I spent the beginning of the week at Tongji University in Shanghai to participate the defense of the Master Theses of the Mannheim University EMBA. This is for the candidates the culminating point of an intensive piece of work. I enjoyed the discussions a lot and congratulate everybody to their success. Of course I am thrilled that the students I supervised did very well, even two of them "excellent", which is a very outstanding result in our very rigorous evaluation system. You convinced a very tough evaluation committee of two Universities of the quality of your work. Well done. Now I am on the last Airport Express train back on the way to Beijing city. The air is filthy, and the sulfur bites the nose. Always when I arrive in Beijing Airport and the hall looks like somebody burned a fire in there, I just want to turn around and get on the next flight to hop over to Japan. But okay, the week will be a short one. And perhaps we get a bit of wind from the North.
Chairman Mao hailing on campus. He is not really known as somebody who cherished academic work, sharing of knowledge and a fair debate. So a University campus would be the last place you might expect his statue. But he is still around. I guess moving these monuments needs more than just a bulldozer.