So it's a couple of days past the solstice, Saturday morning, my shoes are full of dew and grass clippings, I got to see the Doobie Brothers the other day, we're going "Up Nort" in a few days, my new Harley is ready in six days - what's missing?
We don't know if there'll be a Ballpark Tour this year yet. I mean, come on already.
So now as I'm leaving
I'm wearly as hell,
The confusion I'm feeling
no tongue can tell,
The words fill my head
and fall to the floor,
If God's on our side
He'll stop the next war
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Friday, May 4, 2007
Thoughts on China and Sustainability
After being home from China for some weeks, I’ve thought quite a lot about what I saw, especially regarding sustainability. One thing that’s clear to me is that our perceptions of China’s place in all this are being managed pretty well by our mainstream media. It is true I suppose that China’s gross energy consumption is equal to or near ours. However, it is also true that there are something like 4.3 times more folks there.
China’s energy consumption is growing quickly and there’s not a reasonable way they’ll ever be able to get at enough hydrocarbons to equal our per capita consumption.
So, they are pushing things everyday that we don’t see much of. Everything that looks anything like a “house”, even 3-4 story flats, has active solar hot water. Student housing at the universities has serious negative incentives for electric usage in the residences – electric meters for the rooms! They pay as they go. After dusk, the residences were almost completely dark, and students were gathered in public places and classrooms in groups to study.
Green design is in the news constantly and new developments everywhere incorporate storm water into water features and set aside green space – even in the midst of developed Shanghai. Shanghai bought and cleared several square kilometers of land right in the midst of vast development and created Central Park to provide green space, water, an amphitheater, gardens, and miles of walking paths.
In the major cities I saw many construction sites where, to try to cut down on airborne particulates, builders used fabrics – sort of like our landscape matting, to cover the bare ground and cut down on wind blown construction dusts. At my host, Zhejiang Unversity, planners gave up on siting a major new building at the home campus in favor of setting up a beautiful natural park - again with water, trails, and plantings - to decompress the campus a bit and give humans a respite from hardscape and structure. These efforts are unbelievable committments - especially given the scarcity and price of land in the cities.
There’s no question that they have a lot to do but there's a lot of good. Traffic was no where near as bad as I was told to expect (and the roadways, especially in Hangzhou, were excellent). It was exciting to see the efforts that are in place and underway. I talked a lot about our own renewable energy work at St. Olaf, and that’s what my counterparts were most interested in.
China’s energy consumption is growing quickly and there’s not a reasonable way they’ll ever be able to get at enough hydrocarbons to equal our per capita consumption.
So, they are pushing things everyday that we don’t see much of. Everything that looks anything like a “house”, even 3-4 story flats, has active solar hot water. Student housing at the universities has serious negative incentives for electric usage in the residences – electric meters for the rooms! They pay as they go. After dusk, the residences were almost completely dark, and students were gathered in public places and classrooms in groups to study.
Green design is in the news constantly and new developments everywhere incorporate storm water into water features and set aside green space – even in the midst of developed Shanghai. Shanghai bought and cleared several square kilometers of land right in the midst of vast development and created Central Park to provide green space, water, an amphitheater, gardens, and miles of walking paths.
In the major cities I saw many construction sites where, to try to cut down on airborne particulates, builders used fabrics – sort of like our landscape matting, to cover the bare ground and cut down on wind blown construction dusts. At my host, Zhejiang Unversity, planners gave up on siting a major new building at the home campus in favor of setting up a beautiful natural park - again with water, trails, and plantings - to decompress the campus a bit and give humans a respite from hardscape and structure. These efforts are unbelievable committments - especially given the scarcity and price of land in the cities.
There’s no question that they have a lot to do but there's a lot of good. Traffic was no where near as bad as I was told to expect (and the roadways, especially in Hangzhou, were excellent). It was exciting to see the efforts that are in place and underway. I talked a lot about our own renewable energy work at St. Olaf, and that’s what my counterparts were most interested in.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
More Earth Day on the way
The Elements
Modern science has progressed beyond anything imagined in the days when most cultures recognized the "elements" as earth, air, fire, and water. We now think of "elements" as something quite different. We have the periodic table with dozens of substances that are unique and as simple as they can be. In our present time view, the former element "air" is really composed of the elements hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, ozone, and on and on. "Earth" is composed of iron, carbon, hydrogen, and again, on and on. "Water" is hydrogen, oxygen, and a variety of elemental minerals. "Fire" is fundamentally dependent on the elements, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Early members of most religious traditions recognized "Spirit", sometimes the “aether” as the fifth, sort of all encompassing, element.
I submit that in our desire to manage human and institutional impact on the biosphere we have become so dependent on engineering and minutiae that we have lost sight of the bigger picture in important ways.
Anne Lamott proposes that there are times for all of us when we simply think, analyze, puzzle, and confound ourselves more than is healthy rather than going with what is in our hearts. The heartfelt action is often better than the highly analyzed, pragmatic, reaction. Discussing this in her book, Operating Instructions, she even says that at some point, usually sooner rather than later, "…the mind is a bad neighborhood at 4:00 AM where we should not go."
The work of many physicists has been taken to task because of a perception that it is aimed at disproving the existence of God. Indeed, many have worked at almost infinitesimally small levels, but in the context of the infinitesimally vast universe. Even though much of the work could be characterized as being at odds with the view of a perfect universe that emanated from the hand of a creator, Einstein especially has acknowledged in writings for the general public that at some point, there is no other explanation for the order and perfection of the universe. In my view he worked so well because he seemed willing to acknowledge that what he believed in his heart was as valid as what could be tested. He worked on the modern elemental level in the context of the fifth of the old elements, Spirit.
I used to worry about why Pi or Phi works. An Internet search for either can be scary. I have come to be able to relax and simply say that they just work because of the perfection of the universe. At some point we need to back out of our minds, away from the too close look, out of the bad neighborhood, and go with what we feel intuitively.
Thought about this way, perhaps the ancient elements, again, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit are a better way to think about our biosphere. Virtually every environmental issue or impact we can think of consists of and affects most of these elements. For instance, it quickly becomes clear that heating a campus of buildings with a central plant, where steam is generated by fossil fuels - oil, gas, or coal - depends on the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The hydrocarbon fuels come from the Earth, they need Air in order to be able to oxidize as Fire, and so, produce steam from Water. The by-products of consuming Earth and Air by Fire affect Water, Air, and Earth. Mining of the Earth for fuels affects Air, Earth, Water, and requires Fire (electricity, gas, oil). Softening makeup Water for our Heating Plant requires Fire (electricity or heat), which requires Earth and Air, returns some substances, calcium, manganese, iron etc. to the Earth or maybe Water and, well, you start to get the picture.
