With the help of Mr. Morita Kuniisamu, a Japanese helping Haiyan as a teacher, Haiyan began to cooperate with Ogi City of Saga Prefecture, Japan, in 2008. In September of that year, a delegation of Ogi City was sent by the mayor to visit Haiyan. In 2010, a delegation of Haiyan paid a friendly visit to Ogi City. In October 2011, Mr. Satokuchi Hideji from Ogi City visited Haiyan with a delegation of 17 members of Japan-China Friendship Association of Ogi City and Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Ogi City, and both parties signed a memorandum of friendship exchange. Since then both parties have maintained friendly exchanges in terms of governmental and educational issues. In April 2016, Zhang Jian, mayor of Haiyan then, visited Ogi City with a delegation of six members. From October 18 to 20, 2017, Mr. Satokuchi Hideji visited Haiyan again with a friendly delegation of 10 members. From November 29 to December 30, 2018, Zhu Beihua, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of Haiyan County, paid a friendly visit to Ogi City with a delegation of six members. From November 6 to 8, 2019, Masataka Takashima, minister of Department of General Affairs of Ogi City, visited Haiyan with a delegation of ten members. In February 2020, Ogi City donated 13 boxes of epidemic protection materials to Haiyan, including 200 sets of protective suits, 200 goggles, 1,000 N95 masks, and 10,000 medical surgical masks. In May that year, Haiyan donated 200 sets of protective suits and 12,000 medical surgical masks to Ogi City at its request.

An overview of Ogi City: With a population of about 46,600 and an area of 95.81 square kilometers, accounting for 3.93% of the land area of Saga Prefecture, Ogi City is located in the center of Saga Prefecture, 10 kilometers west of Saga City (about a 20-minute drive), 70 kilometers from Fukuoka and 100 kilometers from Nagasaki. Ogi City is developed in agriculture and fishery, and its agriculture mainly focuses on rice, vegetables, fruits and animal husbandry, which is very similar to that of Haiyan. Geographically, there are towering Tenshan Mountains in the north, fertile Saga Plain in the center and Japan’s largest inter-tidal zone in the south, as well as various canals here and there for agricultural irrigation and alluvial fan zones formed by Gion River, Harugi River and Ushidu River all originating from the Tenshan Mountains. Those rivers merge with the Roko River and Kase River and finally empty into the Ariake-kai. Ogi City is hot and humid in summer, but cold and dry in winter, and rich scenic spots and extremely valuable natural resources.