Chapter 2 2. The three universities have always been "connected" very well

Southwest Associated University is a university that combines Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai University—not three.Nankai has fewer people, less money, and less material strength, accounting for less than one-tenth of it. The rest is shared by the other two schools, of which Tsinghua University accounts for more than half.The three schools were basically merged into one, and the cooperation was very good. When the coalition government was brewing after the Anti-Japanese War, someone once said: "The coalition of the Southwest Associated University is so good, why can't the coalition government? It's better to invite three The principal of the school will be a member of the coalition government.” However, there are also bad alliances, such as the Northwest United University, which collapsed after one year, because it used to have several schools that were not the same, and then forced them to be pinched together, causing contradictions. The commotion was so violent that it could not be sustained.Southwest Associated University has always been united very well, I think it has its superior conditions in terms of personnel.For example, Mei Yiqi, the president of Tsinghua University, was born in Nankai University, Feng Youlan, the dean of Tsinghua College of Liberal Arts, was born in Peking University, and Hu Shi, the dean of Peking University College of Liberal Arts, was born in Tsinghua University. This shows that the three schools are related to each other. The relationship is very close, which is an innate advantage, otherwise they might not be able to get together.

After the merger of the three schools, a standing committee was organized. The three standing committee members were the three principals, and the chairman was Mei Yiqi.Zhang Boling was actually an official in Chongqing, so he didn't come here very often. I only saw him once in the seven years in Kunming.That time he came to give a speech to the students, but Zhang Boling didn't seem to be very academic, and his speech still had a rough taste of Tianjin, and he spoke a Tianjin accent.He said: "Mr. Jiang Menglin is my best friend. I have a watch, and I wear it for him. I told him: 'You are my representative (wearing a watch).'" He also said: "I heard that You students are bored, why are you bored? The boredom is because you are confused.” Jiang Menglin used to be the Minister of Education, mainly engaged in some external affairs, and didn’t care much about the affairs of the school. In fact, the president of the United Nations University has always been Mei Yiqi. He also served as the provost for a long period of time, so when we wrote our submissions, we all wrote "May is also the provost".His work performance is quite good. He was able to unite the three schools and has been doing well. It was not easy under the difficult conditions of the Anti-Japanese War. He really has a way.Moreover, Mei Yiqi has a very good demeanor, a gentleman at the top, always carrying a Chamberlain-style umbrella, even when he ran for an emergency alarm, he was still very calm, and at the same time he did not forget to guide the students.It is really not easy to maintain this kind of demeanor in such an emergency. It is probably because of his self-cultivation that he was able to let a school survive the war smoothly.

Southwest Associated University has five colleges, liberal arts, science, law, and engineering. The engineering college is mainly from Tsinghua University, and the other three colleges are owned by all three schools. There is also a normal college, which is jointly organized by the Yunnan Department of Education. , is rather special.The education in Yunnan is poor, and I hope that the United Nations University will train some teachers for Yunnan. I think the United Nations University will not be able to refuse, so they jointly established a normal college (now Yunnan Normal University), and first transferred teachers from Yunnan Middle School, and then recruited students directly. up.But in our opinion, Teachers College is a bit like a "secondary card". For example, we have a history department, but the Teachers College only has a "History and Geography Department". Probably considering that when teaching middle schools in the future, we must teach geography in addition to history, so two departments learn together.Another example is that they have a "department of physics and chemistry", but the physics department and chemistry department of our Faculty of Science are separate, and the content of the courses is different from theirs.

The five colleges of Southwest Associated University are divided into three locations. Among them, the College of Engineering is located on Tuodong Road, in the southeast corner of Kunming City, and the Faculties of Arts, Law, and Science are together with the school headquarters, in the northwest corner of Kunming City.The school headquarters is where the "Southwest Associated University" sign is hung, where the principal's office and the main departments of the school are located.We live in the school headquarters, which is a newly built school building called "New School Building", but it is actually just a thatched house with mud walls.

