China 5. Lunch with Vice Governor Xu

On Tuesday I had lunch with the Vice Governor of the province of Henan -- actually, with one of the Vice Governors of Henan.  From a government website I gather there are eight vice governors, essentially a cabinet for the province’s governor.

How did this happen? you ask.  Well, a few days before we left home I got to thinking: we would have quite a bit of free time while in Zhengzhou and Guangzhou.  Maybe I could visit some university statisticians in one of those cities just to talk about statistical teaching, research, and practice in China.  Jeff Wu, a friend who teaches statistics at Georgia Tech and who was at U. Michigan when I taught there in 2001, has been active in Chinese statistical circles throughout his career.  I wrote him to see if he could provide me a contact.  He wrote back and said, You contacted the right person.  I’ll contact my friend who is a vice governor of Henan province and he will contact you.  His name is Jichao Xu.  Anything you need, he can help.  Send me your schedule.

At the time I thought Xu was a former student of Jeff’s.  Actually, they became acquainted in the 1990s when Jeff was at the University of Waterloo, in Canada.  Mr. Xu was then in Chinese academia and he spent a semester as a visiting professor at Waterloo.  Their area of common interest was statistical methods pertaining to quality and quality improvement.  Subsequently, Xu moved into university administration and then government.  After I got a call from his office on Monday I did some web-searching.  I found that Xu had been a “World Fellow” at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 2007-08.  Here’s the bio they posted:

Jichao Xu: “Vice-Governor of Henan Province and he has performed the chairman’s responsibility for Henan Association for Science and Technology for four years. Before that he was a professor and vice-president of Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautics. During his academic time he was a visiting professor and visited University of California Davis and University of Waterloo as well as Seoul National University, executing some joint NSF(C) projects. He received a national award with distinguished youth for Science Foundation. Mr. Xu is researching relations of the economy on technology with a global view.”

Anyhow, after my correspondence with Jeff I didn’t anticipate needing help from the Henan government (too bad Jeff didn’t have a contact in Beijing government – would have been helpful in recovering my camera there) so didn’t expect anything would come of our contact.  Monday morning I got a call from Mr. Xu’s assistant.  Mr. Xu will be calling you.  He would like to meet with you.  A little later Mr. Xu called and wondered if I and my family could join him for lunch or dinner that day.  That was Gotcha Day – we would be getting Macy soon after lunch, so I begged off (wondering if this was the right thing to do with a Henan Vice Governor) and said, Maybe later in the week.  I’ll check my calendar. 

Tuesday morning, another call from Mr. Lu, who is Mr. Xu’s assistant.  Lunch today?  I said OK, for just myself – Jeff and family were off doing some paperwork and I knew Susie wasn’t particularly interested in talking statistics  -- and arranged to meet in the hotel lobby at noon.  While I was waiting outside the lobby I told the doorman I was having lunch with Vice Governor Jichao Xu (I had written his name and some notes on a note pad).  He was impressed, as I had hoped.  A little later Mr. Lu arrived and introduced himself.  We would be lunching at a nearby hotel where Mr. Xu was having meetings.  He said something to the doorman and instantly (I exaggerate slightly) a car and driver appeared.  We were whisked a block and a half away and were met by about half of the hotel’s staff, opening doors, escorting us through the lobby, and holding an elevator just for us.  Went upstairs to an elegant private dining room.  In a few minutes Mr. Xu came in and we sat down for lunch: Xu, Lu, and Who?  

This was not a hotel coffee shop lunch.  It was an eleven-course banquet.  Some highlights:

fish maw soup with mushrooms.  I found out later that fish maw is fish stomach, or air bladder.  

                                                                                                             

baked sea cucumber – a sea –bottom echinoderm;  we ate the creature’s body that is inside this shell - tasty and very chewable – a delicacy, melts in your mouth.  It looked, though, like a piece of a bicycle tire inner tube (thornproof), with projections corresponding to those projections on the shell, so I was pleasantly surprised.

 Here's another picture.  Looks even more edible, doesn't it?

braised ox-tail – small pieces of tail bone with some meat on it, well sauced.

stewed fish and lamb in casserole

steamed yellow-fin tuna with preserved cabbages – a small fish, whole; the meat flaked off easily and was delicious 

assorted fresh fruits- to cleanse one’s palate at the end.

All of this was very tasty and well-presented.  We had two hovering attendants serving and removing the successive dishes.  I soon learned you didn’t have to finish each dish.  Whenever Mr. Xu decided he was through with a dish I generally followed suit.  Also, some dishes were followed by sake toasts.  I was told that tradition is to bottoms-up the tiny sake glass after the second course, but after the first sip I said No way for me.  But, that was OK, too.  I should say the atmosphere was very casual and gracious.  (Mr. Xu said he had attended a banquet in the US and was disappointed by how quickly it was over.)

We chatted on a variety of topics.  Mr. Xu gave me some Henan facts (it’s pronounced Heh-nan, not Hee-nan): it’s the largest province in population – 100 million people.  The name, Henan, means south of the Yellow River.  It’s also regarded as a cradle of Chinese civilization (according to Wikipedia).  Xu said Henan’s history, which goes back 3000 years, is the heart of Chinese history.  Before we left home I read that the Henan provincial museum is a must-see here and we’re going there this morning (Thursday).

I asked about Xu’s areas of responsibility – wondering if it was science and technology, given his background.  He mentioned education – elementary through university, I gathered.  We didn’t go far on this topic.

We talked some about government structure.  Province governments report to the Beijing central government.  It’s very much top-down.  Policies and programs are defined at the top, implemented down the chain of command.  “Very efficient,” Mr. Xu said.  Not so efficient in the US, he said, where the two parties argue and obstruct (and occasionally compromise).  NY Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, has written in this vein that we need a system more like the Chinese, by which he means a system where smart people like himself decide what needs to be done and it gets done.  And everybody is happy (and dissenters disappear) – that’s the progressives’ dream.  I didn’t pursue this and I won’t here.  Fill in your own response.

I mentioned that the adoption group was going to Wal-Mart in the afternoon (turned out we went to another market/shopping center) and wondered if Mr. Xu had been there.  He hadn’t, not that he had anything against Wal-Mart.  He doesn’t have time to shop anywhere – somebody else shops for him.

I tried to tell him how much I appreciated him taking a couple of hours out of his schedule to visit with me.  This reflects well on his respect for Jeff Wu.  I think all he knew about me was that I was a former editor of the esteemed statistical journal, Technometrics.

After lunch, Xu, Lu, and Who? were driven back to my hotel.  As we parted, Mr. Xu stressed again that if there was anything I needed while in Henan to please let him know.  My hotel’s staff took all this in and cleared my way to a waiting elevator.  A couple of the adoption group saw this, so now I’ve got a bit of fame from that.  And that’s my story about lunch with Henan Vice-Governor Jichao Xu.

Cheers,

Susie and Rob