Qingdao Ocean University

Professor Victor Da Hsuan Feng writes that most people around the globe with the slightest beer drinking habit would know Qingdao beer. I suspect, except for drinkers familiar with China, few would know that Qingdao is in fact a city in the province of Shandong (or Mountain East). Professor Feng visited the Ocean University at Qingdao.

Qingdao is in that peninsula-like area next to South Korea, protruding into the Yellow Sea. Facing the Yellow Sea and surrounded by an imposing range of mountain, Qingdao is a naturally breathtaking and extremely modern city on the southern coast of Shandong. It is for this reason it is the venue for sailboat competition for the 2008 Olympics.

The modern history of Qingdao is full of intrigue. That it was once a ‘German colony’ is not well known. According to http://www.china-sd.net/eng/sdcities/qingdao/history.asp, ‘In November 1897, German invaders occupied Qingdao, which was reduced to the status of a German colony soon after. When World War I broke out in
1914, Japan replaced Germany to occupy Qingdao in November. The famous May 4th Movement of 1919, an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, political and cultural movement, was the direct result of the mass request to regain
Qingdao …’

It is remarkable that even though the Germans were only there for a mere 17 years, and those were indeed very turbulent years of China, they still managed to establish a beer making (and probably drinking) tradition on the city, which has lasted until today. This renders Qingdao the beer capital of modern China.

Over the past three years, I have been establishing contact with a key university in China, the Ocean University of China (OUC) in Qingdao. It began serendipitously in 2002, when OUC Vice President Professor Yu Zhigang, who visited the University of Texas at Dallas as a member of China’s research universities vice presidents’ delegation to the United States.

Quite by coincidence, the former First Secretary (Education) at China’s Consulate in Houston, the Honorable Xu Jiahai, had been “on loan” from OUC since 2001 to the Chinese Foreign Ministry to handle issues related to education in the southwestern United States. It was in this capacity that Xu and I became well acquainted. On numerous occasions, Xu expressed great interest to explore ways in which UT Dallas can interact with OUC.

After Xu returned to OUC in early 2005, we remained in close email contact. When Xu learned that my wife and I will be visiting China in June of 2005, he and his university graciously invited us for a visit.

We were hosted by, met and discussed extensively with a large number of individuals in OUC. Besides Yu and Xu (we are very grateful to Xu who spent the entire two and a half days with us), we had one sumptuous meal after another with many leaders of OUC. The list (too long to include here) was headed by Professor Ruilong Feng, Chairman of the University Council (no relations!).

Of my impressions of OUC, first, unless the group we met is highly atypical, my wife and I were very impressed by the ‘upbeat, positive and optimistic’ tone about the future of OUC that we heard from everyone. Although OUC is one of the two major research universities in Shandong Province, with 15,000 students, it is a distant second in size.

The ‘flagship’ Shandong University in the provincial capital Jinan has around 55,000 students. There is much discussion in OUC that eventually it needs to become a research-intensive university of about 20,000 students. I was also told that the “average” grade of students entering universities is much higher than in cities such as Beijing. Of course, personally, I cannot but help to find this amusing because many of the discussions we heard about Shandong University and OUC are “mirror image” of the discussions I have heard in Texas about UT Austin and UT Dallas.

Second, my discussions with the leadership, among them with University Council Chairman Professor Feng, President Professor Dexing Wu, Vice President Professor Lin Wang and Vice President Yu brought me to the conclusion that their confidence that OUC can become a strong and comprehensive university is palpable.

I was especially interested to learn that despite widespread “merger” fever among institutions of higher education throughout China, OUC appears to be more determined to deepen their strengths before expanding in any significant manner.

One of them actually said that since Caltech and Princeton University are not large universities, greatness may not necessarily be a function of the size of the university. Indeed, in my many interactions with Chinese universities in the past few years, such an attitude is common.

Third, since the early ’50s, after major ‘restructuring’ of higher education in China, OUC inherited much of the ocean-centric disciplines from the start, such as physical and biological oceanography, remote ocean sensing, ocean environmental engineering, marine science and so on. In fact, there is no question that OUC is indeed one of the best, if not the best, universities in China with an ‘ocean-centric flavor.

I remembered my friend Congressman Curt Weldon, the current Vice Chair of the United States House Armed Services Committee and also co-chair of the bipartisan House Oceans Caucus (http://curtweldon.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=1431) told me often that the globe is three-quarters covered by ocean, and therefore the ocean is one of the unexplored great wealth for humanity. It is for this reason that I am so excited to have visited OUC.

Finally, a careful examination of OUC’s history before the ’50s will reveal that the “previous reincarnation” of OUC had some of the most, and I mean MOST, literary giants of China. Chinese literature thundering names such as Wen I-Duo, Shen Chong-Wen, Lao She, and so on, were all at one point in time faculty members of the university.

Indeed, throughout the campus, one can find busts of many of these giants. I am really happy to see that this university is so proud of this group of giants of China. I was told that even though OUC is today centred on technology, its departments in Chinese and foreign languages and literatures have inherited the traditional strengths that these great masters of literature have established in the 20th century.

* Victor Da Hsuan Feng was Vice President for Research and Graduate Education, The University of Texas at Dallas.