Beijing Notes 016 – Returning to Weiming Lake

后山

June 27, 11:30AM

It is early summer in Beijing. Walking along the pathways of the park in the morning, the shade beneath the trees is still refreshingly cool. But the moment I step into the sunlight, the dry, oppressive heat of midsummer rushes toward me. People of every kind pass by—some strolling leisurely, others exercising, others simply sitting beneath the trees to enjoy the morning. As I walk at an unhurried pace, my thoughts drift back, almost of their own accord, to a week earlier, when my wife and I returned to the campus of Peking University. Every scene from that day comes back to me with remarkable clarity, as vivid as if it had happened only yesterday.

To me, Weiming Lake is like a great banyan tree whose roots reach deep into the soil of my life. It was where my youth truly began. Returning to Yanyuan this time was more than a sentimental journey—it marked the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life here in Beijing.

It was the Saturday of the Dragon Boat Festival, just one week ago. Thick gray clouds hung low over the city as my wife and I drove toward Peking University. By my count, thirty-six years had passed since we had last lived and worked there. Entering the campus today is no longer as effortless as it once was. We still possess our beautifully designed staff identification cards from those years. Curiously, they bear no expiration date, which means that, in theory at least, they remain valid. Unfortunately, we had neither applied for alumni credentials nor made the required visitor reservation beforehand. No sooner had we reached the South Gate than we were politely but firmly stopped by the security guard.

After a fair amount of scrambling—and with the help of an old friend who was hundreds of miles away, completed the online registration for us remotely—we finally secured permission to enter. Nearly an hour later, we walked through the South Gate and into Yanyuan once again.

By the time we arrived inside the campus, it was already one o’clock in the afternoon. The sky remained dark and overcast. A broad avenue stretched inward from the South Gate, lined on both sides with towering trees that had spent the past three decades quietly growing older. Somehow, they looked almost exactly as I remembered them.

We wandered through the campus in search of familiar places. The student dorm buildings where I had once lived—Buildings 29—had been demolished and rebuilt. Nothing remained of their former appearance. Thankfully, Dining Hall No. 5 had survived.

Back then, everyone in our laboratory would head there together for lunch. Long rows of tables and wooden chairs filled the dining hall, serving countless meals to students and faculty every day. Of all the dishes I remember, one stands out above the rest: braised eggplant. Eggplant is one of the most ordinary vegetables in a Chinese kitchen, yet preparing it well is deceptively difficult. Somehow, the cafeteria cooks managed to produce an exceptionally delicious version in their enormous woks. Even after all these years, that taste has remained indelibly engraved in my memory.

Yet the moment we stepped inside, I was genuinely astonished. The interior had been transformed beyond recognition. The old communal dining hall had been replaced by a collection of individual food stalls. Students simply tapped their campus cards to pay, while cash had long disappeared from the system. As visitors without university meal cards, we had no way of buying lunch.

It was already past the busiest lunch hour, and after our long journey across the city, my wife and I were ravenously hungry. We had imagined returning to our old university, sitting down in the familiar dining hall, and reliving a small piece of the ordinary life we had once known. Instead, we found ourselves forced to abandon the idea.

We asked a passerby where visitors could eat. He pointed us farther down the road, explaining that the Horticulture Dining Hall was open to the public. Visitors could dine there without a campus card.

As we walked away from Dining Hall No. 5, I couldn’t help reflecting on the irony of it all. Once, we had belonged to this campus. Now, after returning to Yanyuan so many years later, we could only eat there as tourists.

Before leaving the area, we asked someone where Peking University’s famous Triangle was located. We had hoped to see it once more. A student smiled and told us that the Triangle had long since disappeared. The old gathering place had been demolished years ago. In its place was nothing more than an ordinary patch of lawn, with none of the lively atmosphere that had once made it such an iconic corner of the university.

The Horticulture Dining Hall had retained much of the authentic flavor of northern Chinese cooking. Handmade dumplings were its specialty, accompanied by a wide selection of traditional northern dishes. Service ended promptly at 2:15 in the afternoon. We arrived just after two o’clock and hurriedly ordered two bowls of dumplings, each accompanied by a bowl of the traditional dumpling broth.

When I first moved from southern China to Beijing more than thirty years ago, I quickly developed a fondness for northern-style dumplings. To my taste, they far surpassed their southern counterparts. More than three decades later, eating dumplings at a Peking University cafeteria once again, I found them every bit as delicious as I remembered. My wife and I devoured both bowls without saying much to each other, finishing every last dumpling before drinking the broth to the very last drop.

While we were eating, a family somewhat younger than ourselves arrived. Unfortunately, they had come just as the kitchen stopped serving food and were unable to order dumplings. I casually remarked to the husband that the dumplings were exceptionally good. Half joking, he looked at me and said, “You know, I almost hate you right now.” I laughed. “There’s no such thing as love or hate without a reason,” I teased. “Surely you can’t hate someone over a bowl of dumplings.”He immediately shot back, “The well-fed never understand the hunger of those who aren’t.”

