General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee and State President To Lam arrived in Guangzhou and started the state visit to China on August 18.

During his visit in Guangzhou, the top leader held a meeting with representatives of Chinese friendly people towards Vietnam.

This is his first visit to China since he was elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee.

General Secretary and President Lam gave an address at the meeting with the representatives of Chinese friendly people towards Vietnam, saying that he was very pleased to see the important consensus between Vietnam and China have promoted cooperation and exchanges and brought happiness to people from the two countries.

He believed that the people-to-people exchanges will strengthen the friendship between Vietnam and China and pass on from generation to generation.

Yu Shuhui, representative of Chinese friendly people towards Vietnam, told GDToday that she had given treatment and nursing to Vietnamese soldiers from 1968 to 1975, when the US invaded Vietnam.

"In 1968, President Ho Chi Minh sought support from China and one of the items was building a hospital in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region to receive wounded personnels from Vietnam. The hospital was named Nanxishan Hospital," said Yu.

"We received and treated 5432 patients from Vietnam in 8 years. The patients we treated were like our family members," she added.

She introduced that the hospital did not build a blood bank, due to limited conditions, saying, "our hospital had a famous saying: living blood bank. If there was a patient with haemorrhage, an announcement would come from the public addressors in the dormitory: blood type B is needed."

Yu said, "We would get up from bed and rush to donate blood, yelling and holding out our arms saying 'I am blood type B', when we heard the announcement." She introduced that the staff of the hospital had donated nearly 780,000 milliliters of blood in 8 years and herself 1600 milliliters of blood.

"I witnessed the friendship between the two countries being made by blood, because blood from Chinese people had gone into Vietnamese people's vessels," she stressed.

According to Yu, after the US withdrew troops in 1975, the medical equipment of Nanxishan Hospital had been transferred to Hanoi, to the E Hospital, in other words, Nanxishan Hospital has continued to serve Vietnamese people.

Nguyen Vinh Quang, Vice Chairman of Vietnam-China Friendship Association indicated that it is a great pleasure to see To Lam visited China and he believed that the cooperation between two countries in all fields will be promoted after this visit, especially in economy and trade.

According to Department of Commerce of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, trade volume between China and Vietnam has reached 170 billion US dollars in 2023.