Liu Dao Yu was President of Wuhan University in the 1980’s. I really didn’t know him well, but he was the one who made the unheard of decision to let me move from the Foreign Experts Building to a student dormitory on campus. After all this time I still wanted to know why, so I tracked him down and invited him for lunch.
We met in the lobby of a hotel on the East Lake. In the twenty years that had passed he had devoted more and more of his time to educational issues and moved further and further away from Chemistry, his original area of expertise. He was also dismissed from the university at the end of the 80’s apparently for initiating programs and reforms that were just too progressive making me realize that his decision let me move into a dormitory was just the tip of the iceberg and was actually perfectly consistent with his worldview.
We exchanged gifts. I gave him a pen. He gave me a copy of his autobiography “Memoir of a University Dean” and he got into a taxi to go home. In the end, I never did learn why he decided to let me move.
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1 comment:
Hello Paul,
This seems to be a very important experience in your life.
I read "Passagère du silence" from Fabienne Verdier. I think she was in a chinese University at the same time as you.
Catherine
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