Thoughts and Travels

5.05.2008 The New Zhejing Campus

Today I went to the new Zhejing campus again to visit with xinxin and some other students who came to Iowa State University last year.   I was picked up by one of xinxin’s friends in a BMW (her brothers).  He is an architect. 

It took about 45 minutes to get to the new Zhejing campus on the outside of Hangzhou.  It is a huge and beautiful campus.  It was completed (the whole thing) in 2001 I was told, and there are about 60,000 students living and studying here. There are many hi-rise buildings for students to live in on campus and a cafeteria that will feed 20,000 people at once (the biggest in Asia I’m told).   

I saw one of the dorm rooms for the male students and it was very similar to what we had at ISU.  When I came in, several of them were sitting at their laptops playing Diablo.  I spoke to Peter (a student who came to ISU last year) and he will be going to Florida state in June to study Internatioinal Business for his master’s degree.  I asked him how he would be able to pay for it (because he said that Florida doesn’t offer any help to international students in the business program) and he said that his family would pay. 

That’s a huge bill and I’m guessing that Peter is one of the “haves” even though he was in the lowest class dorm.  I was told a different story about how much it cost to go to school there.  Each student needs to complete 150 credits and each credit costs about 75 yuan.  So $1600 for all the classwork.  Then whatever else for the rooms (and that’s the whole degree). 

I ended up back at the hotel at about 5:00 and at 5:30 I got a call from Mr. Chen.  He said to come to his office, so I walked over to the office building.  He said that I wouldn’t be going to the Henan province with Dr. Liu, instead he was sending me to Jiangxi province and the capital Nanchang.  That is from the 5-7 and then I come back and spend one night in Hangzhou and then off to Tetzhou (where Mr. Chen is from) until the 10^th.  Then I get a rest for a couple days then off to South Korea.

Last night after I talked with Mr. Chen, we went out for supper and met a friend of his who is a prof of economics. She spoke little English and the rest of the night was spent with Mr. Chen throwing Chinese at me as fast as I could hear it (he learns by the brute force method I think).  I was pretty tired and irritable when I got back to the hotel, but still packed up everything and got rid of things I realize I didn’t need.  

It should be an interesting couple days.  I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to update this for a couple days now so TTYL.