On Dec. 19th, 2013, Mr. Jens Kraus-Massé, the Deputy Consul-general of the German Consulate-general Office in Chengdu, visited the Department of German at the School of Foreign Languages on the Jiuli Campus, and met with the vice dean of our School, Dr. Wang Pengfei. Present at the meeting were: the culture and information assistant, Ms. Wu Guiling, from the Consulate-general office; head of the Department of German, Pro. Mo Guanghua; and Dr. He Jun, and Dr. Tang Ximin representing the faculty of the Department of German; as well as some graduate students, Yuan Yang, Li Tianjiao, Tang Jie, He Lanyun, etc.

The Vice Dean, Dr Wang, and Mr. Mo extended a warm welcome to Mr. Jens Kraus-Massé and gave him a brief introduction to the history and current status of our School, and to the Department of German. They then discussed the possibility of setting up some exchange and cooperation programs between the School of Foreign Languages, especially the Department of German, and some higher education institutions, and the relevant cultural and academic institutions in Germany. Mr. Wang emphasized that it was necessary for the SFL,SWJTU, to make strenuous efforts to collaborate with their German counterparts in order to achieve a mutually desired outcome. Mr. Massé then stated that he really appreciated the guidelines for the internationalization of higher education that were proposed by Xu Fei, the new president of the Southwest Jiaotong University, and suggested that the School of Foreign Languages should begin talks with the Goethe Institute in Germany on establishing the Goethe’s Language Center, and TestDaf testing center, here at our school at the earliest opportunity.

The Deputy Consul-general then inquired about the “Hier Kommt Deutsch! Deutsch ” event, which was co-organized by the Goethe Institute and the Department of German, and held on the Xipu Campus on Dec. 3rd. Dr. He Jun, one of the organizers, briefed everyone on the students’ active performances and enthusiastic responses. In response, Mr. Massé said that more related activities would be carried out in future. In addition, the teachers and students at the meeting said that they all thought that the recent free German movie show, organized by the Consulate-General of Germany, was indeed meaningful, but was regrettably inconvenient for students who were based at the Xipu Campus, due to transport and time issues. They suggested that the movie should be shown on the Xipu Campus in the form of a “German Movie Party” in due course.

This was Mr. Massé's second visit to our university. He had been to the Xipu Campus previously, accompanying the famous German director Volker Schoendorff, during the German Movie Week which was held in October.