After four days of traveling, we have arrived in Shanghai and finally have internet access again, so I'll do my best to catch up on the last two cities we've visited.
Guiyang is a city located in the mountains of southwest China. We were hosted there by the Guizhou School of Finance and Economics. We stayed at the campus hotel, which was very nice.
After we arrived on January 4th, we were bused to the Qing Ancient City, where native minorities live and sell their wares. We saw cobblers working on the streetside, and many food stands and trinket shops. We were lead by a group of English-speaking students. They helped members of our group barter for good prices on purchases of silk scarves and jackets. We were joined there for dinner by the Director of Foreign Affairs and other university officials. Both at the Ancient City and on the drive to and from, it was obvious that this province is economically disadvantaged.
Our second day in Guiyang was spent on the campus. We had a welcoming ceremony with the president of the university. He and the Director of Foreign Affairs the gave us an overview of the university.
The campus is located on the side of a mountain, so its very, very hilly. There are 17,000 students, and they (like all Chinese universities) are required to live on campus. These students scored very high on the national college entrance exam in order to be selected to attend this business school.
We met with a group of 20 students. They come from all over the country, including Inner Mongolia. We learned that first year students live together in eight-person rooms in single gender buildings. The second year students are assigned to buildings with four-person rooms, and they can select their roommates. They will remain there for the remainder of their years at Guizhou. Graduate students have separate quarters.
We toured the library, the history museum, and the School of Business. The 'dormitories' are spartan. They are not heated (it was 35 degrees and rainy while we were there). The rooms have a sink and a pit toilet, both of which are located on the external balcony outside the bedroom. The dormitories do not have hot water.
The students had lots of questions for us about our universities. They asked us about heating our buildings; they'd clearly like to have heat in their rooms, whether or not they could control the temperature or the fan speed!
They aren't allowed to have visitors of the opposite gender in their dormitory. They were astonished that many of our schools allow 24-hour visitation. Upon hearing this, one student asked how we handle pregnancies. The students said that in China, if a student becomes pregnant, she would be "fired" from school (although no such consequence for the male involved). One female student told us that a pregnant student would go to a small hospital and get an abortion; completing the college degree is too critical to her future success to have a baby and leave school. They again seemed amazed that in our colleges and universities, a student may choose to have the baby and remain in school.
One student asked if it is true that at American universities, students can go on trips. Guizhou students aren't allowed to leave campus, and these students were particularly concerned about how one would keep up with their studies if they were out and about visiting or going away on weekends. In China, students spend about four hours a day in classes, and then they study for much of the rest of the day. Some do hold on-campus jobs, but even those whose family live in Guiyang are not to leave campus. They said that they typically go home once during the year (during the Spring Festival, which begins in two weeks and lasts through the Chinese New Year).
It was eye-opening to learn how tremendously committed the students are to their studies. They live a tough existence, and are simply appreciative of the opportunity to be in school.
Our visit closed with a banquet and a variety of students' musical performances native to this province.
