Despite the hardships, many participants later remembered the journey fondly, crediting it with broadening their worldview. For many urban intellectuals, it was their first direct encounter with China’s rural poverty. Wen Yiduo reflected: “In this difficult wartime, I do not consider walking thousands of li (里) a hardship. Before age 15, I lived in a traditional family, then studied at Tsinghua. After studying abroad, I returned to teach in cities, living a half-foreigner’s life, isolated from China’s vast countryside. Although I am Chinese, I have lived a dreamlike life and know very little about society and the people. Now it is time to know the motherland.” This journey planted the seeds of Wen’s political awakening; he was later assassinated in Kunming in 1946.

Many Chinese scholars studying abroad felt compelled to return and support wartime higher education. Among them was Hua Luogeng (华罗庚), later known as the father of modern Chinese mathematics, then a visiting scholar at Cambridge. Together with Cambridge graduates Wang Zhuxi (王竹溪) and Zhang Wenyu (张文裕), and Berlin University doctoral graduate Zhao Jiuzhang (赵九章), he traveled from London to Hong Kong by merchant ship, then to Saigon, and overland to Hanoi, before taking the Yunnan–Vietnam Railway to Kunming.

Ren Zhigong (任之恭), a physics professor at Lianda and later at Johns Hopkins University, wrote of early conditions in Kunming: “When the university was first established, there was nothing but people. Soon we obtained temporary residences, borrowed or rented. Once land was available, many thatched-roof houses were built for classrooms, dormitories, and offices.” Former students recalled dormitories where forty people crowded into a single thatched hut, with beds infested with bedbugs.

Kunming was not spared Japanese bombing. Residents learned to expect raids on sunny days. Lianda held classes from 7 to 10 a.m. and dismissed students during midday, when raids were most likely. In 1940, a bombing destroyed the teachers’ college along with many student dormitories and faculty homes.

Yet teachers and students persevered and tried to maintain normal life. They staged plays, held parties, dressed up, picnicked, and fell in love. Academically, many professors worked from memory because much of their reference material had been destroyed. Feng Youlan (冯友兰), for example, focused on translating English works into Chinese—tasks he could resume easily after air raids. Joseph Needham (李约瑟), the British historian of science, visited China during the war and observed in his China Report 1942–1946 that Lianda scientists continued research in makeshift laboratories, showing perseverance, courage, optimism, and intellectual openness in adversity.

Lianda’s greatness rested on its faculty, which included many of the 20^th century’s most important Chinese scholars. Among the best known were historians Chen Yinque (陈寅恪) and Qian Mu (钱穆); writers Shen Congwen (沈从文) and Zhu Ziqing (朱自清); and foreign scholars such as Robert Winter (French literature), Robert Payne (English literature), and William Empson (poetry and criticism). In the sciences, leading figures included mathematicians Hua Luogeng (华罗庚) and Chen Xingshen (陈省身), and physicists Wu Dayou (吴大猷) and Zhao Zhongyao (赵忠尧). In architecture, Liang Sicheng (梁思成) and Lin Huiyin (林徽因) played central roles. These professors and their students educated generations of intellectuals essential to China’s postwar development. Some left for Taiwan or overseas during the civil war (1946–1949); Mei Yiqi (梅贻琦), visionary president of Tsinghua and guiding figure of Lianda, moved to Taiwan and became president of National Tsinghua University there.

Of Lianda’s nearly 4,000 graduates in eight years, 174 became Fellows of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Academy of Engineering. Two alumni—Tsung-Dao Lee (李政道) and Chen-Ning Yang (杨振宁)—won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. Wang Zengqi (汪曾祺), a student of Shen Congwen, became one of China’s finest writers of short stories and essays. Graduates of Lianda’s language programs translated major works into Chinese—Le Rouge et le Noir, Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, The Story of Mankind—and rendered Chinese classics such as the Book of Songs (诗经) and Songs of Chu (楚辞) into English. Chen-Ning Yang later recalled: “During the war, conditions at Chinese universities were extremely poor. Yet Lianda’s teachers and students were full of spirit, teaching and learning with enthusiasm, making up for the lack of material resources.”

After the war, Peking, Tsinghua, and Nankai Universities returned to their original campuses, and the former site of Xinan Lianda became Kunming Teachers College.

Photo credit: Baidu.com