Thursday November 1 we started out the day traveling to a branch of the Xiamen Municipal Library in Guankou. It is housed in a cultural center and provides computer and internet access, magazines, books and a lovely children’s area. I believe I actually posted these pictures even though the ones from the days previous are not up yet. We met with the director of the center who is very proud of his cooperative work with other agencies. They offer an amazing number of classes to the community on Saturdays and Sundays. This branch is different from the one at Gulan Yu in that the cultural center and village government provide the space, utilities, computers an furniture and contracts with Xiamen Municipal for staff and collection. Very similar to the Benton County model.
We then visited a memorial to Tan Kah Kee who was an overseas Chinese who funded many schools including Xiamen and Jimei Universities. He is buried at the museum and his tomb looks like a turtle. The museum is outside and is rather large with friezes depicting every aspect of Chinese history, fauna, flora, daily activities, sports, etc that you can possibly imagine. Pictures just don’t do it justice. We also visited his home in Guankou.
We then ventured on to Jimei University which is in Jimei so is outside the prosperous Xiamen Special Economic Zone. They are currently moving the humanities collection into a new library so we got to visit the new library which is not yet open and observed their method of moving collections. Very different from what we are all familiar with and the pictures are quite revealing. Unfortunately many of mine ended up too dark and I have not had a chance yet to load Greta’s but it’s coming…. More for us to tell when we return. We met with one of the deputy directors and toured the current Main building as well. This is a much smaller university- only 23,000 students and 130 FTE. The buildings, however, are of the same scale as many of the others we have seen. Their resources are definitely more limited than Xiamen University’s but they do have a very well developed system for bibliographic instruction and student orientation to the library.
Friday was a light day with shopping in the morning- always a cultural experience with our intrepid companion and translator. Lunch was very special. We went to a Buddhist Temple which just opened a vegetarian restaurant this past month. The bamboo and other wood was just amazing and the food was incredible. For me, after two weeks of “poor thing- she’s vegetarian- what will she eat?” it was very special. The highlight, however, was the servers who were dressed in Han dresses rather than qipaos- much closer to kimonos. We asked to take our picture with one of them and ended up with about 6 who wanted their pictures taken with Gretta and me only. Of course we obliged and it will get posted in good time We were the first westerners our server had ever served.
In the afternoon I gave a presentation on services to 0-6, teens, seniors and non English speaking populations. The hit, however, was a demonstration of L-Net where we signed in and asked for the population of Xiamen. A very nice librarian in Michigan named Nikki answered it for us. It was 5 pm for us and 4 am for Nikki.
Then, while waiting to leave for dinner, we were treated to a stint in their staff room which includes exercise equipment, two ping pong tables and 2 chair massagers. Sorry to report that Gretta lost her ping pong game but we all enjoyed the chair massages. I know what’s going on my Friends Wish List!
We then had our Xiamen farewell dinner at a famous Xiamen dim sum restaurant.
The weekend includes visits to two more cultural facilities then back to Fuzhou for our last week.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Xiamen Tue Oct 30 and Wed Oct 31
We have just put in our third 12-14 hour day in a row. Tonight is actually an early night- back by 8 pm. Just uploaded 121 pictures from my camera and still have Gretta’s disk to tackle and the rest of the original 68 so still way behind on pictures.
Tuesday we spent at Xiamen University. What a beautiful campus. In the morning we toured the main library and talked with the department heads. Rosalind got a little bit of a break as everyone’s English was quite good. We still really needed her for the in depth stuff but basic communication was much easier. As usual the nitty gritty details of the visit will wait for later but some of the highlights are included here. Everything here seems to be on a huge scale. They have 20,000 undergraduate students and 14,000 graduate students. We toured a special collection of a major Chinese born author who is also responsible for inventing the Chinese typewriter in 1946- Lin Yu Tang. Xiamen University is working very hard to get donations of English language academic library level materials dating as far back as the 1950’s. The director says that if American libraries can get the materials to San Francisco’s port, he can get them to Xiamen. As with the other libraries we have seen their funding comes from the national government. Xiamen University is one of the top 10 universities in China. Gretta was very impressed with their electronic resources – they have access to over 200,000 electronic journals including several from Oregon.
