Before the Story Begins
Before the Story Begins
At that time, this place was a shooting range, rather desolate, but quite large, covering nearly eighty hectares. President Mei purchased a portion from the county government at a nominal price and bought another portion from local landowners. He also took a liking to the wetland that is now Lake Success, and asked the deputy director of the Industrial Technology Research Institute to donate it to the school.
—Interview with Lian Zhijiu, in The Re-establishment of Tsinghua University in Taiwan, 1986
Twenty years ago, all the graduate students at NTHU lived in a bamboo-fenced dormitory in the Old South Court by Lake Success (the area now encompassing the small restaurant, student center, and auditorium). . . . In the mornings, we often recited English by the lake, and in the evenings, we would stroll along the lake and watch people fishing. . . . Every day I would pass by Lake Success many times, on my way to and from classes and the lab. . . . . Whenever I pick up a pen, the first thing that comes to mind is Lake Success.
— “By Lake Success,” Yu Youwen (class of 1961, master's degree)
Browsing through maps, yearbooks, and campus photos related to National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), it becomes clear that amidst all the changes that have taken place over the seventy years since the university’s founding in Hsinchu, Lake Success has remained a stable landmark.
Lake Success has long served as a spatial and temporal reference for generations of NTHU alumni navigating the latest changes on campus and revisiting the campus of yesteryear, enriching the legendary narrative of Tsing Hua in the past and present.
Each generation of Tsing Hua alumni holds their own Lake Success in their hearts. This special exhibition recounts the story of the lake from the very beginning, covering important milestones in the establishment of NTHU in Taiwan and reflecting the major developments on campus, from the North Gate all the way to the gradually emerging arts and culture landscape of the South Campus.
Let's start from the beginning---@ Lake Success!