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!