In the afternoon we took a very choppy ferry ride (only 15 minutes but very long ones for me on the way over) to a branch campus of Xiamen University on a peninsula in a town called Zhang Zhou. To go by land would take 2 hours. It is a very new campus and the library was absolutely stunning- but you will have to wait for pictures . Freshmen and sophomores from Xiamen University study here. We saw quite a few westerners who are there to teach and as exchange students.
The trip back was much calmer, at least on Teresa’s stomach, and we then had the treat of visiting the old market area with some excellent negotiators by our sides. Dinner was dim sum at a restaurant overlooking the sea with incredible lights all around. Once again- pictures to follow someday…. Then we shopped in a more modern area with our negotiators now increased by three. Boy did we get deals.
Wednesday we headed to the island of Gulanyu (5 minute very calm ferry) where we visited the branch of Xiamen Muncipal library that is housed there. Finally not an enormous building but reasonable in size to serve a much smaller population. There are only 18,000 residents and two arts colleges on the island. The library’s collection serves the art and performing arts needs of the college students so is rather unusual for a branch library of its size.
Gulanyu is a very popular Chinese tourist destination with lots of great shopping thanks again to our great negotiators! We also visited one of the few private art museums in China with furniture and other artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties. A highlight of the visit was a visit to one organ and two piano museums. The pianos were primarily brought to the island when there many foreign embassies located there and the pianos never left so many are quite old. There is also an overseas Chinese man who continues to provide organs for the organ museum and is responsible for the museums in general. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed in any of these museums.
After eating at a Thai restaurant for lunch- something a little different- we visited the Xiamen Children’s Library which is a separate entity from the Xiamen Municipal Library. I was impressed by the amount of programming they do and the support they give to the schools and to parents. They also have a room set up by the Apple Tree Library Foundation which is composed of materials in English including Big Books, games on CD-rom to be used in the library, English language story times, etc. The bookmobile was interesting in that it not only holds books but is also used to transport staff from and to their homes.
That should be enough for now- will try to get some pictures loaded before bed time and another early day tomorrow.
Tuesday we spent at Xiamen University. What a beautiful campus. In the morning we toured the main library and talked with the department heads. Rosalind got a little bit of a break as everyone’s English was quite good. We still really needed her for the in depth stuff but basic communication was much easier. As usual the nitty gritty details of the visit will wait for later but some of the highlights are included here. Everything here seems to be on a huge scale. They have 20,000 undergraduate students and 14,000 graduate students. We toured a special collection of a major Chinese born author who is also responsible for inventing the Chinese typewriter in 1946- Lin Yu Tang. Xiamen University is working very hard to get donations of English language academic library level materials dating as far back as the 1950’s. The director says that if American libraries can get the materials to San Francisco’s port, he can get them to Xiamen. As with the other libraries we have seen their funding comes from the national government. Xiamen University is one of the top 10 universities in China. Gretta was very impressed with their electronic resources – they have access to over 200,000 electronic journals including several from Oregon.
In the afternoon we took a very choppy ferry ride (only 15 minutes but very long ones for me on the way over) to a branch campus of Xiamen University on a peninsula in a town called Zhang Zhou. To go by land would take 2 hours. It is a very new campus and the library was absolutely stunning- but you will have to wait for pictures . Freshmen and sophomores from Xiamen University study here. We saw quite a few westerners who are there to teach and as exchange students.
The trip back was much calmer, at least on Teresa’s stomach, and we then had the treat of visiting the old market area with some excellent negotiators by our sides. Dinner was dim sum at a restaurant overlooking the sea with incredible lights all around. Once again- pictures to follow someday…. Then we shopped in a more modern area with our negotiators now increased by three. Boy did we get deals.