Understanding of the principles that guide the best use of the elements of creation demands that we think about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water only in the context of the fifth, Spirit. Almost any resource development or consumption issue can be looked at in this way. Preserving the Earth and its resources for the future, cleansing our Air to help the health of our natural world, helping to conserve, restore, and clean our Water resources, and conserving and renewing our energy sources, Fire, will assure the future viability of creation. Preservation and cultivation of Spirit, and examining our use of the other elements in that context, will assure that we bring balance to the ecology of our campus, or any other institution or situation.
Colleges have a sort of unique responsibility to perpetuate themselves. Indeed, mission statements often address this aspect of their life. In addition, most purport to exist in order to serve, as St. Olaf does, by producing graduates prepared to serve a wider creation. We say that we focus on what is ultimately worthwhile and aspire to educate the whole person - mind, body, and spirit.
Preparing students to serve the world while using creation poorly as a college organism is irresponsible and selfish. We have been provided with the natural world and free will. It is ours to use wisely or mess up and we will be the beneficiaries or victims of the ways we choose to exercise our will on creation.
The elements of campus ecology, a small start:
Fire
Gas, Oil, Electricity, indoor and outdoor light, daylight, light pollution, vehicle fuels and lubes, solvents of all kinds, art/science/maintenance, embedded energy in acquired materials, fuels in art processes
Water
Domestic, sanitary sewer, storm water runoff and retention, AC, science, wetlands, mowing and land management practice, food - prep, cooking, dish washing, waste stream, implications of water in materials acquisition and production, cooling, steam production, vacuum by aspiration
Earth
Grounds maintenance, hardscape, land management, wetland, woodland, upland restoration and management, wildlife, bio-mass, outdoor recreation, athletics, natural resource management, material sources, ag and lawn chemicals, fertilization, mowing reduction, fuel acquisition and conservation
Air
Wind-powered electrical generation, particulate emission, CO2 sequestration, O2 production through bio-mass, CO, CO2, NO, SO, etc from carbon based fuels, science and art emissions, woodshop emissions, vehicle emissions, implications of materials acquisition and production on the air, particulates in ceramics, sculpture studios, art welding shops, foundry, and fume hoods. Dust emissions from clothes dryers.
Spirit
College of the Church, stewardship of the natural world, stewardship of the built environment, stewardship of the humans - fair work environments, social impacts of materials and processes, equality across the workplace - faculty, support and professional staff, administration, by gender, gender preference, age, race.
Physics tells us we cannot create or destroy energy, but that does not absolve us of the ramifications of people changing its form. As we think about the ecology of our campus, and its biosphere, we need to consider:
"Although I die, I shall continue
to live in everything that is.
The buffalo eats the grass.
And I eat him; and when I die,
the earth eats me and sprouts more grass.
Therefore, nothing is ever lost
and each thing is everything forever."
Native American author, unknown
Modern science has progressed beyond anything imagined in the days when most cultures recognized the "elements" as earth, air, fire, and water. We now think of "elements" as something quite different. We have the periodic table with dozens of substances that are unique and as simple as they can be. In our present time view, the former element "air" is really composed of the elements hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, ozone, and on and on. "Earth" is composed of iron, carbon, hydrogen, and again, on and on. "Water" is hydrogen, oxygen, and a variety of elemental minerals. "Fire" is fundamentally dependent on the elements, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. Early members of most religious traditions recognized "Spirit", sometimes the “aether” as the fifth, sort of all encompassing, element.
I submit that in our desire to manage human and institutional impact on the biosphere we have become so dependent on engineering and minutiae that we have lost sight of the bigger picture in important ways.
Anne Lamott proposes that there are times for all of us when we simply think, analyze, puzzle, and confound ourselves more than is healthy rather than going with what is in our hearts. The heartfelt action is often better than the highly analyzed, pragmatic, reaction. Discussing this in her book, Operating Instructions, she even says that at some point, usually sooner rather than later, "…the mind is a bad neighborhood at 4:00 AM where we should not go."
The work of many physicists has been taken to task because of a perception that it is aimed at disproving the existence of God. Indeed, many have worked at almost infinitesimally small levels, but in the context of the infinitesimally vast universe. Even though much of the work could be characterized as being at odds with the view of a perfect universe that emanated from the hand of a creator, Einstein especially has acknowledged in writings for the general public that at some point, there is no other explanation for the order and perfection of the universe. In my view he worked so well because he seemed willing to acknowledge that what he believed in his heart was as valid as what could be tested. He worked on the modern elemental level in the context of the fifth of the old elements, Spirit.
I used to worry about why Pi or Phi works. An Internet search for either can be scary. I have come to be able to relax and simply say that they just work because of the perfection of the universe. At some point we need to back out of our minds, away from the too close look, out of the bad neighborhood, and go with what we feel intuitively.
Thought about this way, perhaps the ancient elements, again, earth, air, fire, water, and spirit are a better way to think about our biosphere. Virtually every environmental issue or impact we can think of consists of and affects most of these elements. For instance, it quickly becomes clear that heating a campus of buildings with a central plant, where steam is generated by fossil fuels - oil, gas, or coal - depends on the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The hydrocarbon fuels come from the Earth, they need Air in order to be able to oxidize as Fire, and so, produce steam from Water. The by-products of consuming Earth and Air by Fire affect Water, Air, and Earth. Mining of the Earth for fuels affects Air, Earth, Water, and requires Fire (electricity, gas, oil). Softening makeup Water for our Heating Plant requires Fire (electricity or heat), which requires Earth and Air, returns some substances, calcium, manganese, iron etc. to the Earth or maybe Water and, well, you start to get the picture.
Understanding of the principles that guide the best use of the elements of creation demands that we think about Earth, Air, Fire, and Water only in the context of the fifth, Spirit. Almost any resource development or consumption issue can be looked at in this way. Preserving the Earth and its resources for the future, cleansing our Air to help the health of our natural world, helping to conserve, restore, and clean our Water resources, and conserving and renewing our energy sources, Fire, will assure the future viability of creation. Preservation and cultivation of Spirit, and examining our use of the other elements in that context, will assure that we bring balance to the ecology of our campus, or any other institution or situation.
Colleges have a sort of unique responsibility to perpetuate themselves. Indeed, mission statements often address this aspect of their life. In addition, most purport to exist in order to serve, as St. Olaf does, by producing graduates prepared to serve a wider creation. We say that we focus on what is ultimately worthwhile and aspire to educate the whole person - mind, body, and spirit.
Preparing students to serve the world while using creation poorly as a college organism is irresponsible and selfish. We have been provided with the natural world and free will. It is ours to use wisely or mess up and we will be the beneficiaries or victims of the ways we choose to exercise our will on creation.
