Old Tsinghua Lectures and Others

Author: Tong Bin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: The topics covered in the old lectures were extremely broad, encompassing politics, economics, culture, education, social life, and the universe. No matter where you looked, from north to south, east to west, or ancient to modern times, it was all included. Moreover, they all represented the latest sparks of thought, academic viewpoints, and dynamic information in each field and discipline. In a sense, those lectures were the experimental field for exploration and innovation in society at that time; they were also a gathering place for intellectual culture; they were even a forum for the evolution and debate of social thought; and to some extent, they were also a record of the process of Chinese academia moving towards independence and modernization.
Academic lectures have a long history at Tsinghua University and are a distinctive feature of the campus. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was common to see grand auditoriums packed with thousands of people, with those standing filled the corridors. When prominent figures like Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, or Rabindranath Tagore came, the scene was even more spectacular, often moved scholars and young students deeply. It not only enriched the spiritual soil of the campus but also made this ancient campus more vibrant.