The number of students at that time was much smaller than today, and the Engineering College had the largest number of students, with a total of only four to five hundred students.There are five departments in the College of Engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, machinery, chemical engineering, and aviation. A classmate from the aviation department is very familiar with me. He took me to visit and see those wind tunnels, fluid experiments, etc., which seemed to be very advanced.I was in the engineering college in my first year. I remember that the first experiment in the general physics class was the falling object experiment. Draw a curve, and then get various data according to the distance between two points of the measured curve.A glass plate is needed for the experiment, and the white powder painted on it is mixed with alcohol. This is a rule learned from abroad, because the alcohol evaporates quickly and dries up immediately, and the experiment can be carried out immediately. If you want to use water, you have to wait for a long time.But alcohol is much more expensive than water, and now I think it's a bit extravagant in retrospect. It can be seen that the experiment was not ambiguous at all, much better than when we were in middle school.And every week in the engineering college, there is an afternoon of internship in the factory, making molds, turning sand, forging iron and steel, all by themselves.That's why later intellectuals were criticized for not participating in labor, not working hard, and not distinguishing grains.We work like workers in factories, only unskilled and clumsy.

I haven't counted the number of students in the three colleges of literature, law, and science, but the total number is only seven or eight hundred.The Faculty of Liberal Arts has the Chinese Department, the Foreign Language Department, the History Department, and the Philosophy Department. Only the Foreign Language Department has the most people. There are probably more than 20 people at the first level. The Chinese Department and the History Department recruit more than a dozen people every year, and the Philosophy Department has the least number of people. Only two or three people a year.But there were so many people in my history department that year, there must have been twenty of them.The Law School includes the Department of Politics, the Department of Law, the Department of Economics, the Department of Business, and the Department of Sociology. Because I have taken two years of classes in the Department of Politics, I know that there are only six or seven students in the Department of Law. There are quite a lot of people, there are always 40 or 50 people a year.I think this probably has something to do with future employment. Those who major in economics will have a better career after graduation, but for others, such as those who major in politics, what do you do when you come out?It's not your place to be an official.The mathematics department has the least number of students in the Faculty of Science. There are only three students in our 43rd grade class. There are eight or nine students in the physics department a year, and sometimes there are more than a dozen people. There seem to be only eight students in the 42nd grade class. But their class is incredible, there are five or six top talents, including Huang Kun, Zhang Shoulian and Yang Zhenning, known as the "Three Great Talents", and they are all big celebrities now.

The new school building has only one yard, and the place is so small. There are not many houses. They live there and attend classes there, so they are very familiar with each other, including the teachers of the Faculty of Science. Although they don’t necessarily communicate with each other, everyone knows this It was Wu Youxun and Ye Qisun, those were Zhou Peiyuan and Wu Dayou, like Hua Luogeng and Chen Xingshen from the Department of Mathematics, they were all big celebrities, and they met almost every day.And we often listen to our classmates telling jokes about those teachers. Looking back now, we students sometimes don’t respect our teachers very much.I remember when I first entered university, a classmate told me: "This year, three young teachers came here, only 28 years old, and they are all full professors." How old did you become a full professor?A Qian Zhongshu, a Hua Luogeng, and a Xu Baolu, all just returned to China.Xu Baolu was engaged in statistics, which is said to be very remarkable and a world-class authority. Later, he worked in the Department of Economics of Peking University, but I don't know statistics, so I don't know the details.I still remember someone asking, "Who is Hua Luogeng?" Some classmates said, "That's the cripple." , but he used to be crippled so badly that one of his legs was always making circles there.

The teachers mentioned above are from the Faculty of Science, and the faculty from the Liberal Arts Faculty meet each other every day. Zhu Ziqing, Wen Yiduo, Shen Congwen, Luo Changpei, and Luo Yong are all from the Chinese Department. We all recognize them. Of course, they may not all recognize the students. .At least Chen Yinke and Qian Mu are masters in the history department, and Fu Sinian is also there, but he does not teach. He is the director of the Institute of Liberal Arts at Peking University, just a name.There is also Mr. Lei Haizong, who was later in Nankai, like Mr. Liu Chonghong and Mr. Yao Congwu, who later went to Taiwan.Later, the group of people from National Taiwan University was roughly the foundation of Peking University. Fu Sinian was the president. Apart from the few people mentioned just now, there were also Qian Siliang, Mao Zishui, etc., so National Taiwan University is actually Peking University, although it is not necessary. The name of Peking University.