January 23 is the Chinese Lunar New Year, and marks the beginning of a 15-day nationwide holiday. The Chinese New Year celebration begins on the first new moon of the year and ends 15 days later, on the following full moon. This final day of the New Year celebration is called the Lantern Festival, which is commemorated with luminescent nighttime displays and parades of children carrying lanterns. Much like Christmas in western culture, Chinese New Year is considered a time for reuniting family and giving thanks. Most companies were closed from January 22 to January 28 in observance of this public holiday.

We wish our readers happiness and prosperity in the year of dragon!

The China Gateway office worked closely with the alumni clubs of Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to organize a Big Ten Alumni New Year Party, which was held in downtown Shanghai on January 14. There were 56 alumni from six different schools in attendance, including 25 from Ohio State. Buckeyes came from all across the region to join the celebration, bringing Ohio State spirit from such cities as Chengdu, Nanchang and Suzhou.

In December 2011, a group of 27 students and alumni from Ohio State's Knowlton School of Architecture took a whirlwind tour of China's east coast. The group visited 12 cities (Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Kaiping, Guangzhou, Jinhua, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing) in 16 days, and focused their excursions on the study of traditional, concession-era and contemporary architecture and urbanism. Ohio State faculty members Jackie Gargus and Addison Godel organized the group's travel from Columbus, and Knowlton alumni Zhiguo Chen and Evan Chakroff handled further arrangements in Shanghai.

One function of the China Gateway is to serve as a resource for cultural consultation, both helping faculty and staff understand and adapt to Chinese culture and providing them with a variety of travel tips. The Gateway also provides logistical support, such as arranging bus rental, purchasing train tickets, providing official introduction letters, processing payments and helping resolve the challenges of managing international travel for faculty.

As the liaison for Ohio State and the Chinese market, the China Gateway is continually exploring opportunities for medical training, research and health care exchange. Health care reform is a hot topic in China, a country with 1.3 billion citizens and a $240 billion health care market.

With its aging population on the rise, China has been taking every effort to reform its medical system. The central government set a goal to establish a basic universal health care system that can provide safe, effective, convenient and low-cost services to people all over the country. In 2009, the government launched an initiative with a $125 billion initial investment, and this has presented a unique opportunity for collaboration with universities in the United States. As part of this initiative, there has been a call for thousands of new hospitals and clinics across the country, more training for medical professionals, advanced public health management and more high-end medical equipment, all of which has resulted in a market with thousands of valuable opportunities.

"As I talked with some government officials, I found that they are very interested in collaboration with prestigious U.S. universities to establish advanced public health and general medical training programs," said Adella Ma, business development manager of the China Gateway. "With a great medical center, it's really a great opportunity for Ohio State to build up its brand in China."