Love and hate relationship with the government: the style of times in the Southwest United University

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th century, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Nankai University and other famous universities in China, as the source of resistance to Japanese imperialism, emphasized academic service to the national mission. Therefore, the Japanese army carried out a special retaliation against them. On July 29, 1937, Japanese aircraft bombed Tianjin Nankai University. The following day, Japanese artillery destroyed the remaining campus. Tsinghua University was plundered by the Japanese army. War forced higher education to give way to military work, but they continued their quest for academic purposes. Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nankai took refuge in Changsha, Hunan Province at first, then moved to Kunming, Yunnan Province and established the Southwestern Associated University. In the early days of the Southwest United University, faced with such problems as soil and water acclimation, lack of funds, lack of equipment and living difficulties, the professors of SWU continued to consider themselves as both modern academic freedom and model of political ethics in China, thus initiating a Kunlun also became the center of the "terrorist world" of Kunming intellectuals and had successively witnessed the tragic events of Li Gongpu and Wen Yiduo. The political morality formed by the love and hate relationship with the government has always been the theme of the era of debate and struggle for intellectual elites in Southwest United University.