Lianda by John Israel

Author:John Israel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804765244
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

LIFE ON TUODONG ROAD

The College of Engineering, on the southeast edge of Kunming diagonally across town from the main campus, was centered in a cluster of temples that had been converted into lodges. In the West Yunnan Lodge at the center of this complex were classrooms, offices, and libraries. To the east was the Sichuan Lodge, which provided space for faculty and student dormitories and for large classrooms. To the west was the Jiangxi Lodge, which was principally used for research labs. A few hundred meters to the west of this complex was another compound, originally a salt warehouse, that had two-story buildings built around a cobblestone courtyard. This compound was converted into living quarters for students. The tile-roofed wooden structures were a marked improvement over the first-year accommodations in the mud-and-thatch dormitories of the New Campus, though the tightly packed double-deck beds made occupants feel as if they were living in a pigeon coop. Besides dormitory space, the warehouse compound housed a YMCA-run student service office where needy students could rent cotton overcoats for the winter. In a rear courtyard were the kitchen, latrine, well, and washing area. Eventually a shed was added to house primitive shower facilities. Bathers had to climb up a ladder, pour a bucket of water into another bucket with holes in the bottom, and descend quickly for a coldwater shower.7

The mess hall was on the ground floor of the warehouse in an area formerly used for stabling the horses that had hauled the salt carts. Like the dining facilities on the New Campus, the mess hall had tables but no chairs. The food was also limited to the basics—rice and boiled vegetables—since oil was inadequate for stir frying. Supplements to this monotonous diet were available from hawkers just outside the compound gate who sold delicacies such as pig’s feet and dried bean curd.8 Responsibility for managing the dining hall rotated among various student groups.

Prospective engineers spent their first year on the main campus, where they took a freshman liberal arts curriculum—Chinese, English, Chinese history, physics, and calculus—more or less identical to the core of study at the College of Natural Sciences. Students went back and forth between the engineering school and the mathematics and physics departments, and occasionally a math professor such as Zhao Fangxiong would offer courses at the Engineering College.9 However, at the beginning of their sophomore year, they moved their belongings to Tuodong Road, where the college had its own classrooms, administrative offices, library, infirmary, and extracurricular programs. Thereafter the students lived and worked in a relatively self-contained environment. Second-year students were, however, required to take a range of courses in many technical fields, thus avoiding the overspecialized training characteristic of post-1952 China.10

Life and learning for aspiring engineers was markedly different from the relaxed academic life enjoyed by many other Lianda students, especially in the College of Arts. There was little time for experimental auditing, desultory reading, or other diversions. Instead they followed a strict regimen inherited from Qinghua’s prewar College of Engineering.

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