New Campus

Here are some photos of the New Campus, where I teach every day. I live on the Old Campus, which is across the river and in the older part of the city. The two places are vastly different--the New Campus is built on fields, resulting in a very flat landscape with few mature trees. The Old Campus is on top of Zhong Mountain (a glorified bluff, really) and is covered in lovely old trees and pale green moss. I'm happy that the living/teaching arrangement is not reversed, though the students on the New Campus do have the quieter environment.


This field goes right up to the sidewalk--the farmers that remain around the fringes of the campus (the whole area used to be a village of farmers) are so pressed for space that they cultivate every spare inch.


What do the former-farmers from this area do now? Well, many of them have gone into business for themselves, selling snacks, noodles and dumplings in makeshift restaurants outside the school gate. The novice-restaurateurs can be pretty amusing--I had a lunch of jiaozi (dumplings) at a shop once with a colleague, and the two ladies running the place seemed genuinely confused about how to go about making the dumplings.


The new gate, built in the nick of time before the Provincial evaluation in October of 2006. It is a bizarre combination of architectural styles, if you ask me, but my students like it. In the distance to the left you can see the large white building that is one of three main teaching buildings.