This past October, a group of law librarians had a rare privilege to visit China, as law librarians, with the express goal of learning about Chinese legal bibliography and their legal system. Over the course of about ten days, from October 24 to November 3, we visited three universities, a public library, and two publishing houses. Below is an account of our trip compiled from our group journal written while we on the road. An online version of the journal and many more pictures can be found at http://theleiters.net/China.
The visit was arranged and facilitated by the People to People International, Citizen Ambassadors Program, headquartered in Spokane, Washington. If you haven’t heard of the organization, please check out their website at www.ptpi.org. As stated in their website, “The purpose of People to People International is to enhance international understanding and friendship through educational, cultural and humanitarian activities involving the exchange of ideas and experiences directly among peoples of different countries and diverse cultures.” People to People International sponsors a number of different varieties of programs, from student visits and exchanges to professional ones. Ours was a professional program comprised of ten law librarians from academic, private, and public libraries.
The “Legal Research and Library Science Professional Delegation,” consisted of the following librarians:
Richard Leiter served as the leader of the program, stepping in for the late Roy Mersky of the University of Texas.
Most of the delegation met up in Los Angeles International and braced for the fourteen and a half hour flight to Hong Kong. Two days later (including crossing the International Date Line), the entire delegation met up at the fabulous Kunlun Hotel, Beijing.
The first day in Beijing consisted of a day-long orientation. The morning segment was a four-hour walk through Chinese history by our country guide. It was fascinating not only in that it demonstrated to us just how little we westerners know about Chinese history, but it was fascinating to learn that the Chinese view their country as very young, while at the same time relishing the great history of their culture. I also found it fascinating that the younger generation of Chinese (that we were exposed to any way) didn’t see their country as totalitarian or even primarily Communist. Our country guide insisted that modern China was democratic with eight political parties, each with representation in the congress.
The afternoon consisted of a lecture about the history of the Chinese legal system and legal education by Dr. Xie Zengyi, Associate Professor from the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Science. Dr Xie traced the history of the modern Chinese legal system to the adoption of the modern constitution in the late 1970’s. The specter of watching a legal system develop in support of such a huge, developing and booming economy is fascinating, and, my impression was from the citizens and scholars that we visited was that they were daunted by the prospect and take it very seriously.
In the course of Dr. Xie’s talk, some of our questions were about procedures and processes for publishing and distributing records of the Congress, the courts, and various rule-making bodies. Some of the questions clearly caught Dr. Xie off-guard, especially when we inquired about the challenges of a young lawyer or small firm to get access to legal materials. Legal history of China is so short at this point, that they haven’t yet had to deal with the horrendous challenges of volume that Western, especially American, lawyers have to deal with. At this point, Chinese lawyers are dealing with only many dozens of volumes of materials and a very robust online publishing market, lead by ChinaLawInfo.com.
The next day, the group visited three significant institutions of the Beijing legal academy and legal publishing: the headquarters of ChinaLawInfo.com (CLI.com), Peking University Law Library, and China University of Political Science and Law Press.
The delegation was welcomed at the headquarters of CLI.com and given a thorough introduction to the service by the Vice President and several staff members. The product itself is very good and growing at an amazing rate. But one of the most interesting things about CLI.com is that it is apparently a product owned and managed by the faculty of Peking University School of Law. The president of the company is Prof Wang Jin, a professor of Environmental Law at Peking University School of Law, and he indicated that the Vice President of the company essentially runs CLI.com, and that his position is one primarily of oversight on behalf of the faculty. CLI.com is located at the very edge of campus in the heart of a bustling commercial district, on the top floor of a ten-story building. The ground floor is a veritable flea market of electronic merchants.
Later in the morning we drove through campus to the Peking University School of Law. The campus was stunning with a remarkable combination of new and old buildings and a beautiful lake. We met the law library director, Ye Yuang Sheng, who was clearly thrilled to show a group of law librarians her library. The group hit it off immediately. When we asked about challenges she faces, we were surprised by her answer: in preparation for the Olympics, the Chinese Olympic Committee chose to build the Table Tennis Gymnasium next to the law school. When the gymnasium was finished, the Committee decided that the law library was too close and summarily chopped off about half the library’s space - with a promise to replace the building in 2010. (And we think we have space problems… .)