The elements of campus ecology, a small start:
Fire
Gas, Oil, Electricity, indoor and outdoor light, daylight, light pollution, vehicle fuels and lubes, solvents of all kinds, art/science/maintenance, embedded energy in acquired materials, fuels in art processes
Water
Domestic, sanitary sewer, storm water runoff and retention, AC, science, wetlands, mowing and land management practice, food - prep, cooking, dish washing, waste stream, implications of water in materials acquisition and production, cooling, steam production, vacuum by aspiration
Earth
Grounds maintenance, hardscape, land management, wetland, woodland, upland restoration and management, wildlife, bio-mass, outdoor recreation, athletics, natural resource management, material sources, ag and lawn chemicals, fertilization, mowing reduction, fuel acquisition and conservation
Air
Wind-powered electrical generation, particulate emission, CO2 sequestration, O2 production through bio-mass, CO, CO2, NO, SO, etc from carbon based fuels, science and art emissions, woodshop emissions, vehicle emissions, implications of materials acquisition and production on the air, particulates in ceramics, sculpture studios, art welding shops, foundry, and fume hoods. Dust emissions from clothes dryers.
Spirit
College of the Church, stewardship of the natural world, stewardship of the built environment, stewardship of the humans - fair work environments, social impacts of materials and processes, equality across the workplace - faculty, support and professional staff, administration, by gender, gender preference, age, race.
Physics tells us we cannot create or destroy energy, but that does not absolve us of the ramifications of people changing its form. As we think about the ecology of our campus, and its biosphere, we need to consider:
"Although I die, I shall continue
to live in everything that is.
The buffalo eats the grass.
And I eat him; and when I die,
the earth eats me and sprouts more grass.
Therefore, nothing is ever lost
and each thing is everything forever."
Native American author, unknown
Earth Day on the way
Sustainability – April 12, 2007
I think that the upper mid-west family farm, between the late 1800s up to maybe WWII, may have been “our” most sustainable living model. In this case, “our” is us – the immigrant population. This model couldn’t support a huge population, but if we’d stuck with it, there probably wouldn’t be so many of us either!
Many earlier Americans lived more sustainably, although that thinking can tend to be too romantic. The mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi is probably not so mysterious; it’s likely that their lifestyle overcame the local biosphere’s ability to support it when stressed by drought and so on.
In spite of that, the Navajo have lived on much the same land for centuries, I think because they have a really “outside the (or at least, our) box” idea about what’s needed. If you’ve ever driven through the Four Corners, and so across much of the huge Navajo Reservation, you’ve seen really little, maybe sort of dilapidated, homes off in the distance, where – from inside our box – it doesn’t seem reasonable to live. Traditional Navajo work to live with the concept of “Beauty”. I can’t possibly truly understand this or explain it, not having grownup with it, but I think that being in a state of Beauty means that one is in harmony with their setting, themselves, and their neighbors. When this state of harmony exists, a person just doesn’t need a lot of material to be well.
There’s a Minnesota writer I like named Kent Nerburn who has done a lot of work with folks on the Red Lake reservation over time (he lives in Bemidji). I found an interview with him some time back and something he said hit me hard.
Interviewer: “Do you think Native Americans have something important to teach us? If so, can you somehow express what it is?”
Kent Nerburn: “Own less stuff. Listen to the land. Care for family. Be as responsible to your past as to the future. Value honor as highly as freedom, and know that there are some bondages that are good. Recognize that the spiritual lives in the funkiest corners of your daily life as well as in the most elevated places of your search for God. Stop thinking that you're hot shit.”
He wrote my favorite non-fiction book , Neither Wolf Nor dog, On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder. There’s not a good way to explain this book; if you know it, you also know what I mean. Even though the people are Lakota and not Navajo, as you read this you’ll start to understand both the idea of Beauty and where the quote comes from. As the adventure unfolded, I found myself first wondering what on earth this well meaning but naïve new American was thinking attempting to do the project in place, and at the end wondering why he would go back where he’d been.
I recommend Neither Wolf Nor Dog to every person concerned about the ways we live in the world – it will get you thinking about what you believe you need versus what is truly needed to live in the beautiful place.
"True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed."
- Tom Robbins
I think that the upper mid-west family farm, between the late 1800s up to maybe WWII, may have been “our” most sustainable living model. In this case, “our” is us – the immigrant population. This model couldn’t support a huge population, but if we’d stuck with it, there probably wouldn’t be so many of us either!
Many earlier Americans lived more sustainably, although that thinking can tend to be too romantic. The mysterious disappearance of the Anasazi is probably not so mysterious; it’s likely that their lifestyle overcame the local biosphere’s ability to support it when stressed by drought and so on.
In spite of that, the Navajo have lived on much the same land for centuries, I think because they have a really “outside the (or at least, our) box” idea about what’s needed. If you’ve ever driven through the Four Corners, and so across much of the huge Navajo Reservation, you’ve seen really little, maybe sort of dilapidated, homes off in the distance, where – from inside our box – it doesn’t seem reasonable to live. Traditional Navajo work to live with the concept of “Beauty”. I can’t possibly truly understand this or explain it, not having grownup with it, but I think that being in a state of Beauty means that one is in harmony with their setting, themselves, and their neighbors. When this state of harmony exists, a person just doesn’t need a lot of material to be well.
There’s a Minnesota writer I like named Kent Nerburn who has done a lot of work with folks on the Red Lake reservation over time (he lives in Bemidji). I found an interview with him some time back and something he said hit me hard.
Interviewer: “Do you think Native Americans have something important to teach us? If so, can you somehow express what it is?”
Kent Nerburn: “Own less stuff. Listen to the land. Care for family. Be as responsible to your past as to the future. Value honor as highly as freedom, and know that there are some bondages that are good. Recognize that the spiritual lives in the funkiest corners of your daily life as well as in the most elevated places of your search for God. Stop thinking that you're hot shit.”
He wrote my favorite non-fiction book , Neither Wolf Nor dog, On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder. There’s not a good way to explain this book; if you know it, you also know what I mean. Even though the people are Lakota and not Navajo, as you read this you’ll start to understand both the idea of Beauty and where the quote comes from. As the adventure unfolded, I found myself first wondering what on earth this well meaning but naïve new American was thinking attempting to do the project in place, and at the end wondering why he would go back where he’d been.
I recommend Neither Wolf Nor Dog to every person concerned about the ways we live in the world – it will get you thinking about what you believe you need versus what is truly needed to live in the beautiful place.
"True stability results when presumed order and presumed disorder are balanced. A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed."
- Tom Robbins
Sunday, April 1, 2007
That's Mr. Dylan to you...
Columbia Records has a thing going on bobdylan.com - submit your story about something Dylan. 1,200 characters. Sounded easy when I first read it as 1,200 WORDS. I went along for quite a while, I got to 1,199 words, cut and pasted it into the web form. What's this? Where is the rest of the text? It's cut off like crazy. I messed around for a while then went back to see the fine print again - well, it's not fine, I just saw what I expected to see. 1,200 characters this time. OK, I can make this work. Time passed, slash/burn, it still made sense, sort of. Cut, paste, it's cut off again, back to the directions, which I read for the first time. Dang it, spaces count?
