South University of Science and Technology (Shenzhen) visit #2

You can see from my blog post last year about this time that I have visited SUSTech before. I came over then from a conference in Hong Kong for a few days, gave a talk, and checked out the campus. I had in mind previously that I might spend my whole sabbatical year here, that it might be good to get out of town for a while as a change of pace after the divorce. Anyway, I pursued it with the people here as an option, and I think they were open to the idea. Life on campus here is very facilitated and it is not so easy for someone that doesn't know the language to move around in China (I guess that's probably true everywhere I just know less Chinese and tend to travel in places where English is common). Anyway, expenses would be low (and I think they are generous to long term visitors although I did not get that far in the discussions) and I would have got a lot of work done. This whole plan fell apart when I met Veronica. I would not want to be away from her for a whole year, so am here for a month, which seems too long as it is. I don't think they were counting on me to be here a whole year, but I probably confused them with my sudden change in how long I wanted to stay. I will apologize here, but I don't think anyone here will read this blog.

Shenzhen is an amazing city of 15 million people, almost all built starting in 1980. Construction is booming on and off campus. My colleagues here say they cannot afford the apartments across the road. That sounds familiar coming from Vancouver. You can see the activity from my guest room:

The room (well suite really) has lots of space with two balconies. It is almost as big as our apartment back home. 

The campus is built on a series of hills and I had not realized on my visit last year how extensive and beautiful the campus grounds are. There are trails into the hills and I followed one before dinner.

 
Those are lychee trees in the background. One of my hosts here, Jingzhi Li, brought some to my room after dinner. He looked after me on my last visit, a friendly and helpful guy.

     

There is a Communist flavour to the way certain things work here that Veronica (originally from communist Bulgaria) recognizes when I describe them to her. There is a huge exercise room in the guest house complex, but mostly empty. It has only five machines (but good ones). There is a full time attendant, and I had to make a reservation even though I was the only one there that morning (possibly the only one there all day). It will sound next like I am joking, but I am somewhat serious when I say that a communist system can deal with a transition to an AI economy better than we will in the West. Here, everyone has a societal role.

A couple last pictures to end with. Speaking of communism, I thought this notice board was catchy. I do like red. On the right you can see amongst the high rise apartments that none of us can afford a collection of shacks (I think people live there, correct me if I am wrong). Even here, an example of the inequity in living standards so close together.

Short visit in Hong Kong before crossing the border

I have been in Hong Kong for the last few days, visiting Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. A former colleague from UBC, Dong Li, moved here last year. We still have a joint PhD student at UBC so it was a chance to talk about his project and then we moved on to other things we might do together. I reminded him of a problem (the Oxygen Depletion Problem) that I tried to interest him in before. I had worked with some others on computational methods for this problem and related ones but there are analysis questions about the character of solutions that he and our student might be able to answer. We will see if it stays on his radar this time.

The campus is on the outskirts of the city, on a hill. The campus is quite attractive and the views are great. I enjoyed my short stay here, as I worked to get over jet lag. I stayed in the University Lodge.

   

It could be my last blog post for a while. My next stop is across the border in Shenzhen, where I will be at the South University of Science and Technology for a month, beginning my sabbatical year. In China, I will be behind the Great FireWall, which blocks google pages, including this blog site. It is possible that my UBC VPN will get me past the Wall... I will see later today when I settle in there.