Wednesday we headed to the island of Gulanyu (5 minute very calm ferry) where we visited the branch of Xiamen Muncipal library that is housed there. Finally not an enormous building but reasonable in size to serve a much smaller population. There are only 18,000 residents and two arts colleges on the island. The library’s collection serves the art and performing arts needs of the college students so is rather unusual for a branch library of its size.
Gulanyu is a very popular Chinese tourist destination with lots of great shopping thanks again to our great negotiators! We also visited one of the few private art museums in China with furniture and other artifacts from the Ming and Qing dynasties. A highlight of the visit was a visit to one organ and two piano museums. The pianos were primarily brought to the island when there many foreign embassies located there and the pianos never left so many are quite old. There is also an overseas Chinese man who continues to provide organs for the organ museum and is responsible for the museums in general. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed in any of these museums.
After eating at a Thai restaurant for lunch- something a little different- we visited the Xiamen Children’s Library which is a separate entity from the Xiamen Municipal Library. I was impressed by the amount of programming they do and the support they give to the schools and to parents. They also have a room set up by the Apple Tree Library Foundation which is composed of materials in English including Big Books, games on CD-rom to be used in the library, English language story times, etc. The bookmobile was interesting in that it not only holds books but is also used to transport staff from and to their homes.
That should be enough for now- will try to get some pictures loaded before bed time and another early day tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Friday Oct 26-Mon Oct 29
We have been kept moving at a whirlwind pace with very little time to spend on this blog or anything else. Some more pictures got loaded but we are still unable to see the blog so really cannot see it as you do. I do have one way but have not had time to do it so hope it’s ok. Also, I seemed to get the only room in a 24 story hotel where the Internet is not working and cannot be fixed so it took another day before Rosalind and I had time to exchange rooms. So, once again we are a day behind. Tomorrow I will try to post for Monday and Tuesday but right now I am going to load this then go to bed!
Friday we thought we were visiting a “native” village. As usual we were in for a lot more. We went to Changle which meant they had to get special permission from the government in order for westerners to visit. We felt quite honored. We visited several cultural centers and the Changle Library. The highlights were the library which is only a couple of years old with a very modern children’s room and Internet access area, the museum and the cultural centers. One of the cultural centers is funded entirely by overseas Chinese except for the water and electricity. The most interesting cultural center was one in a poor area that had been converted from a temple. Since my camera died at this point you will have to wait until I can post Gretta’s pictures. It is open in part to the outside which makes it quite cool and fresh. It serves as a quasi senior center and we were the most interesting thing to happen there in a very long time. The senior men even gave up watching tv to watch us.
This was a red letter day for us- we actually had two official 16 course banquets in one day, The first was with the cultural minister for Changle who gave up half of her busy day to accompany us. The second was the Fuzhou Provincial Library farewell banquet. As you can imagine we are all avoiding scales at all costs.
Saturday was a “relax” day. It involved a two car 10 person excursion to the Da Ming Wu Hot Springs. It is about 2.5 hours up in the mountains with a series of hot springs each of which provides a different medicinal quality. It involved another large lunch and tea time. We got back to Fuzhou just in time for, you guessed it, dinner and packing.
We thought Sunday would be a 3 hour drive to Xiamen but we stopped in Quanzhou along the way and spent all afternoon visiting a maritime museum which was absolutely fascinating as Quanzhou was considered the main port for the maritime silk trade. We visited the library as well which is almost 20 years old with a new one under design and scheduled for opening in 3-4 years. We visited a Buddhist temple during chanting time then did some more sightseeing before heading to Xiamen where we were welcomed by another sumptuous dinner.
