Lanzhou Jiaotong University 兰州交通大学

So, today I will be writing about the university I'll be teaching at. It's called Lanzhou Jiaotong University, and I actually have a video talking about it!

This last trip I took to China in June, I was able to visit there a couple of times, so I've got some pictures and some video of it, so here it is!

Lanzhou Jiaotong ("Gee-Ow Tong") University is a former railway institute/college, as evidenced by the train heads located right here. They don't work, but they are sort of the symbol of the school. It is mostly known for its engineering and transportation majors/concentrations, but has a rapidly expanding foreign language department.

English, Japanese, Russian, French, Spanish, and more - I'm not exactly sure how many languages are there. At least the 4.

They actually have whole block of buildings dedicated to foreign teachers housing right here.

See that writing? That says:

"FOREIGN TEACHER'S HOUSING."

How segregated is that?! Haha

Yes, China usually puts all their foreign teachers together on campus. That's pretty much the way the universities do things. China hasn't quite gotten to the point where having foreigners in their countries is no big deal. It's still a big deal. Foreigners are often segregated and watched pretty regularly, but that's because there's not many of us and they're not quite sure how to deal with us yet. Give them some time - things will get better.

The school is located on the north side of the Yellow River in a district called Anning - unfortunately, it's not as close to the "downtown" area of Lanzhou...whatever that means in China. Everywhere is downtown. It's about 40-45 minutes from the areas that used to take me 10-15 minutes to get to. That's unfortunate, but I'm sure Anning will eventually become home.

Anyway, about the school - it's got a pretty good reputation in Lanzhou at least....people seem to be really impressed that I'll be working there, so I assume it's a strong school that has fine students.

I actually shared a cab with a guy who was a train driver/conductor or whatever you want to call it who actually graduated from Jiao Da (what people call it for short). Pretty cool!

As far as the campus itself goes, it's actually much bigger and the facilities themselves are much nicer than at Lanzhou University of Technology. Not that Lanzhou University of Technology is a crap school...it's just got character. LUT is an older school and doesn't have the funding that Jiao Da has. Plus it looks like Jiao Da has finished renovating recently. Things look newer, cleaner, and generally kept up better.

I'm pretty excited about my future with Lanzhou Jiaotong University - good times are ahead!

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I hope you liked this post! I'm going to be putting up another post about the process of becoming an English teacher in China. The idea really took hold when I read another "become a teacher in China" blog post, so maybe if I write my own post, someone will read it and be inspired. One can only hope, right?

Until next time!