Pictures of Fudan University

Fudan University, in the north of Shanghai, is one of China's top universities. I haven’t attended the university, so I’m not about to provide some full-scale expose. But I did wander the grounds with a former student, and I thought it was interesting, so I’ll attach a few pictures in this update.

The University is effectively split into two different halves, on opposite sides of a major street. Right at the entrance to one side is a large statue of Mao Zedong:




There’s also a skyscraper/classroom building, the Guanghua Towers. It’s a new building which houses mostly science and engineering classrooms, from what I’ve been told. I can’t imagine how crowded the elevators must be, right when everyone gets out of class all at once:



And another skyscraper building is to the rear of this picture, on the opposite side of the campus. It's not quite as large, it hosts liberal arts classrooms.



The university has been around for slightly more than a century, though, and a number of older buildings are still in use. These buildings are much smaller and seem pretty pleasant. They also have large fields around them, and wide roads that cars can drive on, and really much of the university seems very much in the American university model:



And there’s also small parks and gardens scattered about:



I didn’t see much of student life, because I visited during the summer on a weekend. However I did see that the school had organized a school dance from 3-7pm, very quaint. On the Liberal Arts side of the university, there were streets directly off-campus full of bookstores and restaurants and so forth, it seemed like it would be a lot of fun. Also, the main pathway was lined with street-side dealers selling snack foods, or clothes, or even kites: