"Please follow me -- grasp the tools in this way," a Chinese teacher from Tianjin Bohai Vocational Technical College (TBVTC) said to over 20 students attending the Thai Luban Workshop online course. 

The training program is named after Lu Ban (507-440 BC), an ancient Chinese woodcraft master believed to be the father of Chinese carpentry and architecture. Its aim is to cultivate technical experts for partner countries. 

To carry forward craftsmanship and enhance teaching amid the pandemic, TBVTC has rolled out over 400 episodes of online information teaching courses and 16 sets of virtual test papers with 16,000 questions for trainees in the Thai Luban Workshop. 

Zheng Yongfeng, a teacher of electromechanical engineering, is one of the first Chinese teachers sent to work for Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Technical College, a Thailand vocational and technical institute where the first overseas Luban Workshop was established on March 8, 2016.

According to Zheng, the Thai Luban Workshop has graduated thousands of professional and technical personnel for the country since its establishment. 

Principal of Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Technical College, Jarun Youbrum, said the Thai Luban Workshop has offered many majors including new energy vehicles, bionic robots, micro-mouse, mechanotronics, numerical control and the internet of things over the past years. 

Thanks to resources provided by the program, Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya Technical College has outperformed many other Thai vocational colleges in terms of discipline and teaching standards, Jarun added.