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!