Today was our first day in Xiamen and we spent it at the Xiamen Municipal Library. This library opened in February 2007 so is brand new, extremely modern and very well funded. Many procedures are similar to those followed by the Provincial Library in terms of circulation policies and acquisitions procedures. But they differ in a number of ways. Xiamen is a special economic zone which gives it special funding and other procedures. One of these is the ability to trade in foreign currency so they can buy directly from overseas publishers. Xiamen has also been able to be somewhat more able to introduce innovations some of which are the result of being new and able to start their design from scratch. They have a very open floor plan with small reference desks and computers scattered throughout the building. They have self checkout available and have not kept a card catalog. They are introducing AV very soon once the security issue is handled (they are waiting for some equipment) and are working on creating a “popular library” concept.
We had a great dinner with the Xiamen Deputy Culture Minister who was just delightful. Gretta is to be commended as she tried the jellied sea worm that was put on her plate. Rosalind says it is not a worm but a sea vegetable inside gelatin. Gretta swears there were body parts and it was sharing a plate with octopus and pigs feet. We will never really know but, no, it does not taste like chicken.
Oh- and Happy Halloween everyone!
Friday we thought we were visiting a “native” village. As usual we were in for a lot more. We went to Changle which meant they had to get special permission from the government in order for westerners to visit. We felt quite honored. We visited several cultural centers and the Changle Library. The highlights were the library which is only a couple of years old with a very modern children’s room and Internet access area, the museum and the cultural centers. One of the cultural centers is funded entirely by overseas Chinese except for the water and electricity. The most interesting cultural center was one in a poor area that had been converted from a temple. Since my camera died at this point you will have to wait until I can post Gretta’s pictures. It is open in part to the outside which makes it quite cool and fresh. It serves as a quasi senior center and we were the most interesting thing to happen there in a very long time. The senior men even gave up watching tv to watch us.
This was a red letter day for us- we actually had two official 16 course banquets in one day, The first was with the cultural minister for Changle who gave up half of her busy day to accompany us. The second was the Fuzhou Provincial Library farewell banquet. As you can imagine we are all avoiding scales at all costs.
Saturday was a “relax” day. It involved a two car 10 person excursion to the Da Ming Wu Hot Springs. It is about 2.5 hours up in the mountains with a series of hot springs each of which provides a different medicinal quality. It involved another large lunch and tea time. We got back to Fuzhou just in time for, you guessed it, dinner and packing.
We thought Sunday would be a 3 hour drive to Xiamen but we stopped in Quanzhou along the way and spent all afternoon visiting a maritime museum which was absolutely fascinating as Quanzhou was considered the main port for the maritime silk trade. We visited the library as well which is almost 20 years old with a new one under design and scheduled for opening in 3-4 years. We visited a Buddhist temple during chanting time then did some more sightseeing before heading to Xiamen where we were welcomed by another sumptuous dinner.
Today was our first day in Xiamen and we spent it at the Xiamen Municipal Library. This library opened in February 2007 so is brand new, extremely modern and very well funded. Many procedures are similar to those followed by the Provincial Library in terms of circulation policies and acquisitions procedures. But they differ in a number of ways. Xiamen is a special economic zone which gives it special funding and other procedures. One of these is the ability to trade in foreign currency so they can buy directly from overseas publishers. Xiamen has also been able to be somewhat more able to introduce innovations some of which are the result of being new and able to start their design from scratch. They have a very open floor plan with small reference desks and computers scattered throughout the building. They have self checkout available and have not kept a card catalog. They are introducing AV very soon once the security issue is handled (they are waiting for some equipment) and are working on creating a “popular library” concept.
We had a great dinner with the Xiamen Deputy Culture Minister who was just delightful. Gretta is to be commended as she tried the jellied sea worm that was put on her plate. Rosalind says it is not a worm but a sea vegetable inside gelatin. Gretta swears there were body parts and it was sharing a plate with octopus and pigs feet. We will never really know but, no, it does not taste like chicken.
Oh- and Happy Halloween everyone!
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