Indonesian students pose for a photo after visiting the Chengdu Yuyao Ancient Lamp Culture Museum in Sichuan province.[Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn]

Sanio Clarissa Sutanto was all smiles while visiting the Chengdu Yuyao Ancient Lamp Culture Museum in Sichuan province.

"The exhibits with a very long history are interesting," said the 15-year-old student of Chinese descendant from the Immanuel Senior High School in Pontianak, Indonesia.

She was one of nearly 150 students of Chinese descendant from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Japan to have visited the museum on Friday afternoon.

Organized by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council and Chengdu Municipal Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the students aged between 12 and 18 are on a two-week trip to Chengdu which started on December 22.

"To learn more about China, the students have visited sites of historical and cultural importance in Chengdu and learned Chinese," said Liu Jingrong, an official with the Chengdu Municipal Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

The Chengdu Yuyao Ancient Lamp Culture Museum was set up in 2015 by Yao Yulin, a lamp collector in Chengdu.

Yao's lamps span from the New Stone Age to present day. His collection goes beyond lamps to other illumination technologies. These include lamp molds from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), ancient Chinese candleholders and flashlights belonging to the American Flying Tigers in the 1940s.

Yao said memories of his mother inspired his love of lamps and lamp collection.

He recalled finding an old oil lamp when he returned to his home in Henan province's Zhumadian after serving eight years in the People's Liberation Army following his 1972 high school graduation.

"My mother used to sit by the lamp to cut paper to make notebooks for my homework. It's a memory of childhood and of mom. I took the lamp back to Chengdu and put it on my desk," he said.

Ever since then, he has collected some 3,000 lamps, candleholders and flashlights. More than 1,000 of them are on display in the Chengdu Yuyao Ancient Lamp Culture Museum.

Viewing his collection at home in 2004, a British teacher named Caroline Portsmouth wrote: "I was fascinated and surprised by Lao Yao's collection, and it was a lovely interlude to see something of China down the ages. Your country owes a debt to those like you who care enough to devote their time and energy to preserving its history and culture."