March 16, 2008

We have spent the weekend focused on travel and tourism, with Saturday morning in Chengdu and the afternoon flying to Xian, then Sunday in that ancient capital.

In addition to our partner universities, which we had visited on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,Giant Pandas: Family picnics are a popular activity for Chinese families at Xian's Giant Panda research station. Chengdu is home to the world famous Giant Panda research station. Located only a short drive out of the city, this institute has the largest number of captive giant pandas in the world, and it was great fun to go and see them. Not that they did very much. They apparently spend most of their lives eating, sleeping and every so often going for a wander to meet a panda of the opposite sex. The ones we saw were sticking to the first two activities, which was a good job as a picnic in the panda park seems like a major Saturday morning event for many Chengdu families!

Our flight to Xian only took an hour, and we came down out of the cloud to find ourselves flying over a flat and arid landscape, much like the southern prairies. Xian is the ancient capital of 13 dynasties, and is famous for its great walled city. Almost 14 kms in circumference and dotted with crenellated watch towers and decorated gates, the walls rise up out of the plain like pictures in an ancient book. Of course, you have to discount the serried ranks of apartments, skyscraper office towers, and other modern constructions which rather block the view, but with a little imagination it is easy to imagine oneself back in the city when it was the start (or finish, depending on one’s journey) of the famous Silk Road. This road, which was more a series of connected local pathways, has been travelled from Xian to the west since Zhang Qian, an emissary of the Emperor, made the first return journey from 138 to 126 BCE.

A few kilometers outside of Xian are the famous terracotta warriors, the funereal guardians of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, known as the First Emperor. I hadn’t realized that the Qin dynasty dates from 246 BCE, and that the burial pits were only uncovered in 1974. Buried for over 2000 years, the warriors werePagoda: The Great Wild Goose Pagoda, built in 652 AD and part of a Buddhist monastery in Xian. only discovered by accident. At a table in the museum shop was sitting an elderly man, who was introduced as the farmer who found the first warrior while digging a well. Unfortunately he didn’t find any water – nor did he allow his photograph to be taken. The warriors are as magnificent as one might expect, and the broader history of the area – as articulated in the Shanxi Provincial Museum – shows the importance of the city over the past two millennia.

Our partnerships with universities in Chengdu and Xian tend to focus on engineering-related agreements – especially in the oil and gas sectors – and on professional training. These two days have shown me how much further we could develop these collaborations. There is potential for work involving the faculties of veterinary medicine (pandas), fine arts (print making, dance, music), archaeology and Asian studies (Xian), religious studies (Mt. Emei, Grand Buddha of Leshan), education (preparation of ESL teachers), business (MBA programs), and so forth. There are 10 million people in Chengdu alone (and some 90 million in the province of Szechuan) and a further 7 million in Xian, so the potential for sustained engagement is certainly there! Tomorrow we shall discuss some of these possibilities with our colleagues at the Northwest University, and then in the evening travel on to our final stop on this trip, the city of Shantou.