"All the bridges I have built are my children and I love them all", Man-Chung Tang, foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering said that recently in an exclusive interview with People's Daily Online. Tang was one of the fifty winners of the Friendship Award of 2008.
The Friendship Award, set up in 1991, is China's highest award for foreign experts who have made outstanding contributions to China's economic and social progress.
In June 2000, Dr. Tang was elected as a Foreign Member to the Chinese Academy of Engineering. The Chinese Academy of Engineering is the highest honorary and advisory organization for engineering and technology in China-an election to the Academy is considered the highest title and life-long honor an engineer can receive in China.
China should have stricter regulation and supervision to ensure the quality of bridges.
When asked about China's technology on bridge engineering compared to the western world, Dr. Tang said that whatever the American or the European can do, China can do. And China can produce the same construction material. The main difference is about quality. China has built a lot of bridges in the last 20 years. In China, some people don’t have the strive for quality. One problem is the lacking of regulation to enforce the quality. The second problem Tang said was the inspection or supervision on bridge construction: both in design, and construction.
Chinese students lacking creativity and flexibility
As Tang said Chinese engineer are very good engineers. They learn a lot in the universities, and can do a lot analyses. The thing Chinese students lack are creativity and flexibility.
In china, there are too many examinations, which test students what they learn, but don't test what they don't learn in the classes. Everybody is trying to read the book very carefully, but then they don't teach them how to create new ideas, how to be innovative. They don't teach them things other than the main course.
"Most today's bridges in China are just the copies of the bridges in the western world. Very few are Chinese made." Tang said.
Tang has established a scholarship for the poor students in Chongqing, and 32 students this year took it. He said the purpose of the scholarship was to spread a message, 'just the score is not enough, they have to think.'
By People's Daily Online
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