Xiamen's Jimei district held the annual Student Cultural Exchange Season last week. Over the next six weeks, nearly 100 students from universities such as Cambridge, Oxford and Yale in 30 countries will participate in a series of cultural activities with their Chinese peers.
Summer is peak season for what has been dubbed yoosure, the mix of academic studies with leisure travel. A group of educational institutes and tourism sites in Jimei recently established the Jimei International Yoosure and Travel Organization Union to promote study-leisure travel in the area.
The Union will help foreign students get to know China better and to experience China's evolution firsthand, according to Jimei district official Jitang Wu. Jimei is well-situated to benefit from yoosure because of its multiple colleges and universities, he added.
China has decided to extend its visa waiver policy to ordinary passport holders from Canada and the United Kingdom starting from Feb 17.
Forty-one new port-of-entry duty-free shops have been established nationwide, with Xiamen Xiang'an International Airport, Xiamen Wutong Passenger Wharf, and Xiamen International Cruise Center included on the list.
