Coming of Age

Tomorrow, I am going on my first ever "business trip" that didn't involve a Chinese train station. I'm going to State College, Pennsylvania with my boss to visit one of our customers, a scientific products distributor, and hopefully get some deals made.

According to some very reliable sources,

State College evolved from village to town to serve the needs of the fledgling Pennsylvania State College, founded as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania in 1855. Since then, the school has grown into a major university, renamed in 1953 The Pennsylvania State University. State College was incorporated as a borough on August 29, 1896 and has since grown with the university, sharing a symbiotic relationship. In 1973 State College adopted a home rule charter which took effect in 1976. The areas outside of State College are filled with historic towns and villages, immense tracts of farmland, and an expanse of mountains and forests.

The university has a post office address of University Park, Pennsylvania, which is sometimes a cause for confusion. When Penn State changed its name from College to University in 1953, its president, Milton S. Eisenhower, sought to persuade the town to change its name as well. A referendum failed to yield a majority for any of the choices for a new name, and so the town remains State College. After this, Penn State requested a new name for its on-campus post office in the Hetzel Union Building from the U.S. Post Office Department. The post office, which has since moved across a street to the McAllister Building, is the official home of zip code 16802 (University Park).

I doubt I'll get to see much of that historic tree-filled mountain farmland, or that zip-code hogging McAllister Building (does it rival Friley Hall?). I am realizing that this blackberry-business-card American coming of age thing doesn't lead to inspirational walks through real places with real people, but only to continental breakfast in business hotels and over-air-conditioned conference rooms. And I am starting to think I prefer my Chinese coming of age, where paying the phone bill meant a twenty minute walk and getting my electricity ration sometimes meant arguing with a man twice my age in a language I don't quite speak. Not only have I successfully completed that coming of age, I think I enjoyed the picking peanuts from the roots on a wooden bench with an old lady more than I will enjoy tomorrow night's steak and seafood dinner.