UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi told the story of Guling during the interview. (Photo by Mu Li/People’s Daily Online)

>A slide rule was shown to a delegation consisted of Chinese journalists as they met with faculty and students of the Physics Department in UC Davis recently.

This slide rule was presented to Professor Milton Gardner on his retirement in 1968 by the Student Engineering Society.People may get nothing from this strange gadget which equipped with hand crank and a plaque declaring Milton Gardner an “honorary engineer”. 

However, the story about Professor Gardner and his special bond with “Guling”, a Chinese resort town, witnesses the friendly exchange between China and the United States, as well as China and UC Davis. 

Guling is a centuries-old resort town in the mountains about 13 km from downtown Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, where Milton Gardner spent the first nine years of his childhood before moving back to the United Stated in 1911.

In his later years, Milton Gardner often spoke of the town “Guling”. Gardner’s widow, Elizabeth Gardner wanted to fulfill her husband`s wish to revisit his boyhood home. In 1992, now general secretary of the CPC Xi Jinping, who was the party chief of Fuzhou helped her arrange a visit there.

On February 15 , 2012, as Vice President of China, Xi Jinping recounted the touching story during his visit to the United States. And UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi was in the audience when Xi told the story. She later wrote to the Chinese leader, describing his account about Guling as "heartwarming and wonderful".
>Xi wrote back: "Amity between people is what underpins good relations between countries. I hope UC Davis will continue to support and promote China-US cultural and people-to-people ties, especially exchanges and cooperation in education, science and technology, and play an active role in building Sino-US friendship."

One year later, talking about what’s the significance of Guling Story for UC Davis, Linda Katehi said that it`s important to keep the story alive and help the two countries feel closely to each other. And it will also promote students from these two countries to have more communications. 

She said “Professor Gardner and Guling are representing an important time when we had somehow intertwined history .” she added that “That`s really a wonderful story because it shows how one can get connections and extent the relationship in a personal level but also eventually elevate it to political level.” 

Besides people-to-people exchanges, education also plays an important role in enhancing bilateral ties. During the interview, Linda Katehi said “ The best way to strengthen relationship between two countries is through education .”

She said that education can not only make people understand each other’s culture, language and history but also provide an opportunity to get experience. She said “Education is the best way opening opportunities to learn from each other and work together.