That afternoon we visited China University of Political Science and Law (CUPSL) and we assumed that we would visit the law library, but we ended up with a meeting of the Editor and his entire executive staff of the CUPSL Press. There were also a number of lawyers in attendance. One of their projects is publishing the American Law Series, with titles by Dworkin, MacKinnon, and many others. [See accompanying list.] An editorial committee of Chinese and U.S. scholars surveyed Chinese law firms on what they needed and made recommendations of titles, of which 60 are now published. They also translate legal treatises from many other countries, especially Germany, France, and Japan. Their theoretical treatises are all digitized and on the web, and can be downloaded for a price. The educational materials are primarily in print form for students.
The law librarian of CUPSL spoke about online access that they have for faculty and students. It was perhaps surprising for our delegation to learn that Westlaw, Lexis, and HeinOnline are all available there.
After discussion of law firm libraries in the U.S. as compared to the “resource rooms” in Chinese law firms, the group exchanged gifts and posed for ceremonial photographs.
After a day of sight-seeing, during which we covered Tianamen Square, the Forbidden City and The Great Wall (seriously, we saw it all in one day!), we took a travel day to go to Shanghai, one of the most cosmopolitan and populous in China. A stunning city of 22 million people, Shanghai presents a world of contrasts, from the Old Town section, that the people call “China Town,” to the Bund and the French Concession to the remarkable shopping district on Nanking Street, it provides a full spectrum of experience of the modern, cosmopolitan China.
We had one full day of meetings with counterparts in Shanghai, and the day was full of surprises. Our first stop was at East China Normal University (ECNU). The director of the library, Huang Xiuwen, had representatives from several departments on hand, including Administration, Data/IT, Reading Room, Reference, and Research.
ECNU was established in 1951 as a teacher training university. The library consists of four million books in paper and over one million electronic books, with an Asian collection of 330 thousand volumes! The Asian collection consists of many materials published before 1911, the oldest being over 1000 years old. The library of ECNU is ranked as the third largest library in Shanghai and ninth largest library in China. Supporting the curriculum of the university, the library provides traditional and digital/online services for thirty thousand students and all performed with 230 library employees (professional and non-professional) including nine reference librarians. Fifty percent of the library collection is in closed stacks. ECNU offers undergraduate, graduate, and PhD degrees in numerous subject areas including law, library management, and other information majors. Several dozens of ECNU graduates of their library school programs are currently employed by ECNU, Peking University, and many local libraries. The ECNU Library has a popularity problem: Seating is at a premium, and students come early to the library because if they do not there is no place for them to sit. The circulation numbers are staggering: 600,000 to 700,000 books are borrowed each year!
Our tour of the library included a visit to the rare books room and a delightful visit with the rare book librarian. When asked why the old materials in the collection don’t have leather bindings, he looked wide-eyed and responded that “the Chinese thought that it would be a horrible waste to kill all those animals just to cover books.” As a consequence, ancient Chinese books are printed on rice-paper and tied with twine and covered in stiff paper bindings which are considered consumable. Therefore, rare book preservation is largely a routine part of library maintenance in China.
That afternoon, the delegation visited the Shanghai Public Library. The group was greeted by the library director, Dr. Wu Jianzhong in a large conference room. The present public library was built in 1996 and has 83,000 square meters (roughly 270,000 square feet) in floor space. The inspiration for the Shanghai public library was American libraries. There are reading rooms, research carrels, exhibition halls, seminar rooms, and audio-visual rooms. The library is open every day of the year and has approximately 9 million visitors a year. It has 50.95 million items including ancient artifacts and manuscripts. The majority of the collection is in closed stacks, but the library is equipped with a cybernated book-carrier which allows delivery of resources kept in the closed stacks from the 6th to the 23rd floors to readers at the counter on the first floor in less than 20 minutes.
As our trip drew to an end, we were met by several important realities. First, ten days is not nearly enough to see China. To truly experience the culture, see its wonders, and understand its modern development would require a lifetime. Second, a visit to China of any duration is worth every minute. It is remarkable to see a gigantic country that is so young striving to enter the “first world.” As it is now, it is a country filled with enormous potential with feet firmly planted in both the “third” and “second” worlds. It is more than a question of prosperity or politics; the people are striving to build a country that is technologically advanced and provides opportunity and security for its citizens. It is a thrill to watch the rapid economic, technological, and political transformation happen at such a rapid pace and on such an enormous scale.
Third, we came face to face with the prospect of that fourteen hour plane ride. Despite the dread, it was our only way home, and left us all with a strong melancholy about having to leave: on the one hand we were ready to come home after many days of meetings and “travelings,” on the other we all wanted to stay longer, see more sites, eat more wonderful food, and learn more about China, that country that’s been such a mystery to us all.
