Jonathan Xavier Weinert 2008

Aug 17, 2005

Hey all, Just wanted to send a little hello from Shanghai. Things are going pretty well here. I was warmly welcomed by Dr. Ma and his students as soon as I arrived and everyone's been helping me get settled and adjusted. Getting over the first week language barrier was pretty tough, but now Mandarin is soaking in a little bit and I can now go shopping by myself, take public transportation, and order Zhongguofan (Food=)).

The facilities at Tongji are very impressive and growing rapidly (see picture); they have a large laboratory for developing environmental vehicles technologies, part of which is devoted towards fuel cell vehicle and hydrogen technologies. In the lab garage, students and faculty work day and night, even on weekends on the fuel cell vehicles and H2 experiments. Last Saturday I ran into Wan Gang, president of all of Tongji University, stopping in to check on the progress of the cars accompanied by Yu Zhouping (Dean of the College of Automotive Studies).

Each night, my classmates and I have what have now been dubbed, "Expression Sessions". We talk only in Mandarin for 45 min, then we talk only in English for the next 45. We both learn new "expressions", and we get to "express" our thoughts on a range of subjects from personal experiences to fuel transition strategies for China. They seem happy to practice their English, and of course I learn a ton of Mandarin since I'm surrounded by so many teachers.

So I know you told me to hold off on data collection until I get the lay of the land, but I just wanted to present you with some quick quantitative statistics I've collected so far:

Fuel Cell Vehicles at Tongji: 10
Tube Trailers of hydrogen: 1
Students in the H2 Lab: ~10
Time to get to downtown Shanghai: 1.2 hr by bus
Meals purchased at my cafeteria with a $12 card: 25 and counting
Typhoons encountered: 1
Paper products dispensed at my cafeteria: 0
Pieces of donkey flesh consumed: 1 (a small piece)
Ice cubes I've seen, let alone consumed: 0
Other white people I've seen on my campus: 2 (but they've since left)
Towns visited by my new bicycle named "Huahua": 1, An Ting (aka International Automobile City)
Times people have chuckled and told me my Chinese name sounds like a girls name: 3

Jonathan (Qiao Wenxuan)