ZJU

I spent the past three weeks teaching at Zhejiang University. It's about time that I gave an introduction of the place along with pictures.

Zhejiang University (ZJU) was originally a school that specialized in engineering. In the early 90's, it combined with several other Hangzhou universities to become the new, monolithic Zhejiang University, with some 20,000 (I think...) undergrads and several campuses. I visited three of these. Pictures as follows:

Yuquan Campus
Yuquan was the original Zhejiang university, home to all the engineering departments and a ~10:1 boy to girl ratio. This is where I lived and taught.

Mao, with his arms raised in a salute to the people. The students say that he's hailing a cab.

The founder of the campus rendered in bronze in front of the library. He doesn't looks so big until you try to stand next to him.

The main teaching/research area of Yuquan dates back from at least the first half of this century. Here is an example of the old architecture, with the elegant uptilted eaves.

The student center of Yuquan has a pond in the middle. Around this are piano practice rooms and a cafe.

The dorm where I lived.

Huajiachi Campus
Named for a pond in the middle of the campus, Huajiachi is home to the agricultural research departments of Zhejiang University. Unfortunately, this campus has been sold and will be relocated in the next couple of years.

The eponymous pond.

Guide to the campus, including such sites as "Democracy Hall", "Peace Hall", and "Institute of Nuclear".

As it is an agricultural research campus, it had a bunch of experimental fields with experimental crops. They also had experimental pigs (not shown), euphemistically dubbed "safety pigs".

A red dragonfly perched on a twig in the middle of a small pond. I thought it was rather pretty.

I was rather amazed by an entire field of these, but all the people I showed this to never seemed to get what's so great about it. Do you?

The campus hires farmers to do the planting for the students. I rather like the juxtaposition between the fields and the buildings in the background.

My friend Zhou Wei, who took me around this and Zijingang campus. She is a communications major focusing on advertisement and made the two ads behind her.

Zijingang Campus
This is the newest and most modern campus of Zhejiang University, home to all freshmen and sophomores plus some upperclassmen of several majors. In the future, all majors except those housed at Yuquan will be relocated to this campus. I visited Zijingang the morning before I left with Zhou Wei. We rode bikes around because it is so large.

Zijingang had very modern architecture.

The inside of the architecture department building. I like the spherical things hanging from the ceiling.

Some guy with more spheres. Spheres seem to be a recurring theme of the decor of this campus.

A mushroom! These innocuous looking things are all over Zijingang, apparently used as little speakers to broadcast student news (and other propaganda).

And that is all. In other news, I left ZJU a couple days ago. After spending 30 hours on the train, I arrived in Chengdu this morning and immediately went on a day trip to see the world's largest buddha. Pictures soon.