After the long day visiting Hong Kong, I decided to pass on the next day’s tour of Macco. So instead I spent time exploring Gaungzhou with my new friend, Charles Boyer, the dean of agriculture at Fresno State.
In the afternoon, following a great Japanese lunch at a popular local restaurant, we went to a giant college fair at the Guangzhou Expo Center where Fresno State had a recruiting booth.
The Guangzhou Expo Center had four giant halls, all the size of this one.
The Expo Center building we went to was so big that even with the huge college fair there, we still had trouble finding our way there. But we found a nice man at a desk who spoke no English who wanted to help. But we just couldn’t get the idea of a college fair across to him. Then it suddenly occurred to me that my conference badge, which I had in my messenger bag, had the word “University” on it, printed in Chinese. I pulled out the badge, pointed to the word, and the man’s eyes immediately lit up, and he was able to give us directions with hand signals and some written numbers.
When we arrived in the hall, we were immediately greeted by a group of students wearing yellow sashes who wanted to talk with us and have their picture taken with us.
My friend Charles meets with a group of Chinese students who are apparently representing their university at this giant college fair.
After that, we moved on to visit the Fresno State booth and the school’s local recruiter. To my surprise, directly across from the Fresno State booth was one for Arkansas State University, where I know a number of people in the journalism and broadcasting programs. In fact, the director of international programs who was manning the ASU booth is knows several of these people as well. It truly is a small world.
Along with Fresno State, Arkansas State also had a booth at the fair. The man heading up the booth knew several of my friends there.