Carol Shankel
In April 1980 a delegation of 6 from the University of Kansas went to China to discuss establishing academic exchanges with several universities. I was ecstatic for the opportunity to go along as an unofficial delegate, as I had a background in Chinese studies. (Full disclosure—my husband was head of the delegation, I was on KU’s art museum staff; I traveled at my own expense.)
We visited Nankai University in Tianjin, Nanjing University and Zhengzhou University in Henan Province, all as a result of previous contacts initiated by KU professors. Henan and Kansas had just signed a sister state agreement. Chinese university administrators welcomed us warmly. Many of them had just returned to the university following the Cultural Revolution, and they were eager to develop ties with the West and to catch up on all they had missed. Our interpreter, an English teacher at Nankai U, later came to KU to teach Chinese language and we learned more, then, how her family had been “sent to the countryside” during the 1970s.
Some of our first impressions—few trucks or cars on the streets, humans and animals doing the heavy work, men pulling large loads through the streets; everyone dressed in drab blue and green; results of the devastating earthquake in Tianjin four years earlier still in evidence, rubble still on books in the university library; the smell of coal smoke; lots of staring— Chinese people were as curious about us as we were about them.
Exchange agreements with all 3 universities were signed that year. From 1981 until the pandemic in 2022, 75 KU students had traveled to China to study at these 3 universities. Kansas and Henan Province marked their 40th anniversary with new academic exchanges.
Following the success of KU’s 1980 visit to China, we planned the Archeological Study Tour to Henan Province for 1982. This trip was organized with the help of Zhengzhou University and the Zhengzhou Branch of China International Travel Service, and a Sunflower Travel in Lawrence. Coordinated by KU art history professor Chu-tsing Li 李铸晋 and East Asian Studies director Chae-Jin Lee, the group included 33 KU faculty, graduate students, alumni and friends. (See account of this trip in my letter to the Lawrence Journal World, below.)
This trip to China was fantastic, the opportunity to see so many places we’d only read about, and experience a country that had been closed to foreigners for years. Because so many in our group were China specialists, the KU Center for East Asian Studies asked participants to submit articles for a monograph, China Omnibus (downloadable as pdf), published in 1983. This small volume contains scholarly articles, accounts of our trip, photographs, poetry, and fiction.
The article by Carol Shankel was originally published on the Lawrence Journal World on June 20, 1982.
Zhengzhou, People’s Republic of China – Henan provincial officials welcomed members of the archaeological study tour from Kansas University at a banquet on June 3 at the Zhengzhou guest house. Ji Cuiping, deputy director of the China International Travel Service and Del Shankel, tour leader, exchanged toasts and pledged friendship between the people of Henan Province and the state of Kansas.
On June 4 tour members visited Dahe Village, site of an archaeological excavation located in a farming area just north of the city of Zhengzhou. The excavation, in progress since 1972, is one of the most important neolithic sites in China. Artifacts over 6,000 years old have been found, and further work at deeper levels may yield even older objects. Shards of ancient pottery lie scattered on the ground in the vicinity of the site.
During a visit to Zhengzhou University, tour members met with faculty and students and visited the archaeological museum on the campus. KU professors Shankel, Chae-jin Lee and Chu-tsing Li met with President Fan Daoyuan to discuss the official faculty-student exchange between the two universities, which will be implemented later this year. President Fan and other administrators were hosts to KU representatives at a midday banquet.
The 34-member study group arrived in Shanghai May 30. While at the coastal city they visited Fudan University, the Shanghai Museum and other cultural cites, as well as the Pengpu Peoples’ Commune, which specializes in growing vegetables. They travelled by overnight train to Kaifeng, a capital city in China during seven ancient dynasties. There they visited the Fan Pagoda and the Iron Pagoda, architectual monuments dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries, and other sites of cultural and historical interest.
The tour continued in the area along the Yellow River, cradle of Chinese civilization, in Anyang, Luoyang, Gongxian, Dengfeng and Sian for the next eleven days. On June 14, tour members flew to Beijing to visit sites in and around the capital city for four days before the tour officially ended.
