Report from JinJiang - 1999/11/6

(The Chinese write the date, year/month/day, quite sensibly.) Today, we
were treated to a visit to a nearby city library, in Jin Jiang, quite the
lunch, and a tour of the seaside sculpture garden in Hui'an, by the walled
city of Congwu. Jin Jiang is about the same size of Portland, so we
wouldn't call it a small city, I guess, but the library was small. They
have a patron database that varies between 1,000 and 5,000. All the public
libraries I've seen have had small patron databases as a ratio of the
population of their service areas. I believe that increasing this ratio
has not been an objective for them the same way it has for us in the past,
but that is changing. All the libraries are looking for ways to increase
their circulation.

 The visit to Quanzhou has had more media coverage than the time I spent
in Fuzhou. The local TV station was in the library taping me correcting
someone's spelling in Chinese on the computer soon after I got there, and
somebody said they saw me on TV! Pretty exciting. They also taped part of
my lecture. They were on hand in Jin Jiang too, taping the tour of the
library and then getting an interview by one of the local broadcasters. I
suppose this is a comment on either the pr capabilities of these library
directors, or the state of news in these locations. Probably a good sign.
Of course I, and Francesca, still feel like the only westerners in these
parts. I can count in Chinese the number of westerners I've seen since I
got to China, and my Chinese hasn't improved much.

The city library does have some automation for cataloging and circulation,
but they neither have all their holdings in their database nor have the
circ system in all of their lending reading rooms, circulating by hand in
those rooms, so they are more or less at the beginning of the many
possible computer applications they could install over the next few years,
including their local area network. They are fully aware of this and felt
my visit might be used to help them discuss some of the issues related to
this future work. The director got the staff together, those of the 20 who
were available on Saturday, and we had a good discussion about the
problems they face bringing their systems up to full force and putting
machines out for the public. All the libraries demonstrate a very positive
attitude about making applications of technology. The public libraries of
China are rated by the Ministry of Culture and this library in Jin Jiang
had won a first place a few years ago. Naturally, they were quite proud of
that. In the future, the application of technology will be an element in
this evaluation, so all the public libraries are trying to find ways they
can integrate automation into their operations. Of course many of them,
particularly the smaller libraries, have small budgets and can't effort
the full-scale efforts like ours.

This city, however, has as many overseas Chinese as they have residents,
they told me. And these overseas Chinese are sending money back to support
industrial development in the area so that an area which has always been
rich in agriculture is now equally productive in small manufacturing.
Possibly a source of extra funding for the library, as we have used
donations and grants at MCL.

After the tour of the library and the meeting with their staff, they took
us to lunch. The restaurants (our translator, the capable and inventive
Miss Chen, for a few days got to calling restaurants 'restranauts" , which
accurately describes how I feel about my role in them - small bite for
man, big bite for mankind)  of China have the large rooms with lots of
tables, as ours do, but they also have many smaller rooms where groups get
to eat in their own room. Sometimes these group rooms have their own
bathroom, and a little living room with sofa and TV, in addition to the
"dining room". The dining room has a large round table with a big lazy
susan on it. They make a very cozy setting. And they come with their own
set of wait people. The honored guest sits on the far side of the table
and the host sits next to them. As the dishes are brought out, the host
offers the first serving to the guest and sometimes dishes it up for them.
Then the other people at the table take their servings. There were 9 of
us; 2 from the TV station, 4 in our contingent from Quanzhou, and 3 from
the local library. I wish I could list the dishes from these dinners, it's
an amazing list, but I can never remember them all. Let's see: turtle soup
(mock mock, I guess), lobster, fish ball (kind of ... ok, they take the
fish and mix it with sweet potato powder into a "ball") soup, sweet buns
you open and put pork into - their hamburger, they joked, fish, whole of
course, "pancakes", something folded inside some kind of outer layer and
deep fried - delicious, deep fried ginger and duck, scallops and black
"hair", tofu and eel, snow peas, small abalones, and asian pears and
grapes. That's most of it. The dinner usually goes on for an hour or two
and you are supposed to try and finish everything, but the amount of food
is really daunting.

I tried to sneak a peek at the bill and I think it was $20. ( This is a
meal that (a), you can't get in most US cities and (b), any one entre
would be $20 if you could.) I was only justified in doing this because,
just this once, the conversation had gotten off at various times into
money. I like to avoid that because it is so difficult to really compare
salaries, budgets and the prices of things between the two countries. And
I don't like the role of the "rich" American. But in this visit there
seemed to be more interest in that and they had asked directly about it,
so I told them. I'm sure other libraries would have wanted to ask, but the
Chinese can be very discreet, and I've taken advantage of that.

After lunch, we changed direction and drove back east through Quanzhou and
out to Chongwu, on the coast, where there is an extensive stone sculpture
garden. This part of this area is known for its stone carving. Most houses
of the Quanzhou area, in fact are made of stone instead of brick, or at
least that is traditional.  Stonework is everywhere and driving out to the
coast we passed about a hundred stone sculpture factories. There are
statues of gods, people, animals, many Japanese garden lanterns, and many
guardian lions, out of beautiful granite or marble. They say it is shipped
all over the world, but it is better than the stuff I've seen in our part
of the world.

The stuffed restranaut,

Brian