Senior Academician's Memoirs - (Volume 2)

Author: Han Cunzhi
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Five ancient temples, green lights build university; scholarly talents gather in a humble room; study diligently, seek truth; Eastern Cambridge, renowned name (1940-1943)
After the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou underwent several relocations and settled in Anshun, Guizhou, in 1940. At that time, the campus primarily utilized existing temples, but due to their limited space, the school had to be scattered across three locations: the main campus and the College of Liberal Arts, Engineering, and Normal Education in Zunyi; the College of Science and Agriculture in Meitan; and the first-year students in Yongxing Town near Meitan. The campus facilities were makeshift, utilizing temples, rented private houses, or self-built grass huts, all scattered among residential areas, with no unified campus. For example, Zunyi was divided into an old city and a new city at the time. The female students' dormitories were in the old city, the general office in the new city, and the library on a small hill in the new city, far from the general office, inside a Confucian temple. Faculty and staff also rented private houses, living in scattered locations. I arrived at Zhejiang University in Zunyi in early 1940 and left in the summer of 1943, spending over three years living at the university. My dormitory was in Shijiaobao, next to the northern gate of the old city. At that time, Zunyi was relatively desolate. Outside the northern gate of the old city were farmlands, and not far beyond them stood a small mountain covered in wild grasses, with no houses nearby. Living in Shijiaobao, I often heard wolves howling outside the northern gate at night. The northern gate of the old city remained open all night. Sometimes, after attending school meetings late at night, I would return to the dormitory with a lantern (as Zunyi faced supply shortages and a scarcity of batteries, with no street lighting in the streets, we had to imitate the ancients and walk with lanterns at night). Passing through the northern gate, I was truly afraid of encountering hungry wolves.
At night, the only source of lighting in the dormitory was a tung oil lamp. It was a primitive lighting tool, similar to a vegetable oil lamp. You would pour some tung oil into a bowl, insert a few wicks, and light them to produce light. However, tung oil had a foul odor when burning and produced a lot of smoke, making it much inferior to ordinary vegetable oil lamps in quality. Guizhou was rich in tung oil. Before the war, tung oil was an export commodity and was more expensive than vegetable oil, so farmers typically used vegetable oil for lighting instead. After the war broke out, tung oil could no longer be exported and was only consumed locally in Guizhou. Vegetable oil had to be reserved for food, making it more expensive than tung oil. Therefore, although tung oil lamps were unhygienic, we had no choice but to rely on them for lighting. At night, the light was as dim as a bean. This life truly resembled the description in old Chinese novels: "ancient temples, green lights correct merits." As for kerosene (foreign oil), it was even more expensive and difficult to purchase on the market. Later, someone invented an improved tung oil lamp, similar in design to a kerosene lamp, with a longer glass chimney that allowed the tung oil to burn more completely. Once lit, it produced brighter light and no smoke. The faculty and students of Zhejiang University quickly adopted it, praising it as a great invention beneficial to humanity. However, the improved tung oil lamp still produced smoke when burning. After using it for a night, a layer of black smoke would accumulate on the glass chimney, requiring careful cleaning before reuse. I spent a significant amount of time each afternoon cleaning the glass chimney. Cleaning the chimney had to be done very carefully, as scrubbing too hard could break the glass, rendering the lamp unusable, and at that time, it was very difficult to buy a new glass chimney.
P20-21