College Bound

Day 2

Hitting the Campus: School stuff

Today we got to see the academic institutions and college life in China’s top two most prestigious school.  Tsinghua University’s campus makes a Big Ten campus look like nothing.  35k students, 29 dorms and enough botanical garden landscape to create tranquility among the entire human race.  Founded in 1911 Tsinghua University has historical ties to the U.S.  Unfortunately due to the very painful history China has endured over the past century the college has changed functions and focus many times in its 100 year history.  Lunch here was traditional Chinese, however was located in the Muslim Cafeteria there were no pork dishes.  Ironically the food was really good, and overall the dishes that were served resembled the American perception of Chinese food.  I must say that the quality was quite good, disproving the concept that cafeteria food is sub-par…. At least in China.

Tsinghua Univesity is regarded as the MIT of China, if this is the case than Peking University resembles something like Berkley.  With sidewalk art and beautiful architecture as well as superb landscape all over the campus, Peking U. was a little less intimidating and overall was pretty relaxed.  There was a huge lake and a million awesome little hide-a-ways ideal to curl up with a good book or study poetry.   University motto: Actions speak louder than words….   Pretty awesome!  Interesting fact, all students had to live on campus, and there were housing barracks for professors and their families as well.

Overall the tours and the lectures today helped give me a much greater understanding of what China is all about academically, culturally, economically and globally. 

Our one professor Claudia gave the most poignant analogy about China and its “ancient cultural that has no history”.   Forgive me I’m going to butcher this but it really was quite eloquent the way Claudia told it:

“There was an old wise man that had a beautiful estate for many many years with a great big house filled with many nice things.  When the old wise man passed away he had willed his estate to a very young man.  Unfortunately, by the time the young man inherited the estate everything was dilapidated and the walls and floors were cracking and the beautiful things were broken.  Instead of renovating the old wise man’s house and preserving the originally architecture and landscape, the young man decided to tear the house down and build a new one that is very cold and has no character.  Although the old house is gone at least the walls are secure and the house functions.  This is what happened to China”

Claudia explained the Cultural Revolution from the 1950-s thru 1970’s as if a Western academic.  Incredibly, she has never even been to America.  I considered her lecture a high privilege, and would compare it to listening to world renowned scholar that teachers at an ivy league school here in the states.  Trust me she had the credentials!

A great day overall.