Institutions
Peking University is the first formally established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial Capital University (Chinese: 京師大學堂) in 1898 in Beijing as a replacement of the ancient Guozijian (Chinese: 國子監), the national central institute of learning in China's traditional educational system in the past thousands of years. Three years earlier, Sheng Xuanhuai (Chinese: 盛宣懷) submitted a memorial to Guangxu Emperor to request for approval to set up a modern higher education institution in Tianjin. After approval on October 2, 1895, Peiyang Western Study School (Chinese: 天津北洋西學學堂) was founded by him and American educator Charles Daniel Tenney (Chinese: 丁家立) and later developed to Peiyang University (Chinese: 北洋大學堂). In 1896, Sheng Xuanhuai (Chinese: 盛宣懷) delivered his new memorials to Guangxu Emperor to make suggestion that two official modern higher education institutions should be established in Beijing and Shanghai. In the same year, he founded Nanyang Public School (Chinese: 南洋公學) in Shanghai by an imperial edict issued by Guangxu Emperor. The institution initially included elementary school, secondary school, college, and a normal school. Later the institution changed its name to Jiao Tong University (also known as Chiao Tung University, Chinese: 交通大學). In the 1930s, the university was well known in the world as the "Eastern MIT" due to its reputation of nurturing top engineers and scientists. In the 1950s, part of this university was moved to Xi'an, an ancient capital city in northwest China, and was established as Xi'an Jiaotong University; the part of the university remaining in Shanghai was renamed Shanghai Jiao Tong University. These two universities have developed independently since then.
Controversially, Wuhan University also claimed that its predecessor as Ziqiang School (Chinese: 自強學堂) was the first modern higher education institution in China. On November 29, 1893, Zhang Zhidong (Chinese: 張之洞) submitted his memorial to Guangxu Emperor to request for approval to set up an institution designed for training students specializing in foreign languages, mathematics, science and business. However, after Ziqiang School (Chinese: 自強學堂)) was founded in Wuchang, no courses in science and business were developed and the school only focused on foreign languages teaching. Later, the school officially changed its name to Foreign Languages School (Chinese: 方言學堂). In China, there had been some earlier schools specializing in foreign languages learning, such as Schools of Combined Learning in Beijing (Chinese: 京師同文館, founded in 1862), in Shanghai (Chinese: 上海同文館/上海廣方言館, founded in 1863), and in Guangzhou (Chinese: 廣州同文館, founded in 1864). The students in these schools were also taught mathematics and other subjects, but mainly studied foreign languages. These schools are generally not considered as colleges/universities. It is widely accepted that Wuhan University was established as a college/university in 1913 as the National Wuchang Higher Normal College (Chinese: 國立武昌高等師範學校), but Wuhan University officially celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1993.
Tianjin University celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1995, followed by Jiao Tong University (both in Shanghai and Xi'an) in 1996. Other leading universities, such as Zhejiang University (1897), Peking University (1898), Nanjing University (1902), Fudan University (1905)，Tongji University (1907) and Tsinghua University (1911) also recently celebrated their hundredth anniversaries, one after another.
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Famous quotes containing the word institutions:
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“You can’t talk about a kind of democracy unless those who are affected by decisions make those decisions whether the institutions in question be the welfare department, the university, the factory, the farm, the neighborhood, the country.”
—Casey Hayden (b. c. 1940)
“This, our respectable daily life, on which the man of common sense, the Englishman of the world, stands so squarely, and on which our institutions are founded, is in fact the veriest illusion, and will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision; but that faint glimmer of reality which sometimes illuminates the darkness of daylight for all men, reveals something more solid and enduring than adamant, which is in fact the cornerstone of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)