UGA
Official from China Leads Tour of Country's Remote Area
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Rongrong Liu, a program director at the University of
Georgia, took her first ride on a yak during a six-week
visit to China from which she returned to Athens on
July 7.
“We were at 7,000 feet above sea level on the way to Qinghai Lake,”
she told GlobalAtlanta of her opportunity to climb aboard and
hold a lamb at the same time.
Yaks are long-haired humped bovine that may be found throughout the
Himalayan region of south central Asia. While wild
yaks can be either brown or black, the domestic variety, such as the
one she rode, are generally white.
Originally from Beijing, Ms. Liu said that her visit to the
lake, which is located in the northern province of Qinghai,
was as exotic a locale for her as it was for the 12 faculty members
of the University of Georgia, state officials and four
students with whom she was traveling.
Ms. Liu, 27, is a program coordinator at the Carl Vinson
Institute of Government at UGA, as well as executive director of
the Georgia China Alliance, based in Atlanta.
She helped organize the tour to the cities of Beijing, Nanchang,
Tianjin and Xining on behalf of the institute’s International
Center for Democratic Governance where the professors taught
public administration classes to local Chinese officials for two
weeks in each city.
Besides her introduction to yak riding as part of a sightseeing
outing, Ms. Liu said that she was amazed about “how crazy” the
Chinese were about the 2006 World Cup Soccer tournament.
“Walking on the street at 4-5 a.m., you still could see fans
watching the big screen TVs in bars and restaurants. Probably most
of these Chinese had U.S. Eastern Standard Time sleeping schedules.”
She also was surprised, she said, by the new openness of Chinese
youth who appreciate “Super Girl,” the Chinese version of “American
Idol,” and are familiar with many U.S. hit songs.
Ms. Liu first arrived in Georgia in 2001 on a fellowship of
the Georgia Rotary Student Program, which she first
learned about in China through the Internet. Since then, she has
earned master’s degrees in economics and Internet technology
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