heritage of the China Vocational Education Association (CVEA), and promote the co-construction and sharing of resources between its northern and southern exhibition halls, on August 13 a delegation from the College — comprising Chairman Yang Ping, President Yang Jie, Executive Vice President Gao Chenglin, Vice President and Head of the Party Committee's United Front Work Department Alex, Head of the Party Committee Publicity Department Xue Fei, and Dean of the School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship Gao Hongyin — made a special trip to the History Exhibition Hall of the China Vocational Education Association in Yubei District, Chongqing Municipality, to conduct a thematic research visit.
Built upon the municipal-level cultural relics protection site 'the Former Residence of General Yu Xuezhong and the Former Site of Zhonghua Vocational School,' the History Exhibition Hall of the China Vocational Education Association officially opened on October 10, 2012. It is the first comprehensive exhibition hall of the China Vocational Education Association (CVEA) to systematically present the Association's history since its founding in 1917 — its pursuit of 'saving the nation through education,' its devotion to the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, and its service to the overall interests of the Party and the country. It has now become a National Traditional Education Base for the United Front, as well as Chongqing's demonstration bases for patriotic education, clean-governance education, national defense education, and united-front culture education.
During the research visit, following a thread spanning more than a century, the College leaders paid an on-site visit to the 'original scene' of the CVEA's wartime resistance and salvation efforts in Chongqing — the Former Residence of General Yu Xuezhong and the Former Site of Zhonghua Vocational School. Unlike the Dalian hall, which uses immersive 'AI + history' re-creations, the Chongqing hall relies on authentic historical buildings and physical relics, allowing the visitors to witness, amid the weathered texture of the brick-and-timber quadrangle, the glorious journey of patriotic pioneers such as Mr. Huang Yanpei in founding vocational education and persisting in 'saving the nation through education,' and to deepen their understanding of how Hongyan martyrs including Jiang Zhujun, Xu Xiaoxuan, Hu Youyou, and Peng Liren once studied here and interpreted the great founding spirit of the Party with their young lives. At the Martyrs' Square, the group observed a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Hongyan revolutionary martyrs and laid flowers. The College leaders also focused on studying the Chongqing hall's mature practices in the preservation and restoration of the former site, scene re-creation, and educational-base operations, gaining a deeper understanding of how the CVEA's distinct characteristics of being 'united-front oriented, educational, and non-governmental' are manifested in an authentic historical space and how it continues to function as a National Traditional Education Base for the United Front and a Chongqing demonstration base for patriotic and clean-governance education — drawing fresh experience to give back to and enhance the Dalian hall's exhibitions and services.
This research visit was both a 'linkage of old and new venues' and a 'north-south dialogue on the Association's history.' Contrasting with the Chongqing 'old hall' — which rests on century-old relics and opened in 2012 — is the 'new hall,' the Liaoning History Museum of the China Vocational Education Association, built by our College and officially inaugurated at our Qidingshan Campus on July 4 last year. The old hall carries memory through historical artifacts in a brick-and-timber quadrangle, while the new hall activates heritage through immersive AI empowerment. The new exhibition hall in Dalian, the northern coastal city, and the old former site in Chongqing, the mountainous Bayu city, converse across the distance, connecting the CVEA's century-spanning, north-and-south struggle into a continuous thread: old and new shining together, reflecting an unshakable founding aspiration; north and south echoing one another, jointly building an enduring legacy.
From the century-old former site amid the mountains and waters of Bashu to the renewed exhibition hall by the coast of the Bohai Sea, from the weathered artifacts of the brick-and-timber quadrangle to the AI-empowered digital heritage, this dialogue across mountains and seas reflects the unchanging original aspiration of generations of vocational educators: 'to enable the jobless to find employment and those employed to enjoy their work.' Taking this research visit as a new starting point, the College will earnestly absorb the Chongqing hall's mature experience in former-site preservation, scene re-creation, and educational-base operations, and feed it back into the enhancement of the Dalian hall's exhibitions and functional expansion. Furthermore, it will advance deeper collaboration between the northern and southern halls in resource sharing, joint curriculum development, and linked outreach, so that the CVEA's century-spanning torch will shine brilliantly and endlessly between north and south, and the two halls — one in the south and one in the north — will become enduring landmarks that carry forward the legacy of vocational education and build the consensus of the times.
