Twenty Years of Building Bridges between Oregon and Fujian, China: The 2016 Horner Exchange

Abstract

The Horner Library Exchange, celebrating its twentieth year in 2016, began as a collaboration between the Fujian (China) Provincial Library and the Oregon State Library. It is one of only two such exchange programs administered by a state library association (in this case, the Oregon Library Association). The author has been involved in the program since 2002 and coordinator of the Oregon side for the past nine years. Last fall, he was one of three Oregon delegates to visit Fujian, finally taking the plunge to travel there himself. In May, 2016, Oregon hosted Li Fan, Huaqiao University Library in Quanzhou; Chen Wenge, Quanzhou Municipal Library; and Liu Xuzan and Lin Yongxiang, Fujian Provincial Library. In the course of three weeks, they spoke with library staff the length of the Willamette Valley as well as visiting the Columbia River Gorge.

The Horner Library Exchange, celebrating its twentieth year in 2016, began as a collaboration between the Fujian (China) Provincial Library and the Oregon State Library. It is one of only two such exchange programs administered by a state library association (in this case, the Oregon Library Association). I have been involved in the program since 2002 and coordinator of the Oregon side for the past nine years. Last fall, I was one of three Oregon delegates to visit Fujian, finally taking the plunge to travel there myself.

In the early years, our colleagues in Fujian would send two librarians to Oregon for a month, alternating with one Oregon librarian traveling to Fujian for up to six weeks the following year. Starting in 2007, this pattern changed to three-week visits every three years, with four Fujian librarians coming to Oregon and three Oregonians visiting Fujian. During their time abroad, librarians visited a multitude of public, academic, school, and special libraries; gave lectures about the latest developments in their home libraries; and went sightseeing. Originally, funds for the Oregon side of the exchange came from a bequest by Dr. Layton Horner. Once those moneys were spent, the Oregon State Library continued to provide funds for the exchange. Oregon delegates also were required to contribute to their own travel. The Fujian provincial government provided for all room and board in China, as well as land transportation. Plans are underway to do fundraising to ensure future exchanges.

In May, 2016, Oregon hosted Li Fan, Huaqiao University Library in Quanzhou; Chen Wenge, Quanzhou Municipal Library; and Liu Xuzan and Lin Yongxiang, Fujian Provincial Library. In the course of three weeks, they spoke with library staff the length of the Willamette Valley as well as visiting the Columbia River Gorge. As has been our custom, a banquet on the last night ensured that our guests had a great sendoff and departed with distinctively Oregonian gifts - CDs of Portland-based Pink Martini and books about the history of the Chinese in Oregon.

In October, Jian Wang (Portland State University), Veronica VichitVadakan (Oregon College of Oriental Medicine), and I embarked for our three-week visit to Fujian Province. We were accompanied during the first week by Rosalind Wang, a retired librarian and past Horner alumna whose efforts over the three decades laid the foundation for the exchange and built many bridges between Fujian and Oregon; Amy Lee, a 2010 Horner alumna; and MaryKay Dahlgreen, Oregon State Librarian. Our itinerary was a mixture of library tours and meetings with library staff at twenty-four libraries as well as sightseeing in Fuzhou, the provincial capital, Xiamen, the largest city in the province, and Quanzhou, a bustling metropolis that was the terminus of the maritime Silk Road.

During our time abroad, Veronica and I maintained a blog to keep our families, friends, and library communities informed on our doings and whereabouts. What follows are some highlights from our trip and the impact that this experience has had on me.

