Tongji's Jiading campus

As I've mentioned, Tongji has several campuses, and today I've been at meetings with the School of Software Engineering on the new campus, the Jiading campus, west of Shanghai and near Suzhou.

The Director of their office of international cooperation met me at the Guest House and escorted me on the 40 km shuttle drive to Jiading.

It's a thoroughly modern campus with state-of-the-art computing facilities and loads of international sponsors, including IBM, HP, and even AutoDesk (!). Because of the wide open spaces the scale isn't obvious. These are really large buildings.

I was well cared for, given a nice tour of campus, and met a number of professors and staff before returning late in the afternoon. We found a number of common interests and opportunities for future collaboration.

[Professional details causing addtional loss of interest ommitted.]

I did find out through casual conversation, though, an interesting tidbit.

There are lots of buildings in Shanghai that are inadequately cooled, not cooled at all, or cooled by individual units here and there, leaving common areas warm and uncomfortable. Even new high-rises in Shanghai are constructed with individual, external air-conditioning units outside each apartment. This I didn't understand, so I asked my guide today about it. Apparently there was a government or municipal edict in the 1950s that buildings south of the Huang Pu River would not be centrally heated and cooled. Something about energy consumption. Hmm.