Building China's Field of Dreams

The grass

 

China presents its own challenge when it comes to growing grass.

It’s a climate thing. MSU Professor John “Trey” Rogers has consulted meteorologists, looking for an analogy to a United States venue. Indeed, there are similarities – its hot summers are Kansas City, Mo., but it turns frigid in the winter. Then there’s the heavy rain that can come, making it seem more like Miami.

“We asked them to compare the climate in Beijing to someplace in the United States, and their answer was no, they couldn’t,” Rogers said. “Beijing has the most challenging climate I’ve ever seen for growing grass. The weather there is just brutal.”

There’s also the language barrier, adding an interesting twist to the consulting role. The other managers on the project speak English, and there are translators, but even so it’s hardly a seamless flow of information.

Rogers and doctoral student Alec Kowalewski went to Beijing in September to help get the field started, then Kowalewski stayed until October to watch the grass grow – hardly the metaphor for dullness the cliché suggests.

The months building the field – assembling the modules, filling them with pea stones for drainage and soil, inserting removable collars to stabilize the root zone until it can hold its own, then seeding it with Kentucky bluegrass – was a time of negotiation, of compromise, and learning on both sides.

This is literally the laying of the groundwork. The seeds germinated within two weeks, covering the vast expanse with a light mist of green. The grass took root, and then went dormant for the winter.

In Beijing, Kowalewski couldn’t walk past an athletic field – and the group toured plenty – without kneeling to pluck a bit of grass. It seemed to speak to him – about its condition, its pedigree, its invaders.

“The plants and weeds here in China are the same ones we have in Michigan,” Kowalewski said. “Even though everything is so different, the plant biology is very similar to Michigan.”

Kowalewski returned in May to help manage the day-to-day growing of the turf. Rogers returned in August to help install the portable field before competition started in Beijing National Stadium.

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