While I enjoyed touring each library, my favorite moments were sitting down with library staff and discussing our work. Our hosts would describe their latest accomplishments: the opening of a new building, producing videos of vanishing minority art and culture, the preservation of ancient books. We would talk briefly about similar developments in our libraries. Then the moment would come for asking questions - and that is when we would really connect. Those questions revealed what we each really wanted to know about the people on the opposite side of the table. These friendly interrogations often took the form of "do you do X?" or "how do you do Y?" We asked: Do you have obligations to collect datasets from your researchers? (Short answer: no, not yet, but we know this is something that is happening elsewhere.) Where do you get funding for your cultural preservation projects? ("The provincial government.") And in turn we were asked: Who pays for the books that the public library book clubs read? (Answer: the public library - we don't make our patrons purchase their own books.) When will Bibframe be implemented? (Answer: it's too early to say specifically!) Through this exchange of questions, I had the feeling that both sides of the table were asking: Are your libraries like ours? And how are we different? Ultimately, I learned that we are all simultaneously the same and different. Both sides of the Pacific are interested in funding, the latest technology, and innovative services. In many instances, we are doing the same things: cooperative cataloging (although carried out in different ways), purchase-on-demand, digitization projects. But many times we heard or saw things that are not yet widespread in the United States. In Xiamen, we saw kiosks that allowed 24/7 access to books and were placed around the city. Using a library card to unlock a sliding door, a user could select from a 12-shelf collection of books that might be just outside a branch library or located inside a shopping mall. Xiamen had 116 of these kiosks scattered around the city. We also saw self-service book sanitizers that used UV light to kill germs on the surface of books. I wondered about damage to the paper by the radiation, but assumed that these public library books were not destined to be part of an archival collection anyway. (I was also puzzled as to why these elaborate machines were in place when these same libraries offered no soap or paper towels at their bathroom sinks.) Several of the large municipal libraries we visited were conducting extensive video and audio projects to document the music, dance, and crafts of ethnic minorities in the province. With funding from Beijing, staff were using state-of-the-art equipment for these projects. An example of one such video is available here.

In addition to learning about libraries in the province, we were also taken on sightseeing trips, both in the cities and the countryside.

We enjoyed seeing the Fujian tulous, round earthen buildings of several stories, dating back centuries and still inhabited. They are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. On our way to see these rural structures, we drove through banana and tea plantations. The terrain is so different from Oregon, with lush tropical trees instead of our familiar Douglas fir and pine trees. In Quanzhou, our tour guide, Quanzhou Municipal Library Director Xu Zhaokai, took us on a walking tour of the neighborhood where he grew up, visiting Buddhist and Taoist temples and the oldest mosque in China, all within a few blocks of each other. In Xiamen, we visited Gulangyu Island, also known as Piano Island for the many families owning pianos there, a former colony of foreign business owners and diplomats whose European background resulted in distinctively non-Chinese architecture.

As if the library visits and the sightseeing wasn't enough, we were treated almost nightly to banquets, often with local and provincial dignitaries. I was somewhat concerned whether my vegan diet could be accommodated, but our hosts went out of their way to ensure that I had plenty to eat. While the others dined on sea cucumber, squid, and various species of fish, I was stuffed with mushrooms and related fungi of seemingly endless variety. After the first week, I commented that I had been served dragon eyes (a fruit related to lichee), dragon beard (a leafy green) and dragon fruit, to which Chen Wenge responded that dragons were vegan! (On returning to the U.S., I learned that dragon fruit are native to the New World and are grown commercially in the Southwest. Funny how I had to travel so far to discover something so near.) I would be remiss if I did not also mention the tea ceremonies that we were treated to. I found them so interesting that I bought a tea set for myself. You can watch a Fujian tea ceremony here.

As with all of my travels abroad, it was difficult to have to say goodbye and return home. I learned so much about the libraries we visited that I am still processing the trip. I will be sharing what I learned at an upcoming seminar at my library and a presentation with my fellow delegates at the Oregon Library Association. I know that I am very committed to ensuring the continuation of the exchange program and will be an enthusiastic fundraiser for it. I am also attempting to start some ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Fujian, which should solidify the relationships established in 2016. My hope is that the Horner Exchange will continue for many more years so that it can be a source of inspiration, learning, and cooperation between our two countries.