"Before and after" pictures . . . look for the "after" installment in September. At Gansu United University, we are in the process of inventing the wheel. Beginning in September, a team of experts from the national education ministry in Beijing will arrive for The Inspection. Those four syllables have the ring of doom, and our faculty has been working overtime, literally, since last September to prepare for this accreditation hurdle. Weekends, holidays, late nights. Even the sacrosanct two and a half hour lunch break has been violated from time to time. (All of China, tropical or not, takes a mid-day nap; that’s why we have beds in our offices.)

You have read herein about how impoverished and poorly equipped is our campus. But I have kept to myself observations about its lack of organization. I have more than once described it privately as "the most dysfunctional institution on earth." When I began teaching here in 2005, I quickly discovered that confusion was the norm, and that it was unrealistic to expect even the most basic administrative support – printed lists of students enrolled in my classes, for example. They didn’t exist in any language.

Now, in anticipation of The Inspection, all of that is changing. Everyone now keeps official lesson plan books and attendance records, and we have been given crisp computer-generated class lists. The lists are in Chinese, but I’m not complaining. As long as the student numbers are there, I can figure it out. (I’m even learning to recognize the characters for a few common names. There are a lot of Wang’s and Li’s.) Not only are we keeping scrupulous records of our teaching activities, we are reconstructing those records going back to the time of my arrival in the fall of 2005. Yes, this is a chore, and in some instances a creative challenge. And the Internal Revenue Service has nothing on the Chinese authorities when it comes to creating arcane forms. With grumbling and eye-rolling, we forge ahead. We all understand how critical this is; the future of our university depends on the outcome. The demands on me are few, since my spoken Chinese is so poor and I can’t read Chinese documents. But my colleagues are overburdened with meetings and paperwork.

And then, there’s the campus itself. There are two new buildings, a dormitory and a teaching building. The teaching building opened in 2005, but is already in disrepair. Older buildings have been neglected for decades. Last summer, the older dorms got a coat of exterior paint. A few months ago all staff were directed to wet-mop their offices daily, and perform other cleaning chores. I once discovered my Dean, clad in rubber gloves, scrubbing down the surfaces in her office. Recently, a classroom in our department was transformed into the "Inspection Office." Fresh paint and new furniture. Even the radiators got a coat of gleaming silver. Yesterday I observed that giant red characters, no doubt proclaiming some noble sentiment, were being inscribed along one wall of that room. I’m told that summer 2007 will be the time for interior painting throughout. Therefore, I have snapped a few unflattering photos of our older teaching buildings. Yesterday I was on my way to document some newly-fallen plaster when I met one of my students and, instead, took a companionable stroll with him. I feel like a traitor when I record our disgraceful environment. So, with a twinge of defensiveness, I offer the "before" pictures.