It is an autumn afternoon with a gentle breeze. The warm sun shines above Hengqin Mountain, bathing the construction site of the new University of Macau (UM) campus in shades of gold.

As soon as I step onto the construction site, I am greeted by deafening pile drivers and towering cranes. Large construction vehicles pass by me continuously, sending the dust flying. Looking at the hustle and bustle, I feel as if I were in an embryonic city where everything is yet to be built, pulsing with vigorous vitality and making you look forward to the day when it is finally built.

A Durable Campus Begins with a Solid Foundation

It is hard to imagine that a little more than two years ago, the land I now stand on was still overgrown with plantain plants and weeds, lying quietly beside what was once an ancient battle ground. The decisive day that would forever change the face of this land—and the destiny of UM—came on 27 June 2009, when the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress approved the new campus bill. Upon learning the great news, UM’s University Council Chair Dr. Tse Chi Wai, UM Rector Wei Zhao, who took office just several months before, and numerous top management personnel of the university, trudged through this virgin land many times with their trousers rolled up, excitedly envisioning the day when UM can finally have a decent campus.

You have to visit the campus site in person to feel its vastness. Stretching before your eyes is unobstructed view of approximately one square kilometre, twenty times larger than the current campus. A leisurely walk from the south to the north takes about twenty minutes. One year from now, approximately eighty inter-connected buildings with a consistent style will be completed, and roads inside the campus will measure 150,000 square metres. It is no exaggeration to say that constructing the new campus is like constructing a new city, because a multitude of tasks, including landscaping; construction of roads, overpasses, the undersea tunnel, and living facilities; transportation design; installation of fire-fighting and telecommunication systems; design of water, electricity and gas supply; application of information technology; and establishment of police stations and fire stations; need to be performed from scratch.

A durable campus begins with a solid foundation. That’s why among all the tasks mentioned above, foundation reinforcement takes precedence.

To ensure that the campus has a foundation solid enough to resist floods, construction workers spent almost a year building up the level of the land by three metres with quality earth and sand sourced from nearby regions, and in the process, more than 26,000 truckloads and 1,000 shiploads of earth and sand, as well as nearly 200 dredges, bulldozers, earth transportation vehicles and excavators were used. The total length of the more than 24,500 reinforced concrete piles, used for the purpose of reinforcing the soft subsoil, is about 1,000,000 metres, which equals the height of 110 Mount Everests.

These figures very well give us an idea of the enormous human and material resources contributed to this huge project.

Overcoming Numerous Challenges

It would be difficult to complete the construction of the new campus within three years without sufficient vision, planning, intelligence, decisiveness and perseverance. Among the many challenges, the trickiest are recruiting sufficient construction workers and addressing the legal differences between Macao and mainland China as well as different standards of weights and measures. To ensure that the project can be completed on schedule and with high quality, the Macao SAR government, which is the owner of the new campus, set up a special three-tier structure, headed by Secretary for Transport and Public Works of Macao SAR Lau Si Io, Chief of the Office of the Secretary for Transport and Public Works of Macao SAR Wong Chan Tong, and Assistant Coordinator of the Infrastructure Development Office of Macao SAR Chau Vai Man, respectively, to coordinate efforts related to the construction of the new campus.

Aware that the new campus is a significant undertaking for not just UM, but also Macao as a whole, UM has carefully handled every procedure, in order to avoid any mishaps. Not long after the release of the new campus plan, UM set up a new campus project (NCP) management team that comprises UM’s top management, representatives of UM staff, students and alumni, as well as external advisors, in order to be fully prepared for relocation, budgeting and human resource allocation. Throughout the process, from the planning stage to the construction period, the local governments of Macao SAR and Guangdong as well as UM’s NCP management team have cooperated closely and approached this landmark project in China’s higher education history with an open mind and in an innovative fashion.

Looking across at the construction site from Coloane, you can see that the central classroom building and the central library, two landmarks on the new campus, are beginning to take shape. The main structures have been built, and the two buildings are expected to be completed and receive final inspection in mid-2012. Foundation construction or construction of the main structures of the basements for the other independent buildings, including the eight faculties, the twelve residential colleges, the central administrative building, the university hall, the guesthouse, the student activity centre, the dormitories for postgraduate students and teaching staff, the sports complex, the research base, and the central business zone, are expected to be completed and receive final inspection between August and October 2012. Landscaping works are expected to be finished by October 2012. The 500-metre-long undersea tunnel connecting Macao and the new campus is now undergoing the last-stage cofferdam-joining works. To accomplish these tasks on schedule and to complete the construction of the new campus by December 2012, approximately 10,000 construction workers are now working in sync around the clock.

Quantum Leap

Athletes, artists and scientists often have the feeling that it often takes years of effort before they can finally achieve a major breakthrough, or a sort of qualitative change. There is a phenomenon in Quantum Physics known as “Quantum Leaps”, which states, in layman’s terms, that many things change not in the form of a straight line, but rather in the form of a series of straight lines followed by a sudden leap. If we liken UM’s steady development over the past thirty years to a series of straight lines, then the unprecedented opportunity brought by the new campus will likely serve as a catalyst for a “quantum leap” . In anticipation of the day when the said “quantum leap” materializes, UM must prepare, by, among other things, establishing a unique, sound, and forward-looking teaching system and quality student training plan, in order to sustain future development and nurture extraordinary graduates. Perhaps that is why over the past more than two years, Rector Wei Zhao has reformed the undergraduate curriculum, established the Honours College, introduced a residential college system, and implemented a new “4-in-1” pedagogical model that consists of discipline-specific education, general education, research and internship education, and community and peer education. These sound systems and a soon-to-be new campus will no doubt give UM full confidence to conduct whole-person education and to produce future leaders.　

After UM relocates to the new campus, the number of faculties will increase from the present six to between eight and ten. The additions will include a faculty of social sciences and a faculty of arts, which will be spun off from the existing Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, as well as at least one new faculty, concerning health sciences. With these new faculties, a greater variety of disciplines will be available. Apart from new faculties, there will also be ten residential colleges on the new campus. Implementation of a residential college system indicates UM’s endeavor to follow the international practice of world-class universities, and will certainly give new momentum to whole-person education. The interactive and caring environment created within the residential colleges will also facilitate non-formal education and benefit the students’ growth in an immeasurable way.

Hailed as an educational landmark which reflects the “One Country, Two Systems” policy and which represents a new mode of cooperation between Guangdong and Macao, the new campus has from the beginning attracted widespread attention from both at home and abroad, and has also raised expectations that it will act as a catalyst for UM to realize a “quantum leap”. Some four hundred days from now, this long-dreamed-of new campus will stand up tall and dazzling, ushering in an era where new brilliant chapters will be added to UM’s history.

06/03/2012