Rip, tear, plunder, now you had to be there!
Unbelievably - 1,200 characters and spaces - I couldn't have done this if I wasn't jet lagged into tomorrow!
#
Soft late summer breeze, full moon, my four kids, a lawn just short of making dew. It’s THAT night - the band is perfect, the voice is right there, not in the mix as much as in front of it, talking to YOU. The greatest “Lay, Lady, Lay” ever.
My daughter refuses to leave; she needs a word with Mr. Dylan. “Emma, I’m sure Bob’s at the hotel wondering “What the heck was the deal with that moon?” “He’s still here and we need to find him, now!” “OK, you can’t do it alone, I’m your man.”
Soon we’re stumbling through backyards trying to get to the buses. Given the proximity to the scene of the crime most of the backyards are in the midst of afterglow parties. Several people greet us, a few laugh, most look at us with, “What?” “What are you looking at? She’s my daughter.” “You guys leave him alone, he’s my dad and he’s helping me find Bob!” We excuse ourselves and struggle through the hedge to the next back yard to repeat the scene; behind us we hear, “That poor guy, he’ll never get her home!”
No Dylan. She gets tired, the moon is still out, the breeze is still perfect, it is still just a nice stroll - and it is still in my head, “Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead."
Rip, tear, plunder, now you had to be there!
Unbelievably - 1,200 characters and spaces - I couldn't have done this if I wasn't jet lagged into tomorrow!
#
Soft late summer breeze, full moon, my four kids, a lawn just short of making dew. It’s THAT night - the band is perfect, the voice is right there, not in the mix as much as in front of it, talking to YOU. The greatest “Lay, Lady, Lay” ever.
My daughter refuses to leave; she needs a word with Mr. Dylan. “Emma, I’m sure Bob’s at the hotel wondering “What the heck was the deal with that moon?” “He’s still here and we need to find him, now!” “OK, you can’t do it alone, I’m your man.”
Soon we’re stumbling through backyards trying to get to the buses. Given the proximity to the scene of the crime most of the backyards are in the midst of afterglow parties. Several people greet us, a few laugh, most look at us with, “What?” “What are you looking at? She’s my daughter.” “You guys leave him alone, he’s my dad and he’s helping me find Bob!” We excuse ourselves and struggle through the hedge to the next back yard to repeat the scene; behind us we hear, “That poor guy, he’ll never get her home!”
No Dylan. She gets tired, the moon is still out, the breeze is still perfect, it is still just a nice stroll - and it is still in my head, “Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead."
Thursday, March 29, 2007
What? Me worry?
March 30, 2007 – Conversations in China
Much of every day I am with folks who have no, or very little English – yet, I have become able to participate in conversation somewhat by becoming familiar with nuance.
So, this is how I think it works.
If the conversation is sort of boisterous and the pace quickens, then falls off and sounds sort of off-handed, then gets wildly faster and louder and so on – it’s business.
If the conversation sounds sort of inquisitive and maybe serious, with lots of questions – someone is probably ordering dinner.
If the group is silent and staring at the floor – they’d be talking about politics if they were talking at all.
If one person is smiling broadly and talking excitedly, then the whole group erupts into uproarious laughter and excited outbursts of speech, while staring at you – you’ve done something dumb and they are making a joke about you. You must relax and enjoy it, acknowledging their fun with a sort of “What? Me Worry?” Alfred E. Neuman-esque smile.
Much of every day I am with folks who have no, or very little English – yet, I have become able to participate in conversation somewhat by becoming familiar with nuance.
So, this is how I think it works.
If the conversation is sort of boisterous and the pace quickens, then falls off and sounds sort of off-handed, then gets wildly faster and louder and so on – it’s business.
If the conversation sounds sort of inquisitive and maybe serious, with lots of questions – someone is probably ordering dinner.
If the group is silent and staring at the floor – they’d be talking about politics if they were talking at all.
If one person is smiling broadly and talking excitedly, then the whole group erupts into uproarious laughter and excited outbursts of speech, while staring at you – you’ve done something dumb and they are making a joke about you. You must relax and enjoy it, acknowledging their fun with a sort of “What? Me Worry?” Alfred E. Neuman-esque smile.
The Great Wall!
March 29, 2007, Beijing, later
About 10:00 AM we got picked up for a ride to the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling, maybe the most familiar Great Wall stop for foreigners. It had been raining and was cool so the crowds weren’t too great when we arrived. Dr. Ma and I set off up the East Mountain – the far side from the more tourist oriented area, and we were soon huffing and puffing! It’s hard to describe the climb in meaningful terms. It is very steep, and while there are steps most of the way, they vary wildly and suddenly. There can be a series of four inch steps, then suddenly maybe twenty inches for a while, then four, then a series of twelve inch steps, then something else. The big steps are a big effort! The variation is pretty hard on the knees on the way down because no one step is exactly what you expect.
We got to the top of the first big climb and I think I would have been fine with going to get a drink and heading home. I believe that neither of us wanted to be the one to suggest such a thing, so we went along across the ridge tops, up and down, to the very highest point on the east side, then back down to the lowest level. Again, we were both done in, but both talking bravely about the West Mountain, so off we went. Soon, little kids were passing us and laughing. Old ladies and men were making jokes about us. Turtles were shaking their heads.
Actually, we were fine, and no one really passed us during the entire big circle. We did get where we had to sit and rest fairly often, and it was a good thing we brought drinks along! The whole trip took us about two and a half hours, but that included stopping so groups of students could have pictures taken with me and so on. The whole thing is a social experience, like almost everything here.
I only saw a couple of people who I thought might be Americans. There were hardly any Caucasian people at all and most were Russians. Everyone was having a nice time out in the fresh air – and all were getting more exercise than they planned on!
The scope of the work that produced this is sort of unimaginable. All the materials had to come from somewhere, and not a lot of it was on these mountain sides. I’m not sure how often enemies ever breached this wall, but they had to bad, bad, people to get that done. The thing would be easily defended because it is all on wild terrain, and even if someone did get up on top, a push with one finger would send them careening down the steps to a bad end.
We had lunch in what Dr. Ma and his friend described as a “farmer restaurant” in a little settlement just on the Beijing side of the Wall, and it was great. Rustic at best, posters of the Chairman everywhere, and only one foreigner on site. Beijing area cuisine has lot of chiles in many dishes, and I love it all. What we know as the “Imperial” dishes, imperial chicken, imperial shrimp, fall into this category. A meat or seafood, some vegetables, usually scallions, peanuts, and hot little red chiles.
Now - a nap!
