Located in the western part of Hangzhou is a famous institution of higher learning — Hangzhou University, which is now known as the Xixi campus of Zhejiang University. Before merging with Zhejiang University, Hangzhou University was a comprehensive university with a wide range of disciplines, including humanities, history, philosophy, mathematics, science, and chemistry. Although a local university, it ranked among the top universities in China.

To the south of the campus, right across the Yanshan River (called “Xixi” or the West Brook in the olden days, hence the “Xixi Road”), lies a neighborhood amid lush green trees, where a few two-story and three-story buildings appear and disappear into the shades. This is the Hangda (as Hangzhou University is colloquially referred to) New Village, which served as dormitories for the university’s professors. The neighborhood was alternatively known as the Henan Dormitories, as it situates to the south of the Yanshan River, or Daogu Bridge Dormitories, as there used to be a bridge nearby by the name of Daogu.  Daogu, as it turns out, was the courtesy name or style name of Qin Jiushao (1208-1268), a famous Southern Song (1127-1279) mathematician, and the bridge was built in his honor at the suggestion of Zhu Shijie (1249-1314), also a well-known mathematician who was from the Yuan dynasty (1206-1368). 

Indeed, it has long been a Chinese tradition to show respect to teachers and intellectuals, as attested the stories vividly told in No. 56, Xixi Road, a book published recently by Zhejiang University Press. 

Hangda New Village, which covered roughly 10 blocks of two-story and three-story buildings, was built in the 1950s when the People’s Republic of China was newly established. Despite many difficulties, in particular a tight fiscal budget, funding was still allocated for the construction of the dormitories. Equipped with plumbing, each apartment had three bedrooms and was as big as 80 square meters — quite spacious at that time. A small courtyard was set aside in front of each building, planted with all kinds of flowers. There were no walls between each building, only low hedges acting as dividers, over which academics discussed and talked about their latest research. Many brilliant ideas were born, academic results were achieved, in this way. 

Back in Southern Song, Xixi Road was an imperial passageway, which has witnessed a cluster of personalities, sites, and spots of cultural significance throughout history. Poets like Lin Bu (967-1028) and Qin Guan (1049-1100), calligraphers such as Xian Yushu (1246-1302) and Dong Qichang (1555-1636) all wrote poems, essays, or calligraphies about it. Zhongyi (literally “loyal and righteous”) Bridge, built in the Southern Song and the oldest extant stone arch bridge in Hangzhou, is now a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level. The first emperor of Southern Song was also said to have once traveled along the passageway and enjoyed a local wine made from the water of a spring called the Plum Blossom Spring. Hangda New Village is just one of the more recent additions to this long historical and cultural corridor. 

In fact, the Village was once a part of the Xixi wetland, before some of it was later turned into the Xixi National Wetland Park and became a tourist attraction. According to Menglianglu, or A Dream of Sorghum, a book was written during the Southern Song about the life of Hangzhou, visitors could board a ship at the place where the Village was built and travel directly upstream to the heart of the Xixi wetland. At the time, the Village lay among a large swathe of farmland, crisscrossed with rivers and waterways. In the distance, smoke from cottages curled up, accompanied by occasional barking and mooing.  Then reed flowers in summer and plum blossoms in winter would bring color and fragrance. People would not be much mistaken if they thought they were living in Xanadu.

Ultimately, it is people that make the place. In Hangda New Village, it is the world-renowned professors, scholars, and experts that have made it a memorable place.  Xia Chengtao (1900-1986), a foremost authority on Ci poetry studies, Jiang Liangfu (1902-1995), a master of traditional Chinese culture, Shen Wenzhuo (1917-2009), a top intellectual on ritual studies, Shen Lianzhi (1904-1992), China’s first researcher on French history… to name but only a few. These great minds have left indelible marks and anecdotes and reminiscences about them are the most talked about among the graduates of Hangzhou University.

Hangda New Village

One of them is Sun Xizhen (1906-1984), who taught foreign literature at the university. Sun was known lovingly and jokingly as the “Professor of Love”. Professor Sun “earned” this epithet because of his teachings: there is love in Othello, there is love in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, there is love in The Red and the Black, and there is even love in Homer’s histories. “Love is the eternal theme,” as a popular saying went. But it is more than his teachings: Sun’s ways of teaching were even more lovable. Sometimes, so lost in telling the love stories, Sun would make a hugging gesture and utter “kiss”, making all the students laugh. Sun’s students admired him for his devotion, eloquence, and knowledge of foreign literature: he never took any notes with him, but with only a few prompts written on a piece of scrap paper, Professor Sun would talk about his subject for a couple of hours in as vivid and interesting a manner as one could imagine. 

The story of “Professor of Love” is just one of many in the book No. 56, Xixi Road, in which the images of a few dozen masters have been portrayed in the fullest details. As the place where these masters once lived, Hangda New Village will be remembered as a “sacred land”; for those who wish to follow the masters’ footsteps, No. 56, Xixi Road will always be their spiritual home.