La Salle Senior Luke Bollerman Got to See a Side of China Most People Never See

Bollerman visiting the Great Wall of China.

When La Salle University senior Luke Bollerman wasn’t playing basketball in Shanghai with local college students, he ate some delicious donkey tongue, spoke with people who had never heard of the Tiananmen Square demonstration, and saw the world’s largest screw, nail, and fastener manufacturer. He rode around in golf carts exploring the dozen buildings, each bigger than a football field, that were the only ones in the world with a large enough supply to keep up with the demands of rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

“It was a life-changing event. To go there, see a different culture, a different lifestyle, a different pace of life,” said Bollerman, who traveled to China through a Syracuse University-based program. “I would look around, and I wasn’t stuck in my lifestyle.  It develops you as a person, as a citizen of the world.”

Before he began taking classes in mainland China in early June, Bollerman visited Hong Kong as tourist for a week. “It was really a good foundation to get started,” Bollerman said. He appreciated the diversity of Hong Kong, which up until 1997 was not under the rule of mainland China. A Pakistani man, who had lived there for 20 years, helped Bollerman understand the city. “He described it as a city of refugees,” Bollerman said. The style was more laid back, and people spoke Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. 

He noticed differences when he arrived in Shanghai: the people were more reserved, few spoke English, and the physical setting was different, too. “I felt the distance I traveled at that point,” said Bollerman, who is a political science major.

In Shanghai, the largest city in the country, Bollerman met the other students enrolled in the Syracuse program. They came from Turkey, Brazil, Thailand, Taiwan, and the United States to study international finance, the phenomenal growth of China’s economy, and the effects of that growth on the culture.

As part of their study, they traveled to businesses, financial institutions, and factories, such as General Motors, Shanghai Stock Exchange, Singapore Industrial Park, and that large screw, nail, and fastener producer. Bollerman saw a variety of companies, some that took care of their employees and some that didn’t. “You have low wages, no healthcare system, and working conditions that aren’t that great,” Bollerman said. He had heard about the poor work environment before, but seeing it in person, well, Bollerman said, “It’s beyond words on the page.”

Even their sightseeing trips were educational. Bollerman traveled to Beijing, the nation’s capital, and visited Tiananmen Square with a group of native Chinese students. When Luke and another American student mentioned the 1989 Tiananmen Square student demonstrations that were suppressed by the government, Bollerman said the Chinese students hadn’t heard about it. “They didn’t believe us,” he said. “They thought we were fooling them.”

His conversations with so many different people don’t really come as a surprise to anyone who knows him.  “He’s the kind of person who is easy to be comfortable with.  I got to know him very quickly,” said Richard Mshomba, an economics professor at La Salle. “He’s very hard working, very conscientious.”

Bollerman had some fun, too. When he wasn’t in class, he’d play basketball against some local college students.  They played on eight-foot rims, and according to Bollerman, he usually won. He tried every kind of food from donkey which is “very, very good” to scorpion on a stick, which “tasted like it looked.”

A graduate of Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, New Jersey, Bollerman is President of the Students’ Government Association, a member of the La Salle Ambassadors, Delta Sigma Phi fraternity, and Students in Free Enterprise.

After graduating this year, Bollerman is considering returning to China, and he encourages other students to travel to China, or Rome, or anywhere. Especially now, he said, “You’re not going to do it if you’re 40 years old.”

-- Ed Mahon