One of the places I’m looking forward to visiting is the campus of Peking University (Beijing Daxue, 北京大学). My father was a student there (at the original campus) and my aunt and uncle were also professors there. The university was founded in 1898 by Zhang Baixi, who was an Imperial official in the Qing Dynasty. It was formed as the Imperial Capital University (Jing Shi Da Xue Tang) during the Hundred Days Reform during the time that the nephew of the Empress Dowager, the Guangxu Emperor, had his brief reign. Zhang Baixi was an educational reformer and instituted a modern educational system at the university. As such, Peking University is the first formally established modern national university of China. The Hundred Days reform culminated in the coup d’etat that led to the Empress Dowager Cixi retaking control of the country. In 1912, after the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty, Jing Shi Da Xue Tang was renamed Peking University.

The original campus of the university was located north of the Forbidden City in Shatan (east of Jingshan Park). It is here where the Red Mansion of Peking University sits that students from Peking University gathered on May 4, 1919 to demonstrate against the government’s weak response to the Treaty of Versailles and the concession of Shandong Peninsula to the Japanese. The national protests were known as the May Fourth Movement.

In 1952 Peking University was merged with Yenching University (Yanjing Daxue, 燕京大学) and moved to the Yenching University campus, the former site of Qing royal gardens known as Yan Yuan (the Garden of Yan). The campus is located in northwestern Beijing near the Summer Palace. The campus contains many traditional houses, gardens, and pagodas and surrounds Weiming Lake with the Boya Pagoda.

There are three main gates that lead into campus – East, West and South gates, and the West Gate is the most well-known.

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