Final blog entry

My apologies for posting this late. My hotel in Beijing seems to charge for Internet access so I thought I would wait for my son and husband to arrive and then pay for one day and take care of things all at once.

Our last day in Fuzhou was quite fun. We actually got a day off. In the morning we visited the Fuzhou zoo which is basically a panda (giant and lesser pandas) and other bear zoo- no other animals. Besides incredibly cute pandas there are a grizzly bear and an American black bear. There was another bear species but they were not out in the enclosure so we couldn’t see them real well. Hopefully when I post this entry I will post the pictures as well- way too many but how can one resist.

Then we went to the flower, fish, antique, and pet market. Unfortunately we got tied up in the antique section (there was a good place to buy jade) so we never really saw all of it.

After lunch it was packing, nap and massage (for me) time. Then off to our farewell banquet which was as wonderful as the others we attended over the past 3 weeks.

On Saturday we were up early to make the 1 hour plus trip to the Fuzhou airport. Our Fuzhou Horner visitors- Mr Ruan, Mr Wu and Ms. Fang accompanied us and stayed with us with me being last. The system is different than ours. When you are leaving China as Gretta was to go to Hong Kong she went through an international departure gate and that is the last we saw of her. Then for domestic departures you don’t go to your airline’s counter but by flight a station is opened up 1.5 hours before and you send your bags and get your boarding pass. I was wanded and my carry on searched as I went through but the good part was when they made me turn around I could wave to our friends who were waiting and watching me. All was well and I caught up with Rosalind and saw her off.

I made it safely to my hotel in Beijing and can only assume the others made it to their destinations as well- Hong Kong for Gretta and Shanghai for Rosalind.

I will conclude with a few of the general observations we made during the trip:
• China is growing at a geometric pace which has resulted in an unusual sociological phenomenon- the growth has not been evolutionary but revolutionary. Traffic is an excellent example of this- they did not start with slow cars sharing the road with horses and other slow moving vehicles but went from carts to fast cars practicalloy overnight. There do not seem to be any rules that evolved but total chaos. The interesting part is that it works. We never saw an accident and an American businessman I talked to on my plane didn’t either. He said it was explained to him that each driver is responsible for what is in front of him and nothing more. At times it is like a dance.
• China is a country of contradictions- once again the traffic demonstrates this- carts being pulled by people share the road with cars and mopeds- try to imagine human drawn carts sharing the streets of downtown Portland with left turns being made from right lanes and cars going the opposite direction on a one way street. The other area of contradiction is the traditional Chinese veneration of its elders and the importance of family relationships. Yet, in modern China, families are quite often split apart as fathers or both parents go to the cities to work and leave children in the rural areas with grandparents with parents visiting one to two times per year. As temporary residents in the cities, the parents also do not have equal access to services including library services in Fuzhou. Xiamen does extend borrowing privileges to non-permanent residents. Folks can use the Fuzhou libraries but cannot borrow.
• There is a strong government commitment to libraries as demonstrated by the massive buildings that have been constructed- both for public and academic libraries. If there is one thing we would recommend changing is the way standards are set- they are very intensively focused on collection size. There needs to be a better way to account for electronic resources and usage. There is basically no weeding in any of the libraries we visited since they need to keep their collection size as large as possible.
• The libraries we visited all seem to be on the right track- in some areas they are doing things better than we are. The rapid pace of development throughout all aspects of Chinese life is also reflected in how libraries are developing.
• They face many of the same problems and difficulties we do- having enough resources to meet demand, marketing the library and its collections, dealing with difficult patrons, how to account for electronic resources, what happens if a library stops subscribing to an electronic resource- how does it get counted now, and so on.

That’s enough for now. For more discussion please join us at the WLA-OLA Conference in April where we will be doing a presentation. We look forward to seeing your comments on the blog when we once again have access to it.