On the menu of a family-owned Chinese restaurant, a dish named "Liuzhou noodles" stands out. The savory entree originated from the South China city Liuzhou and is rarely seen in Chinese restaurants in foreign countries. Its presence in a Midwestern US city is a byproduct of robust people-to-people exchanges between Cincinnati and China.

Those exchanges have fostered mutual understanding and brought benefits to both sides, according to local community leaders, a school official and business leaders who were interviewed on Thursday.

"It's all about understanding," said Paul Orkwis, interim dean of the college of engineering and applied science at the University of Cincinnati (UC).

The university had partnered with China's Chongqing University to launch the Joint Engineering Co-op Institute in 2013, a five-year program in which half the course of study is taught by professors from both universities, and the other half consists of work at local companies.

The institute's first 56-student class — all Chinese students — graduated in 2018, and they all got to spend their senior year at UC and graduate with degrees from both universities.

Chinese students — more than 1,000 of them — constitute the largest international student community at UC, about one-third of the 3,000-plus international students.

Cincinnati also has hosted English-as-a-second-language (ESL) teachers from its sister city Liuzhou since 1993. The teachers stay with local host families, gain educational and cultural experiences, and interact with local people for 21 weeks.

The exchange program has impacted nearly 80 Chinese teachers, and by extension, more than 600,000 Liuzhou students, helping them to speak better English, said Joseph Hamrick, co-chair of the Cincinnati-Liuzhou Sister City Committee.

"That means a lot" for people in Cincinnati as well, he said, as people here don't always get a chance to travel to China.

Through the exchanges, however, they get to meet Chinese teachers and "see that we are all just the same — we all have the same wants, the same needs", he said. "That's the beauty of these exchanges."

The introduction of Liuzhou noodles, or Luosifen in Chinese, to the Oriental Wok restaurant in Cincinnati is a result of a 2017 exchange when a Liuzhou-based chef visited to learn French cuisine techniques and brought Liuzhou authentic recipes to Cincinnati.

"It's always great when the two citizens and their countries can get together and talk about our similarities instead of our differences," said Hamrick.