University of Kansas Cultural Research Tour to China in 1984
In 1984 the South China Cultural Research Tour, a group of 30 KU professors, alumni and friends, flew to Hong Kong and traveled by train to Guangzhou. China International Travel helped us with visits to Guilin, Yangshuo, Hangzhou, Wuxi, Zhenjiang, Yangzhou, Nanjing, and Shanghai. Having been open to western tourists for a few years, China was now really prepared for visitors. We were shown factories—w/shops—a jade carving factory, a silk factory, a sandalwood fan factory, a mahogany factory, a clay figurine factory, a lacquerware factory, an antique store, and lots of arts and crafts shops. We visited gardens, temples, tombs, pagodas, museums, even a silkworm farm, and we attended performances—song and dance, and acrobats.
A traffic jam at an intersection on the Grand Canal provided an unscheduled highlight—dozens of canal boats and barges jammed together trying to proceed in various directions, bumping against canal banks and each other, while men shouted instructions on who needed to move where to unsnarl what appeared to be an impasse. The busy Grand Canal was totally different from the peaceful Li River cruise earlier in our visit. Our 19 days in China were fantastic, filled with both busy and peaceful experiences.
Our Southwest China Cultural Tour in 1986 started in Beijing so participants on their first trip to China wouldn’t miss the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Imperial Palace and the Temple of Heaven.
We covered a lot of territory. From Beijing we flew on a military plane to Xi’an to see the excavation site of the Chin emperor’s terra cotta army, visited nearby sites, and were entertained by a Tang Dynasty music and dance troupe. From Xian we flew south to Kunming and traveled by bus to see and walk in the Stone Forest and hear performances by cultural minorities. Next a flight to Chengdu and a bus to Leshan, and a boat ride past the Great Buddha rising high above the river. We could climb the steps to the top. Next by bus to Mt. Emei and more walking. Back to Chengdu by train and a flight to Chongqing, and side trips by bus to Dazu and Baoding Village. Along the way we visited temples, towers, pagodas, markets, factories, a granary, the Yunnan provincial Museum, the Chengdu zoo, local sites, and had opportunities to climb steps, one time 500 steps to see Buddhist sculptures.
From Chongqing we boarded a boat to travel through the Yangtze Gorges, and a side trip through the Three Lesser Gorges of the Daning River on small boats. Our Yangtze River boat made stops at sites and cities along the way, and our tour culminated in Shanghai, where the last stop before the airport was the Friendship Store. This tour to Southwest China was beyond fabulous.
January 1988
After four China tours arranged by China Travel Bureau, I figured that I could manage a trip on my own. My daughter was studying in Japan, so as a present for her twenty-first birth we met in January of 1988 at the Hong Kong airport and flew to Guangzhou. We walked a lot, took public buses, visited street markets, and had some lessons about standing in line. At one location we seemed to be the only two persons waiting for a bus, it came into sight and suddenly dozens of people rushed from every building to crowd onto the bus.
Next we flew to Guilin and boarded a boat on the beautiful Li River to see karst mountains, riverside pagodas and pavilions, stop at the picturesque market at Yangshuo. We hired a taxi to take us to the Ming tombs. outside Guilin. I’d recently read about them in an art journal, they were scheduled to be renovated but not yet on the tourist circuit, so we two had the rare opportunity of wandering around an historic site empty of people.
We flew to Beijing, visited the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, took a taxi to the Great Wall, experiencing China as independent tourists, making hotel and travel arrangements as we went along.
North China Cultural Tour – 1988
For the fourth trip that we organized for KU staff and friends, we spent three days visiting the must-see sites in and around Beijing, including the Beijing zoo, acrobats, and a first – we were taken to the Mao Mausoleum to file past his remains. We rode the night train to Hohhot, visited the grasslands, stayed in a yurt “motel” and had the opportunity to ride camels, watch horse racing and wrestling. Another night train to Datong where we visited the spectacular Yungang Caves and the stunning Hanging Temple. We returned to Beijing by night train and soon enjoyed a different mode of transportation – a cable car to the peak of Mt. Tai., one of the nine sacred mountains of China. Next, to Qufu to see Confucius birthplace; another night train to Wuxi, and a boat on the Grand Canal to Suzhou. Along the way we toured all kinds of craft factories – silk, wood, porcelain, carpet; visited temples and pagodas, museums, gardens, markets, and agricultural commune, and finally in Shanghai a Children’s Palace and more acrobats, and of course, the Friendship Store.
Our four group tours provided opportunities to see many of the historic sites of China, as well as tremendous changes that we observed each two years. We especially noted a greater degree of openness, the proliferation of busy outdoor markets, changes in style (girls wearing miniskirts and knee socks!). Our KU poet wrote that tall construction cranes rising above city landscapes bowed to ancient pagodas.
