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Visit to the NingXia University and Yinchuan

已有 16976 次阅读 2011-9-5 07:29 |个人分类:生活点滴|系统分类:海外观察

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Vice President and Professor Li Xing of Ningxia university was a visiting scholar at Harvard during 2007-2008. We got to know each other. After his return to Yinchuan and his university, he kindly invited me to visit. Finally, the trip took place August 31-September 3, 2011.

To be frank, my previous knowledge about Ningxia was limited to one paragraph description in geography class during middle school and something I heard about the mysterious dynasty of West Xia which flourish briefly for some 190 years and then vanquished by the Mongols. Thus, my wife and I came to Yinchuan with great anticipation of new knowledge and experience. We were not disappointed. The hospitality was superb and we learned so much.

Yinchuan situated astride the Yellow river is the capital of the Ningxia Muslim Autonomous region. Geographically, this is quite different from the province of Ningxia that I learned in middle school some sixty+ years ago. It reputedly has the largest concentration of Muslim people inside China. Ningxia University has a well known Islam study center where scholars from abroad come to visit and study. Otherwise NU is basically the premier university serving the local region teaching and doing research on a full set of science and technology endeavors.

Yinchuan is an oasis in the middle of rather basically dessert and rugged land. The mixture of desert, water, green vegetation and trees make rather scenic nature. Historically of course the Kingdom of XiXia left many archeaological treasures, artifacts, and a lost language to intrigue us. The HeLan mountain made famous by the epic poem of the General Yuefei (the river is all red) is also visible and nearby. All of these are within a half day drive of Yinchuan which makes it a future destination resort place for tourist.

Yinchuan is also a new city of the 21^st century. Almost all the sites, roads, and buildings we visited were built after 2000. The leaders of the University are all relatively young. It is definitely a city oriented towards the future.

Below are various photos taken during this visit.