We visited Mr. Yang Shou-guo’s school on the 16th.  We were due to return to Xian later that day.  I told Mr. Yang that I would arrive with my group in the early afternoon.  It so happened that 3 Spring Bud girls are attending that school.   At about 3:15 PM.,I was greeted by Mr. Yang, Party Secretary Qian, and 2 other teachers.  While the Spring bud delegation held their meeting with school officials, I visited with with Mr. Yang and his colleagues.  Frankly speaking, I was a little embarrassed by the “official” hospitality shown towards me.  As you might know, I had intended it to be a brief and personal visit.  But it was a nice meeting, and I was very impressed by what I saw.  The 2 labs, the SOAR Foundation Audio-visual Systems Lab and the SOAR Foundation Heating/Cooling Systems Lab, are situated across the hallway from each other.  In each lab, there are about dozen to 20 “stations”.  Currently the H/C Lab is not in use.  In the A/V Lab, each station can accommodate 2 students at one time.  The instructor has his own monitoring or evaluation station.  The students are able to detect up to 100 “problems”  and learn how to repair/solve each problem right there at the station.  The entire classroom set-up looks totally practical and functional, even to someone like me.  By the way, the classroom is well-lit, clean, and orderly.  Mr. Yang told me that currently there are about 600 students enrolled in the A/V Lab course.  The course duration is 3 months, and upon graduation students also get certification from the local labor department.  I don’t have the statistics, but it seems that graduates have been able to find jobs and therefore the labor dept. is giving its approval to the course.