About 10:00 AM we got picked up for a ride to the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling, maybe the most familiar Great Wall stop for foreigners. It had been raining and was cool so the crowds weren’t too great when we arrived. Dr. Ma and I set off up the East Mountain – the far side from the more tourist oriented area, and we were soon huffing and puffing! It’s hard to describe the climb in meaningful terms. It is very steep, and while there are steps most of the way, they vary wildly and suddenly. There can be a series of four inch steps, then suddenly maybe twenty inches for a while, then four, then a series of twelve inch steps, then something else. The big steps are a big effort! The variation is pretty hard on the knees on the way down because no one step is exactly what you expect.
We got to the top of the first big climb and I think I would have been fine with going to get a drink and heading home. I believe that neither of us wanted to be the one to suggest such a thing, so we went along across the ridge tops, up and down, to the very highest point on the east side, then back down to the lowest level. Again, we were both done in, but both talking bravely about the West Mountain, so off we went. Soon, little kids were passing us and laughing. Old ladies and men were making jokes about us. Turtles were shaking their heads.
Actually, we were fine, and no one really passed us during the entire big circle. We did get where we had to sit and rest fairly often, and it was a good thing we brought drinks along! The whole trip took us about two and a half hours, but that included stopping so groups of students could have pictures taken with me and so on. The whole thing is a social experience, like almost everything here.
I only saw a couple of people who I thought might be Americans. There were hardly any Caucasian people at all and most were Russians. Everyone was having a nice time out in the fresh air – and all were getting more exercise than they planned on!
The scope of the work that produced this is sort of unimaginable. All the materials had to come from somewhere, and not a lot of it was on these mountain sides. I’m not sure how often enemies ever breached this wall, but they had to bad, bad, people to get that done. The thing would be easily defended because it is all on wild terrain, and even if someone did get up on top, a push with one finger would send them careening down the steps to a bad end.
We had lunch in what Dr. Ma and his friend described as a “farmer restaurant” in a little settlement just on the Beijing side of the Wall, and it was great. Rustic at best, posters of the Chairman everywhere, and only one foreigner on site. Beijing area cuisine has lot of chiles in many dishes, and I love it all. What we know as the “Imperial” dishes, imperial chicken, imperial shrimp, fall into this category. A meat or seafood, some vegetables, usually scallions, peanuts, and hot little red chiles.
Now - a nap!
March 29, Morning at Tsinghua
Thursday, March 29, 2007
This morning we walked the campus of Tsinghua University for an hour or so, and Tsinghua has also done a great job of preserving and enhancing green, calm, space in the midst of a major urban campus. There is a wild mix of very old, and very new, and everything in between.
Last evening we walked a bit before dinner and saw two elderly lab-coated scientists filling a vessel with a liquid gas – I guess either oxygen or nitrogen, by pouring it from one container to another, out of the back seat of and older car – no gloves, a little insulation on the vessels, and lots of fog! Not something we see on our campuses everyday!
This morning outside our campus hotel I saw an older fellow pedal up to a lab building next door on a tricycle with a box on the back, and drag out a device that looked sort of like the transmogrifier that Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) used to use. A young woman technologist of some sort came out to get the thing so she could change Hobbes into something or other exotic, and the guy pedaled off.
I think these examples are a sort of theme for the whole experience. I’ve visited three really major universities where they are studying everything you can imagine. The students are serious; literally nothing is going on even in the early evenings because they are studying. Yet, part of the reason the places work is because people are willing to do what needs to be done, with whatever they have. In addition, they have vast labor resources to do the support work of the campuses.
At Zhejiang, there are 47,000 students and about 5,000 staff in the logistics division, just about 9.4 students per staff FTE. At St. Olaf College, if we added food service, facilities, and the bookstore to sort of equate to their logistics group, the number would be about 17.65 students per staff FTE.
Everywhere we go you can see this – the streets are swept clean constantly by poor people who need the work, whatever it is. The major cities depend on these folks, who are largely migrant workers from the countryside. However, it is not such a good deal for them for a variety of reasons. There is still a system of domicile registration in place - basically, people are accounted for where they are from, and they do not accrue any state benefits working somewhere else in these jobs. Cities and provinces have been trying to resolve this issue, but when the restrictions are lifted people flood to the cities too quickly and overcome the social services structure, so the controls go back.
All that said, China is seriously on the move. When these people decide to something you can count on it getting done! Almost nothing has been like anything I expected, and we in the U. S. have been seriously sheltered from what this country is all about.
This morning we walked the campus of Tsinghua University for an hour or so, and Tsinghua has also done a great job of preserving and enhancing green, calm, space in the midst of a major urban campus. There is a wild mix of very old, and very new, and everything in between.
Last evening we walked a bit before dinner and saw two elderly lab-coated scientists filling a vessel with a liquid gas – I guess either oxygen or nitrogen, by pouring it from one container to another, out of the back seat of and older car – no gloves, a little insulation on the vessels, and lots of fog! Not something we see on our campuses everyday!
This morning outside our campus hotel I saw an older fellow pedal up to a lab building next door on a tricycle with a box on the back, and drag out a device that looked sort of like the transmogrifier that Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) used to use. A young woman technologist of some sort came out to get the thing so she could change Hobbes into something or other exotic, and the guy pedaled off.
I think these examples are a sort of theme for the whole experience. I’ve visited three really major universities where they are studying everything you can imagine. The students are serious; literally nothing is going on even in the early evenings because they are studying. Yet, part of the reason the places work is because people are willing to do what needs to be done, with whatever they have. In addition, they have vast labor resources to do the support work of the campuses.
At Zhejiang, there are 47,000 students and about 5,000 staff in the logistics division, just about 9.4 students per staff FTE. At St. Olaf College, if we added food service, facilities, and the bookstore to sort of equate to their logistics group, the number would be about 17.65 students per staff FTE.
Everywhere we go you can see this – the streets are swept clean constantly by poor people who need the work, whatever it is. The major cities depend on these folks, who are largely migrant workers from the countryside. However, it is not such a good deal for them for a variety of reasons. There is still a system of domicile registration in place - basically, people are accounted for where they are from, and they do not accrue any state benefits working somewhere else in these jobs. Cities and provinces have been trying to resolve this issue, but when the restrictions are lifted people flood to the cities too quickly and overcome the social services structure, so the controls go back.
All that said, China is seriously on the move. When these people decide to something you can count on it getting done! Almost nothing has been like anything I expected, and we in the U. S. have been seriously sheltered from what this country is all about.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
If it's Wednesday - it must be Beijing!
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Tuesday afternoon 3-27 Dr. Ma and I returned from a quick trip to Shanghai where we visited Fudan University. The Hangzhou – Shanghai train service is very good. There are about forty trains per day between the two cities because Shanghai is one of the leading business cities in the world, and Hangzhou is one of the nicest, as the Chinese say – leisure cities anywhere. Both trains were new, super clean, smooth, and quiet. We traveled through mixed country side with agriculture, housing, and some manufacturing side by side.
