Today@Dal

Submitted by Keith Taylor

March 19, Hangzhou to Fuzhou

Last night, we arrived in Hangzhou by train from Nanjing rather late and it was near midnight when we got settled into a hotel. This morning was spent on the incredible modern main campus of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Like Nanjing University, ZJU is among the handful of top educational institutions in China and radiates the energy of growth and innovation.

Our relationship with ZJU is new. Vice-President Martha Crago visited Zhejiang Province last year as part of a Nova Scotian delegation led by Premier Dexter and their itinerary included a brief visit to ZJU where she learned of their ambitious plans for a new campus which would house their Ocean College.

We had the opportunity today to follow up on Dr. Crago’s visit. We talked at length with Dr. Chen Ying, Dean of the Ocean College and Dr. Fan Jieping, Assistant President and Director of International Relations, about the scope and scale of their development of ocean related studies and research. Dean Chen is overseeing the construction of the campus on the archipelago near the coast of Zhejiang Province where Ocean College will be fully housed by 2015. The level of funding available and the speed of construction are beyond the imagination of someone who grew up in Canadian universities.

Read the rest of this post, and all of the delegation's updates, at the Eastern Horizons blog.