Those interesting differences and similarities

Since it is close to the time for me to go back home, I was thinking about the small but interesting differences between University of Manitoba and Ningbo University, also things I have seen.  

As for the fundamental infrastructure, U of M campus is better built and comfortably designed for students.

NBU (abbreviation for Ningbo University) has about 24,000 undergraduates and 2,300 faculty staff on campus, whereas U of M has around 26,000 students and 8,000 faculty staff. The population size is similar but what I feel is we have way more students than U of M. The reasons are as follows: Most Chinese university students are full-time students, and it is mandatory that students should live in dorms, so during times of class breaks, lunch, or dinner time, the campus is just too over-run and cafeterias are just swarming with students. I have that kind of feeling as I go to the Dafoe library but other places are much quieter. Also a lot of them work part-time, thus they only attend classes and go to work and leave the campus after that. Especially on holiday, the campus of UM is always shut down and basically nobody shows up at the campus. When NBU students meet holiday, the dorms are so packed. The whole building is like a streaming hotpot, within a few minutes the roof will be torn off. 

I really appreciate that U of M has enough seats for students to study. Because NBU has only two libraries and limited study area, so in most cases students choose to study in classrooms instead. It is not uncommon at all to see NBU students line up in front of the libraries.  Our library rules work like this: every student waits in line before the library opens, the earlier students each get a seat number and sit at the seat as the number indicates. Students that come late don’t get a seat number and have to wait until someone leaves the library. In summer, it becomes worse.  The libraries are the only places with air conditioners, just like heaven. That leads to longer line-ups and bike races minutes before the libraries opens. Sometimes even riots take place; someone tried to enter with force and even shattered the glass once. This is ridiculous to you and to me as well as I see it now. God, could you administrative university staff not throw money away on building your fancy thirteen-floor executive building, rather than just build one more library? Please!! If I say so upfront, I have to go “talk” to the vice dean and get some “spiritual education”. Or some security people are going to talk to me in the bathroom. (That means I will get a beat-up)

Here, I have one more thing to mention. The Winnipeg transit system is so much different from ours. It is usual that a family owns at least one car in Winnipeg, or broader, Canada. Perhaps there is no need to put many buses on the street. That’s maybe why Winnipeg has so many fewer buses. For students like us, transit is like oil pipe to gas station. The Transit Company considers that we are a small group that can be ignored. If we miss one bus, maybe we have to wait another half-hour for the next bus. In NBU, transit is bad but in a different way. We’ve got too many students getting on the buses, which makes every passing bus “a can of salmon fish”. Waiting for a bus is horror, getting on them on weekends is even harder. Definitely buses are overloaded by 50% capacity at least. And we have come up with ideas for loading the bus from the back door that normally only is for exit passengers. So, it takes longer to get off the bus because you have to let someone get off the bus, leave the door open, and those people get off then the first few people get back on the bus again. Anyways, timing is the skill we need no matter in Winnipeg, and braveness and toughness are characters that needed in NBU.

All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (from “Anna Karenina”) My point in this blog is to make you laugh and afterwards think of what we can do to improve the situation. Don’t take my words exactly, I may put some exaggeration here. See you next blog.