Tuesday evening Dr. Ma and his senior staff hosted a going away dinner for me at the university restaurant - we had a great time and another great dinner. This group obviously enjoys each other and I don’t believe that can happen unless they work well with each other and support each other’s work. Dr. Ma’s leadership is obviously an important facet of all this. While we had a good time, it was sad to say goodbye to these fine people. I hope to be back with them sometime, and I hope they can visit us.
This morning we packed up to get ready for the jump to Beijing. Dr. and Mrs. Ma came a bit early so that she and I could say goodbye, and they brought very nice gifts. Just before leaving, Miss Chen stopped by with a CD of pictures from the first several days. I will update each of these posts with pictures when I get home. After a brief scare on the highway (when I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my passport) we were on our way. The passport was found at the bottom of my big bag, but I was relieved when Dr. Ma offered me job if I couldn’t return home!
The air was much better in Beijing than my first day in China, with a pleasant breeze most of the afternoon. On the way to Tsinghua University we went right past the Beijing 2008 Olympic Stadium and other Olympic venues, and the stadium is a fantastic steel structure. There is a lot of construction and other preparation underway and many, many, tower cranes in every direction.
Tsinghua University is in the midst of the city, but occupies about four square kilometers. It has more low buildings than the other campuses I visited, and it also has more generous spacing. Tsinghua has also placed a lot of emphasis on the land and nature in the midst of a giant urban area, and the campus therefore feels more relaxed and settled than the surrounding areas.
Tuesday afternoon 3-27 Dr. Ma and I returned from a quick trip to Shanghai where we visited Fudan University. The Hangzhou – Shanghai train service is very good. There are about forty trains per day between the two cities because Shanghai is one of the leading business cities in the world, and Hangzhou is one of the nicest, as the Chinese say – leisure cities anywhere. Both trains were new, super clean, smooth, and quiet. We traveled through mixed country side with agriculture, housing, and some manufacturing side by side.
Tuesday evening Dr. Ma and his senior staff hosted a going away dinner for me at the university restaurant - we had a great time and another great dinner. This group obviously enjoys each other and I don’t believe that can happen unless they work well with each other and support each other’s work. Dr. Ma’s leadership is obviously an important facet of all this. While we had a good time, it was sad to say goodbye to these fine people. I hope to be back with them sometime, and I hope they can visit us.
This morning we packed up to get ready for the jump to Beijing. Dr. and Mrs. Ma came a bit early so that she and I could say goodbye, and they brought very nice gifts. Just before leaving, Miss Chen stopped by with a CD of pictures from the first several days. I will update each of these posts with pictures when I get home. After a brief scare on the highway (when I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen my passport) we were on our way. The passport was found at the bottom of my big bag, but I was relieved when Dr. Ma offered me job if I couldn’t return home!
The air was much better in Beijing than my first day in China, with a pleasant breeze most of the afternoon. On the way to Tsinghua University we went right past the Beijing 2008 Olympic Stadium and other Olympic venues, and the stadium is a fantastic steel structure. There is a lot of construction and other preparation underway and many, many, tower cranes in every direction.
Tsinghua University is in the midst of the city, but occupies about four square kilometers. It has more low buildings than the other campuses I visited, and it also has more generous spacing. Tsinghua has also placed a lot of emphasis on the land and nature in the midst of a giant urban area, and the campus therefore feels more relaxed and settled than the surrounding areas.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Shanghai and Fudan University
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
On Monday, Dr. Ma and I set off to Shanghai by train to visit his friends at Fudan University. Fudan is about 20,000 students and has had its primary focus on the sciences. It is in the midst of developing a new campus that will be more oriented to language instruction and we visited it Monday afternoon.
This new campus was desired by many areas in and around Shanghai because the Chinese have recognized that higher education is a great neighbor, and that campuses are great places to grow new areas around. Only a few buildings and the campus entry are in place at this time, but the planners have taken great care to develop the land as well as the buildings so that the campus will come together as a well balanced whole.
In fact, that is a big theme everywhere in Shanghai, which has grown almost exponentially over the past several decades, and now stands at about 23,000,000. Green design is a consistent theme, and the city has committed to developing as much green space as possible - dedicating space in newly developing areas and reclaiming land for parks and green space in established areas. Tuesday we visited the relatively new Central Park, a huge commitment of unbelievably valuable land to the health and wellness of Shanghai citizens.
Monday in the late afternoon we visited the Oriental Pearl Tower on the Bund of the Huang Pu River. The tower is very striking and is a big tourist attraction. At this time it is the third tallest structure in Asia. Dr. Ma’s counterpart at Fudan, Mr. Jiang arranged for a special tour of the tower through a friend. Amazingly, we were greeted and specially escorted on to the grounds, then walked a broad red carpet and were serenaded by a uniformed brass band – and yes, it was for me. Apparently I am bigger deal than we’ve ever known! I was all dressed up in a gray St. Olaf polo with my running shoes for touring, and thousands of other visitors were trying to figure out who that guy was and why the big welcome.
That evening Mr. Xie Guangen, General Manager of the Shanghai Fudan Logistic Service Development Group hosted a dinner for us with several of his staff members at the Shanghai Classical Hotel. Mr. Xie’s group is again, roughly our facilities management team, plus food and a few others. He is the Chair of the nation-wide logistic professional’s organization and we agreed to talk soon about developing a more ongoing relationship between our schools’ operational groups. These dinners seem like a sort of contest among the hosts to see if they can order something I won’t eat, none have been successful so far but there are days to go!
On Monday, Dr. Ma and I set off to Shanghai by train to visit his friends at Fudan University. Fudan is about 20,000 students and has had its primary focus on the sciences. It is in the midst of developing a new campus that will be more oriented to language instruction and we visited it Monday afternoon.
This new campus was desired by many areas in and around Shanghai because the Chinese have recognized that higher education is a great neighbor, and that campuses are great places to grow new areas around. Only a few buildings and the campus entry are in place at this time, but the planners have taken great care to develop the land as well as the buildings so that the campus will come together as a well balanced whole.
In fact, that is a big theme everywhere in Shanghai, which has grown almost exponentially over the past several decades, and now stands at about 23,000,000. Green design is a consistent theme, and the city has committed to developing as much green space as possible - dedicating space in newly developing areas and reclaiming land for parks and green space in established areas. Tuesday we visited the relatively new Central Park, a huge commitment of unbelievably valuable land to the health and wellness of Shanghai citizens.
Monday in the late afternoon we visited the Oriental Pearl Tower on the Bund of the Huang Pu River. The tower is very striking and is a big tourist attraction. At this time it is the third tallest structure in Asia. Dr. Ma’s counterpart at Fudan, Mr. Jiang arranged for a special tour of the tower through a friend. Amazingly, we were greeted and specially escorted on to the grounds, then walked a broad red carpet and were serenaded by a uniformed brass band – and yes, it was for me. Apparently I am bigger deal than we’ve ever known! I was all dressed up in a gray St. Olaf polo with my running shoes for touring, and thousands of other visitors were trying to figure out who that guy was and why the big welcome.
