Source: SYSU News Center
Written by: Lu Yiwei
Proofread by: Ian Heuer
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

To mark the 91st anniversary of the founding of Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), Retracing SYSU’s Relocation during the War of Resistance, a special TV program to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance was officially launched online on November 12, 2015. The program, which takes the form of popular reality TV shows, is a production of the Publicity Department of SYSU Party Committee. Retracing the routes of SYSU’s relocation and revisiting major wartime University-related sites along the way, the program aims to re-experience the University’s history and re-introduce it to a new generation of faculty and students, while also honoring the profound friendship between the SYSU community and the local people at SYSU’s temporary home.

During the War of Resistance, SYSU was forced to relocate and move its campus several times. On March 1, 1939, SYSU began classes in Chengjiang, Yunnan Province; in August 1940, SYSU moved to Pingshi in the northern part of Guangdong Province; in early 1945, SYSU was forced to move to the east part of Guangdong Province, and finally it came back to the Shipai Campus in Guangzhou in October 1945. During this period, SYSU faculty, staff and students persevered in teaching and research, preserving the cultural inheritance, studying and fighting, thereby writing an extraordinary and inspiring chapter in the history of the University.

Following the footsteps of SYSU’s relocation routes, Season One of Retracing SYSU’s Relocation during the War of Resistance focuses on Chengjiang, Yunnan Province. At Pufu Temple, Jile Temple, Cengqing Pavilion, and Meiyu Village, the then temporary classrooms for SYSU faculty and students, the participants in the show are assigned various tasks to accomplish, and local citizens and experts are invited to share their stories of SYSU’s relocation, teaching, research and service to the local community, enabling the audience to take a look back at the University’s history and its cultural inheritance.

The participants and moderator for Season One of the program were recruited from current students at SYSU. The moderator is Wan Yawen from the School of Geography and Planning, and the three participants are Wu Zhousihai from the School of Education, Su Yanhui from the School of Sociology and Anthropology, and Gao Xingxing (Maria Nikolaeva), a Russian student from the School of Chinese as a Second Language. The production team consists of staff members from SYSU News Center, with Qin Dongjun, Director of SYSU Television Station, as the director of the program. There are four episodes in Chengjiang for Season One. This is the first program produced using the reality TV format among universities nationwide.