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Fudan touched by war-time dramas of its own
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With the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in Asia fast approaching, I’ve been looking for interesting but overlooked war stories involving my adopted home of Shanghai, which was one of China’s first cities to get dragged into the conflict. Most such stories involve a mix of perseverance, resilience and defiance, as both Chinese and foreigners in Shanghai tried to maintain their daily routines as much as possible, while also resisting the enemy and awaiting the return of peace.
That’s when I realized that one of the most fascinating stories, which includes a healthy dose of all these elements, was right under my nose at Fudan University where I’ve been teaching in the Journalism School for the last four years. I’d heard in the past that Fudan fled Shanghai during the war and set up temporary shop in Jiangxi Province and the interior city of Chongqing, but never pursued the real story to find out what actually happened and why.
What followed was my own brief journey, which began with the help of several people tied to Fudan’s own archive. I also visited Huang Runsu, a 93-year-old Sichuan native and current Shanghai resident who is one of a dwindling number of war-era Fudan students who are still around. I’ve read accounts of wartime life in Shanghai before, but it was quite different hearing the story from true experts and people who experienced this part of history first-hand.
The story begins in 1937 when Japan invaded Shanghai. In response to growing incursions by the Japanese, the education ministry ordered several major universities in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai to relocate to safer areas, though it left individual institutions to decide the details.
After some hasty reconnaissance, Fudan decided that Lushan in Jiangxi was a suitable new location. The area was already a popular vacation destination for many wealthy Shanghainese, and thus was close enough to the city and had much of the necessary infrastructure.
So in October 1937, some 900 Fudan students moved to the Lushan campus and began fall classes. But no sooner had classes begun then everyone began to worry about the Japanese army that wasn’t far away as it advanced on Nanjing, China’s capital at that time. Nanjing would come under siege a short time later, in what became the Nanjing Massacre of December 1937.
Having decided Lushan wasn’t safe, Fudan’s administrators hastily decided to leave the city and head for an uncertain fate in Sichuan, with a vague plan to ultimately join with a sister school that was setting up a campus in adjacent Guizhou Province. Most of Fudan’s 900 students weren’t too thrilled about such a dangerous journey, and only 400 showed up for a boat trip up the Yangtze River that began on December 1 and ultimately ended three weeks later with their arrival in Chongqing.
Fudan quickly discovered that the Guizhou plans were impractical, and instead turned to locals and the Chongqing government for help. Those efforts resulted in its relocation to a campus about 50 kilometers from the city on the banks of the Jialing River, where the university would remain throughout the war, managing not only to survive but even thrive. It had nearly 2,000 students by the time it returned to Shanghai in 1946 and moved back to its former campus.
It was hard for me to imagine how people could make and execute so many major decisions so quickly at that time. I got the same sense of haste and improvisation when I tracked down the lively 93-year-old Huang Runsu at her Xuhui apartment where she lives a quiet life with her son. Coming from a well-to-do Sichuan family, Huang was studying French at a university in Kunming, Yunnan Province when the war broke out and had to abandon her studies when the Japanese started bombing the city. She and a dozen classmates made their way back to Sichuan during that chaotic time, making slow progress by walking and relying on people for rides, as they sold their clothes to pay expenses.
She later enrolled at Fudan in Chongqing, and graduated in 1945. Among her memories were studying in the dining hall at night because the gas lighting was best there, and the cramped dormitories where 11 students shared each room on a series of bunk beds. One of her wartime photos showed the steep stone steps leading up to the campus from the banks of the Jialing River, a far more rugged look than Fudan’s leafy campus today in suburban Shanghai.
Despite the tough conditions, Huang also remembered the period with a certain fondness, recalling how her romance blossomed with the man who would become her future husband. She also recalled the richness of academic life in Chongqing, since many of the country’s top professors and students had fled to China’s wartime capital at that time.
In this day and age where universities like Fudan have become massive, well-established institutions with tens of thousands of students, it’s hard to imagine that earlier era where things were smaller and difficult decisions were made and executed quickly out of necessity. I shudder today when thinking of the turbulence in the lives of students and professors of that era, and wonder how they coped.
Their perseverance, defiance and determination are certainly worthy of reflection and a strong dose of respect as we observe the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII in Asia.
Their experience also serves as a reminder for all of us today to be grateful for the peaceful and prosperous environment we now call home here in modern Shanghai.
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