That evening Mr. Xie Guangen, General Manager of the Shanghai Fudan Logistic Service Development Group hosted a dinner for us with several of his staff members at the Shanghai Classical Hotel. Mr. Xie’s group is again, roughly our facilities management team, plus food and a few others. He is the Chair of the nation-wide logistic professional’s organization and we agreed to talk soon about developing a more ongoing relationship between our schools’ operational groups. These dinners seem like a sort of contest among the hosts to see if they can order something I won’t eat, none have been successful so far but there are days to go!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
First day (out of sequence!)
My first big day at Zhejiang University was great. I met with the senior staff of Dr. Ma’s Real Estate Division in their conference room to get started. Everyone I’ve met is wonderful and I felt completely welcomed immediately. A few folks are trying out their English with me. For many people I meet, I am their first foreign person so I must stay on my best behavior at all times!
Real Estate does work with land acquisition and dispersal and so on, along with faculty and staff housing. Housing privileges come with seniority, and the people get an opportunity to buy condo-like units that are at their campus. This is a big operation with over 5,000,000 square feet of buildings and 3,000 units.
At our meeting I presented St. Olaf via Power Point, an effective but sort of unsatisfying way to do it. People are always amazed at the wide open nature of the developed campus, and love the things that we have done with the green belt. We talked quite lot about our facilities group, the work we do, and how we are organized, but we spent far more time on the idea of the residential liberal arts campus in the U.S., which is quite different than ZJU’s setting.
Dr. Ma has asked Miss Chen Bing, a member of the Real Estate division staff, and a recent graduate with a master’s degree in comparative education, to help me, and together they gave me a tour of the main campus where Real Estate’s offices, and most of the university-wide administration, are located. It is very compact, but they’ve paid attention to open space to the greatest extent possible. There is a nice central quad, with detailed landscaping, beautiful trees, and footpaths throughout. They’ve also developed two more loosely organized park settings, even giving up a serious building site to do one – and that is a huge commitment to place for such a land-locked campus.
I am staying at the Ling Feng Hotel, which is owned by the university and is just across from the main formal gate entry. I love college and university gates and this campus has three. They have great food, including a breakfast buffet of all regional dishes that is a lot of fun.
I completely failed to get even basic Chinese phrases, but I am given huge credit in the cultural arena for being proficient with chop sticks and trying every thing they bring out. People have come to watch me eat!
Real Estate does work with land acquisition and dispersal and so on, along with faculty and staff housing. Housing privileges come with seniority, and the people get an opportunity to buy condo-like units that are at their campus. This is a big operation with over 5,000,000 square feet of buildings and 3,000 units.
At our meeting I presented St. Olaf via Power Point, an effective but sort of unsatisfying way to do it. People are always amazed at the wide open nature of the developed campus, and love the things that we have done with the green belt. We talked quite lot about our facilities group, the work we do, and how we are organized, but we spent far more time on the idea of the residential liberal arts campus in the U.S., which is quite different than ZJU’s setting.
Dr. Ma has asked Miss Chen Bing, a member of the Real Estate division staff, and a recent graduate with a master’s degree in comparative education, to help me, and together they gave me a tour of the main campus where Real Estate’s offices, and most of the university-wide administration, are located. It is very compact, but they’ve paid attention to open space to the greatest extent possible. There is a nice central quad, with detailed landscaping, beautiful trees, and footpaths throughout. They’ve also developed two more loosely organized park settings, even giving up a serious building site to do one – and that is a huge commitment to place for such a land-locked campus.
I am staying at the Ling Feng Hotel, which is owned by the university and is just across from the main formal gate entry. I love college and university gates and this campus has three. They have great food, including a breakfast buffet of all regional dishes that is a lot of fun.
I completely failed to get even basic Chinese phrases, but I am given huge credit in the cultural arena for being proficient with chop sticks and trying every thing they bring out. People have come to watch me eat!
More about Zhejiang University
Where to start? Zhejiang University has 47,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff. Nearly all of the students, and over 3,000 faculty and staff, live in university housing. The main campus, the original one started in 1894, is now the graduate school and has 10,000 students who live and take classes there. Many faculty and staff persons also live on this campus. There are 5,500,000 square feet of buildings. All this happens on less than 100 acres – about 2/3s of our developed campus. It is hard to imagine how it all works, but it feels nice being out on the grounds during the day.
This afternoon we were at the new campus which is quite stunning. The entire place was built during the last six years, and the project started with construction of all new housing for the people who had been living on the land that became the new campus. The university is starting some consolidation after operating on six campuses across the city for many years by closing a small one and selling the property - five acres for $360,000,000.
I spent the morning with the lead team from the Zhejiang University Logistics Group – basically our facilities group, plus food service, stores, and restaurants, and probably some other things I did not pick up on. They run the physical operations of five campuses and have over 5,000 staff members.
Just as in Dr. Ma’s time at St. Olaf when I could not figure out how I could be considered a mentor to him, it was sort of bizarre that these folks would be interested in anything I might have to say. We quickly found that in the end we do exactly the same work with a different scope.
They were very interested in our accounting approach, and we spent a great deal of time talking about our phone system, the wind turbine, and our other generation. The logistics group is a separate corporation, and the lead person has university vice-president status, along with being the CEO of the corporation.
There’s an idea in China that Harvard and Stanford should be the model, so the presidents send their administrators over there to learn and bring back. Somehow Dr. Ma found his way to St. Olaf, and he’s reported on all aspects of the place to his president. That’s caused some pressures on people like these because they are hearing about us on one hand and Harvard and Stanford on the other.
Harvard and Stanford are great, but also sort of unique, with resources most of us cannot imagine. The people doing the work at the Chinese public universities come away from their visits to the US frustrated because they can’t imagine their institutions ever having those resources. They are encouraged to hear that there are other models.
At each session we have talked about each other’s families as much as the work, and Ethan Sandberg is now famous in China! This is an important aspect here and once we got into all that the discussions changed completely, we were now people who either were, or hoped to be, grandparents.
At the end of our session today I was invited back to present at a nation wide facilities and logistics conference. It’s not set on a calendar yet, but I hope it will be a while because these flights are tough!
We had lunch today in a student food building that can seat 10,000 at one setting, and it was really good. We have choice, but they have CHOICE. Food from every region of China, Japan, Tibet, and the west. Across the university, the food service can seat 20,000 students at one time, and the production facilities are amazing. At the new campus they have a rice production facility with nearly $1,000,000 of equipment that can produce all the rice for 10,000 people per meal. Serious rice!
Tomorrow is more relaxed with tours at Hangzhou’s famous West Lake district.
