Wednesday, May 16, 2018

Family China Trips

Since the opening of China in 1980, our family was offered many opportunities to visit the country. In 1985, I accepted an offer from Tsinghua University in Beijing to teach a course there during the early part of the summer. This turned out to be the best trip we took together as a family, not just because the arrangements made by Professor Liu Danqiao were so good,  but also because our children had just reached the right ages for this kind of trip. Janice and I later realized that the ages of our children were an important factor in how much they learned and gained from their travel. As a family, you only realize the results much later. Margaret was 16 and Steven had just turned 14. We did a lot that summer! The pictures below show some of the scenes from the begining of a nice summer! The first picture is of Margaret taking a rest at the airport! Then we landed in Shanghai for the first time after Shanghai was opened. The third picture was when we visited Fudan University there. The last two pictures were taken in Suzhou, a city not far from Shanghai. One includes our host for the summer, Professor Liu, and the other shows the the famous Tiger Hill Pargoda. We were there in the last part of May, 1985.




Monday, May 7, 2018

The Opening-up of the People's Repbulic of China

In 1980, I was lucky to be selected by the United Nation to take on a teaching responsibility and to visit China. In 1981, I repeated the visit, taking my family with me. Not only did we get the opportunity to visit the "Bamboo Curtain" but we had a wonderful chance to meet a number of Chinese intellectuals during our stay. In 1984, there were two Wuhan University Chemistry Professors, one Physical Chemist and another in Analytical Chemistry who applied to visit our Department at ETSU. Of course, we were honored to have them. They could take advantage of the fact that Dr. Ho and I could speak Chinese, for their convenience. They came to our small town at the end of 1984 and spent one whole year with us. The picture below, showing the four of us, was taken by the University photographer in the room holding the department's Liquid-Chromatographer machine, after they arrived on campus. Their last names are Lin and Yin. This arrangement proved to be a good beginning for our many years of exchanges!