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I had the pleasure of traveling to China from October 7 to 21, 2006. I was invited by Dr. Bian Xiuju, Professor and Director of the Turfgrass Research Institute in the College of Agronomy at the Agricultural University of Hebei (pronounced: Ho-bay, abbreviated AUH). I was introduced to Dr. Bian by an important member of my research team, Dr. Zhang (Turfgrass Physiology Research Scientist). Dr. Bian was spending 6 months in the US studying turfgrass science with Dr. Huang at Rutgers in the spring of 2006 and contacted Dr. Zhang to visit Virginia Tech and learn more about our turfgrass practices in the Transition Zone. Dr. Zhang received his master's degree from AUH and so was familiar with Dr. Bian. We hosted Dr. Bian for 1 month's study from May to June of 2006. While at Virginia Tech we learned that the climate of Virginia and that of the Hebei province were similar, with tall fescue, Kentucky bluegrass, zoysiagrass and buffalograss being the best adapted turfgrasses in various regions of Hebei. However, no bermudagrasses were currently being used. In June 2006, we therefore set up a collaborative research project to evaluate cold-hardy bermudagrasses for sports turf use in Hebei. My visit to Hebei to lecture at AUH and tour golf courses arose from these interactions.

The capital of China, Beijing, is in the N-central portion of the Hebei province, while Hebei is in N-central China with mountains to the west and the China Sea on the east. Hebei's temperature profile from north to south is comparable to Pennsylvania down through Virginia. It is much drier than the US east coast receiving only about 20 inches of precipitation annually with the majority falling during their hot, humid summer rainy season. Freezing temperatures persist longer over their winters, but their lowest temperatures, on average, are not below what we experience in Blacksburg.

I left the US on a Saturday and after a non-stop 13-hr flight from Chicago arrived in Beijing on Sunday afternoon and was driven to Baoding (population ~10M). AUH (25,000 students) is in Baoding (ba-ding) about 70 miles south of Beijing. One of the first things I noticed is that their expressways are quite new and easy to travel with two lanes on each side, driving on the right side, and speed limits similar to our own. Roadsides consist of buffalograss or tall fescue and often 4-10 rows of poplar or willow trees on each side. In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics many of the road signs were in both Chinese and English, with extensive greenways on both sides of the road. An immediate difference was that many slow trucks loaded down with farm products were allowed on the expressways with many car drivers passing on the shoulder as needs be.

Sunday night I was treated to a fancy meal at the 4-star hotel I was staying at with Dr. Bian, her husband, and her 17-yr-old son. As an invited Visiting Professor I paid for my airfare to China with all other costs covered by their university. The Chinese are wonderful hosts providing VIP treatment for the duration of my stay. Perhaps I was treated so well because Dr. Bian's husband is one of the university's Vice Presidents. Her son was very well spoken and familiar with US culture. English is now taught as a primary subject in all Chinese schools and I found that it was the 12-18 yr-olds who had the best spoken English. China is currently experiencing its Baby-Boomer generation with their largest high school class ever set to graduate in May 2007. As a result, competition to score well on the college entrance exam is fierce. During my stay, many of the faculty members I had dinner with brought their children. During our interactions I was struck by how mature they seemed, expressing self-imposed realizations that they must study very hard or they would not be placed properly in college.

On Monday morning we visited our seeded bermudagrass variety trial that was planted in early July. Riviera and Yukon had established well and are expected to be the best-adapted cultivars. Dr. Bian also collected 4 naturalized bermudagrass ecotypes from around Baoding and established them from stolons this summer (Picture 1. Dr. Bian and graduate student standing on their naturalized selections of bermudagrass showing differences in the rate of spread). Two of these ecotypes filled in quickly and, along with the seeded types, will be established next year in larger blocks and tested for wear tolerance.

On Monday afternoon I gave my first lecture to Dr. Bian's undergraduate turfgrass management class: "Turfgrass Industry and History, a US Perspective". The 200-seat classroom was standing room only! I was told enrollment was only about 190, so I assume many extra students showed up to view the American Professor (picture 2, Dr. Bian and Dr. Ervin). The turfgrass program AUH is less than 5 years old, even though it is the oldest agricultural university in China, founded in 1902. Interest in turfgrass has skyrocketed recently as the Chinese government has opened their economy to world trade, pushed tourism, funded a greening of the urban landscape, and has prepared to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

During the rest of the week I gave one or two lectures a day (including the last 2 on Saturday!) to either the undergraduate or graduate student turfgrass classes. During my Power Point presentations I spoke clearly and slowly, stopping after each slide to have Dr. Bian translate. Each class session lasted two hours. My lecture titles were: Turfgrass Adaptation and Use for the Chinese Transition Zone; Major Advances in Turfgrass Research since 1960; Environmental Impacts of Turfgrass Management; Soccer Sports Field Construction and Management; Turfgrass Management for Golf Courses; and Using PGRs Effectively.

Another interesting difference between our program and theirs is that the university administration has given Dr. Bian and her students the responsibility to establish and maintain the turfgrass areas on at least half of the west campus (with a $12,000/yr budget!). This campus is less than 4 years old (the older, East campus, is across town), with a few buildings still being built. On one-half of the campus entrance lawn they established Kentucky bluegrass, while tall fescue was planted on the other side.

The varieties planted are all from Jacklin Seed as they appear to have entered the market first. As with most of us they prefer the quality of Kentucky bluegrass. However, they quickly discovered its Achilles Heel in their hot, humid summer climate: Summer Patch. They have also established perennial ryegrass on some lawns. They initially liked its fast establishment, fine texture and dark color, but found it had very poor persistence through their summers. With little knowledge of diseases and no fungicide availability, they have grudgingly accepted that tall fescue will have to be their main cool-season grass. Sound familiar?