This afternoon we were at the new campus which is quite stunning. The entire place was built during the last six years, and the project started with construction of all new housing for the people who had been living on the land that became the new campus. The university is starting some consolidation after operating on six campuses across the city for many years by closing a small one and selling the property - five acres for $360,000,000.
I spent the morning with the lead team from the Zhejiang University Logistics Group – basically our facilities group, plus food service, stores, and restaurants, and probably some other things I did not pick up on. They run the physical operations of five campuses and have over 5,000 staff members.
Just as in Dr. Ma’s time at St. Olaf when I could not figure out how I could be considered a mentor to him, it was sort of bizarre that these folks would be interested in anything I might have to say. We quickly found that in the end we do exactly the same work with a different scope.
They were very interested in our accounting approach, and we spent a great deal of time talking about our phone system, the wind turbine, and our other generation. The logistics group is a separate corporation, and the lead person has university vice-president status, along with being the CEO of the corporation.
There’s an idea in China that Harvard and Stanford should be the model, so the presidents send their administrators over there to learn and bring back. Somehow Dr. Ma found his way to St. Olaf, and he’s reported on all aspects of the place to his president. That’s caused some pressures on people like these because they are hearing about us on one hand and Harvard and Stanford on the other.
Harvard and Stanford are great, but also sort of unique, with resources most of us cannot imagine. The people doing the work at the Chinese public universities come away from their visits to the US frustrated because they can’t imagine their institutions ever having those resources. They are encouraged to hear that there are other models.
At each session we have talked about each other’s families as much as the work, and Ethan Sandberg is now famous in China! This is an important aspect here and once we got into all that the discussions changed completely, we were now people who either were, or hoped to be, grandparents.
At the end of our session today I was invited back to present at a nation wide facilities and logistics conference. It’s not set on a calendar yet, but I hope it will be a while because these flights are tough!
We had lunch today in a student food building that can seat 10,000 at one setting, and it was really good. We have choice, but they have CHOICE. Food from every region of China, Japan, Tibet, and the west. Across the university, the food service can seat 20,000 students at one time, and the production facilities are amazing. At the new campus they have a rice production facility with nearly $1,000,000 of equipment that can produce all the rice for 10,000 people per meal. Serious rice!
Tomorrow is more relaxed with tours at Hangzhou’s famous West Lake district.
Getting started in China
March 21, 2007
Today, I am only reporting that I survived the flights - MSP to Chicago, Chicago to Beijing, pretty much straight over the top, then Beijing to Hangzhou. I lost track of the actual travel and awake time somehow, and I’m more jet lagged than I’ve ever been, but I think it was something like 29 hours. All I know for sure is – it’s tomorrow here! Back in the day we’d say someone was so far out they were half way into next week, and now I know what it feels like.
It’s sort of disorienting as a pure baby boomer that grew up practicing hiding under grade school desks, to watch the airplane animation on the video screen as it flies over Siberia and into China. The only things we saw like that in the fifties and sixties involved other kinds of planes. In spite of the unsettled condition of our world, it can be more unsettled than this!
Many of you remember Dr. Ma Yin Liang’s visit to St. Olaf just two years ago this semester – he invited me to do this exchange over a year ago, but I got the actual flu last winter just before it was scheduled and we postponed it until now.
Ironically, I got a very bad cold right before this trip and I feel sort of like a garbage truck ran over me, then came back to see what that bump was, and got me again. Going onto the plane with all kinds of junk going on in my chest I thought about the “Alien” movies and wondered if anyone would be alive when we landed; a lot of people are going to feel crummy in a few days!
Zhejiang University is 47,000 students, and 15,000 faculty and staff. There are five campuses in and around Hangzhou, and the newest is about six years old. It is something like 15,000,000 square feet of space. That’s like building maybe the entire University of Iowa at once, and it’s also why our concrete, steel, copper, and other construction supplies are so expensive here today. Most of the Portland cement is made here, there, you know, the US - and shipload after shipload is heading to here, China, constantly. Dr. Ma says that construction is slowing on the new campus and that they’ll only start 100,000 square METERs this year. That’s half of St. Olaf and it’s a slow year!
The last two years Yin Liang has been working on a sale of one of the older campuses for redevelopment and he just closed that deal yesterday before I arrived – some 2,400,000 of Chinese Yuan. Exchange is about .14, but it’s still serious money!
Today - I’m writing at 10:00 PM your time, but it's 11:00 AM tomorrow here - I make a presentation to Dr. Ma’s staff, tour the campus a bit, then have a dinner with one or more of the university vice presidents.
Pictures will come later - there's something messing up the uploads and I need a little kid to help me figure it out!
Today, I am only reporting that I survived the flights - MSP to Chicago, Chicago to Beijing, pretty much straight over the top, then Beijing to Hangzhou. I lost track of the actual travel and awake time somehow, and I’m more jet lagged than I’ve ever been, but I think it was something like 29 hours. All I know for sure is – it’s tomorrow here! Back in the day we’d say someone was so far out they were half way into next week, and now I know what it feels like.
It’s sort of disorienting as a pure baby boomer that grew up practicing hiding under grade school desks, to watch the airplane animation on the video screen as it flies over Siberia and into China. The only things we saw like that in the fifties and sixties involved other kinds of planes. In spite of the unsettled condition of our world, it can be more unsettled than this!
Many of you remember Dr. Ma Yin Liang’s visit to St. Olaf just two years ago this semester – he invited me to do this exchange over a year ago, but I got the actual flu last winter just before it was scheduled and we postponed it until now.
Ironically, I got a very bad cold right before this trip and I feel sort of like a garbage truck ran over me, then came back to see what that bump was, and got me again. Going onto the plane with all kinds of junk going on in my chest I thought about the “Alien” movies and wondered if anyone would be alive when we landed; a lot of people are going to feel crummy in a few days!
Zhejiang University is 47,000 students, and 15,000 faculty and staff. There are five campuses in and around Hangzhou, and the newest is about six years old. It is something like 15,000,000 square feet of space. That’s like building maybe the entire University of Iowa at once, and it’s also why our concrete, steel, copper, and other construction supplies are so expensive here today. Most of the Portland cement is made here, there, you know, the US - and shipload after shipload is heading to here, China, constantly. Dr. Ma says that construction is slowing on the new campus and that they’ll only start 100,000 square METERs this year. That’s half of St. Olaf and it’s a slow year!
The last two years Yin Liang has been working on a sale of one of the older campuses for redevelopment and he just closed that deal yesterday before I arrived – some 2,400,000 of Chinese Yuan. Exchange is about .14, but it’s still serious money!
Today - I’m writing at 10:00 PM your time, but it's 11:00 AM tomorrow here - I make a presentation to Dr. Ma’s staff, tour the campus a bit, then have a dinner with one or more of the university vice presidents.
Pictures will come later - there's something messing up the uploads and I need a little kid to help me figure it out!
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