As opposed to the US, they have no tradition of having lawns and have little experience with everyday tasks such as mowing. As such, they asked me to give them a "mowing lesson" where we discussed concepts such as mowing height, frequency, string trimming, clipping return, blade sharpness, proper fertilization, and PGR use (picture 3, Dr. Ervin discussing proper mowing techniques and quality of cut on this tall fescue area with the AUH turfgrass graduate students given the responsibility of maintaining the campus entrance lawns). Success in establishing and maintaining this dense, unirrigated tall fescue lawn can most likely be attributed to their excellent soil preparation where organic matter was evenly incorporated prior to planting.

During the second week of my trip we visited the Emperor's tombs, an Ancient Lotus Pond Garden (picture 4, Ancient Lotus Pond in Baoding) golf courses, Beijing, and the Great Wall. The Lotus Garden was 700 years old and the former site of a College of Classical Learning for the nobility.

While the Lotus Pond was beautiful, I keyed on the invasive stand of buffalograss (picture 5, Buffalograss lawn at the Ancient Lotus Pond Garden in Baoding) brought from the US and used as an unirrigated and unmown lawn and the bermudagrass growing out of one of the limestone formations (picture 6, Naturalized or invasive bermudagrass on the south-facing side of this limestone structure at the Ancient Lotus Garden.)

I visited 5 golf courses, three in Tianjin and two in Beijing. Tianjin is a large (population ~10M) industrial city on the east coast. Here I toured a course being grown in with Alpha creeping bentgrass greens, tees, and fairways and tall fescue rough. The group building and establishing this golf course works extensively with Peter Thompson (famous Australian golfer) as architect and associated LCW Golf Design. This area was ideal for a golf course with an open parkland setting and sandy soils that they improved by incorporating composted manure. On the day of my visit it was foggy and about 65 degrees and we found a small area of non-spreading pythium blight on one of the bentgrass fairways. All of China has less than 300 golf courses, but the ones being built are being done to western standards. The Yangliuqing Golf Club also consisted of an older 18 holes with zoysia fairways, bluegrass tees and roughs, and bentgrass greens. We then drove to another 36-hole bentgrass-fairway links-style facility (Fortune Lake Golf Club) that was established by placing an 8-inch sand cap over the native salt-affected soil (picture 7, Links-style Fortune Lake Golf Club showing a female worker hand watering the tall fescue rough. The native "salt-scrub" vegetation is seen on the left). Even with a clean deep-well water source, salt evaporation into the surface soil was causing some salt-damaged areas on the putting greens. I worked with them to diagnose a salt-related disease problem on these greens most likely caused the pathogen associated with Rapid Blight. See this link for a discussion of this problem.

Beijing (population ~30M) is in the north of the province and has a cooler climate. Here we visited one 36-hole bentgrass-fairway golf course under construction next to the Olympic Park and I played at a very nice Kentucky bluegrass-fairway golf course, Dragon Woods Golf Club. Labor crews for each 18-hole facility consist of about 70, with a lot of mowing, watering, and weeding done by hand. They have adequate, modern equipment with John Deere being the dominant supplier. On the day that I played they were topdressing, brushing, and rolling the greens (stimp of about 10). They were also sweeping leaves and coring fairways. The superintendent walked about 6 holes with me and another turf professor (Dr. Xiang) from China Agricultural University. Our main topic of discussion was how to deal with dollar spot on the fairways without the use of fungicides (as few to none are specifically labeled for turfgrasses yet in China). Generic paclobutrazol is both cheap and available so we discussed its regular use for dollar spot suppression along with small amounts of foliar N as a tank-mix. After getting the point across that 0.1 to 0.2 pounds of N at each spraying would not substantially override the mowing reduction effects of paclobutrazol, but would help the bluegrass to better outgrow the dollar spot, I think I convinced him to give it a try.

Golf in China is presently only for tourists and for the emerging rich. As such, courses are not crowded. As with many Asian countries, there remains a strong British influence and this has carried over to walking with the use of caddies being required. The interesting twist is that all caddies are lovely 18-22 yr olds who caddy as their main vocation (picture 8, From left to right: superintendent, Dr. Xiang, our two caddies, and Dr. Bian).

My caddy was a recent high school graduate who either chose to not attend college or was not given the chance due to her class status or family income level. Her English was limited to "putter", "driver", and "140 yards, etc." Lucky for me, she was very adept at giving correct yardages and at pointing out the proper line. I only confused her once when I chose to putt from off the fringe with a 5-wood instead of chipping with my wedge: obviously a Tiger Woods shot that she had not seen played before! After a quick morning 18 we had lunch on the 4th floor of the clubhouse where I shot this overhead view of the course (picture 9).

The last big event of my trip was a visit to the Great Wall (picture 10, The Badaling section of the Great Wall snaking along the mountain ridge-tops. Guard towers are spaced every 500 meters along all 4000 miles of the wall). The literal translation of its name is the Long Wall. Both are very apt as the wall is a little over 4000 miles long and wide enough for 2 horses to gallop side by side. We visited the most popular section near Badaling, about one hour north of Beijing. The Great Wall literally snakes like a Dragon's tail along the ridge of the mountains historically forming a barrier to invasion from the north (picture 11, A crowded Great Wall on a beautiful autumn day). Almost completely finished over 2000 years ago and improved during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), it is amazing to contemplate the engineering and human suffering that went into its completion!

Look for more "Turf in China" updates from the VT Turfgrass Team as at least four of us travel to Beijing this summer for the 2nd International Sports Turf Research Conference. We also plan to continue our bermudagrass research collaborations and co-author a Chinese Sports Turf textbook with Dr. Bian in 2007.