After we finished eating, the family was still sitting there, having failed to get anything to eat. Before long, we found ourselves walking together toward Yannan Garden. Oddly enough, although I had spent three full years at Peking University, I had never once visited this part of the campus.

Adjacent to Dining Hall No. 5 and situated in the very heart of Yanyuan, Yannan Garden preserves a remarkable collection of Republican-era residences once occupied by some of China’s most distinguished scholars, including Ma Yinchu and Feng Youlan. The neighborhood has retained much of its original architectural character, offering a rare glimpse into the university’s earlier history.

As we wandered through the quiet lanes, we happened to meet a woman in her seventies who looked remarkably energetic. She told us she had lived in Yannan Garden for fifty-two years. Warm and welcoming, she showed us the exterior of her residence and patiently recounted the history of the neighborhood.

The old houses here cannot be bought or sold; they are only passed on for residential use. To our surprise, these century-old homes contain all the conveniences of modern living behind their historic façades. Some vacant houses, lacking regular maintenance, have fallen into visible disrepair. Others, where families still reside, remain beautifully cared for, their courtyards neat and full of life.

From Yannan Garden we continued on toward the Peking University Library. There is an old saying on campus: “One Pagoda, One Lake, One Library.” （一塔湖图）。The pagoda refers to Boya Pagoda overlooking Weiming Lake; the lake, of course, is Weiming Lake itself; and the library completes the trio. These three landmarks have long symbolized the spirit of Peking University.

The library was where I spent countless hours studying in those years. Seats were perpetually scarce. Finding one during exam season was often impossible, and friends—or couples—would frequently save places for one another. Even now, I can vividly recall the quiet intensity that filled those reading rooms, where hundreds of students immersed themselves in study from morning until night.

The rear portion of the library’s main building remains much as it was when I studied there. I recognized it instantly. In front of it, however, an expansive new structure of striking contemporary design has been added. The old and the new now are merged, their contrasting styles joined into a single complex. It is difficult to recover, in one’s mind’s eye, the familiar silhouette of the library as it once was.

We took several photographs in front of the library before making our way to what had once been the Department of Biology, now known as the School of Life Sciences.

The laboratory where we had worked, then part of the Center for Life Sciences, has long since been relocated to a modern building elsewhere on campus. The old building has been reassigned to another department, and every sign at the entrance has been replaced. It was my wife’s first return to Peking University in thirty-six years, and she was no longer entirely certain where the old laboratory had been. Standing before the building, I took a photograph and sent it to an old friend in Shenzhen. His reply came quickly: yes, this had indeed been the Center for Life Sciences. The building itself still stood, but everything inside had changed. The place remained; the people and the life that had once animated it had long since vanished.

We then entered the old Biology Building. The departmental office, the Party secretary’s office, and the student affairs office were all still in their original locations. Yet it was a Saturday, and the Dragon Boat Festival holiday besides. The building was completely deserted. We wandered through its quiet corridors without encountering a single familiar face, leaving us no opportunity to reminisce with old colleagues.

Today, the dean of the School of Life Sciences is Chen Xuemei, who once worked in the very same laboratory as we did. She later pursued her career in the United States and is now a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, because we had not arranged access to the administrative offices beforehand, we were unable to pay her a visit. Even so, simply walking once more through the place where we had spent so many years working together filled us with quiet satisfaction.

My wife continued searching for traces of the past. For six months she had served as secretary to Professor Gu Xiaocheng, then chairwoman of the department. The small office building where she had worked had disappeared completely, demolished without leaving the slightest trace. Professor Gu herself had long since passed away. The building was gone, the people was gone, only memory remained.

Carrying these complicated emotions, we slowly made our way toward Weiming Lake. The Biology Department stood only a short walk from the lakeshore. Within minutes, Boya Pagoda came into view across the water. Although we were close to the pagoda, it was not the best vantage point for photographs.

Just as we reached the edge of the lake, a fine drizzle began to fall. My wife and I had brought only one umbrella. Walking shoulder to shoulder beneath it, we found ourselves unconsciously recreating the romantic scene of strolling through Yanyuan in the rain all those years ago. The shower came and went, almost as though it had arrived especially to welcome our return. Above us, deep rolls of thunder echoed across the sky.

Despite the gloomy weather, the lakeside remained lively. Young students in university jackets posed for photographs. Newlyweds were taking wedding portraits beside the water. Families wandered leisurely along the shore with children in tow. The lake itself, however, was just as murky as I remembered. Its familiar appearance brought to mind an old campus joke:

“Weiming Lake is shallow—but it’s full of turtles.”

The saying was never really about the lake. It was about Peking University itself. A place that gathered together brilliant scholars, gifted writers, ambitious intellectuals, and every imaginable kind of personality. Where there was integrity, there was also vanity; where there was idealism, there was inevitably intrigue. In that sense, Weiming Lake has always reflected the many faces of Yanyuan itself.

As the thunder continued rolling over the water, my thoughts drifted back to 1990, when I first arrived at Peking University. Everywhere on campus, Lo Ta-yu’s Love Song 1990 seemed to be playing. One lyric, in particular, suddenly echoed in my ears: “The rumble of thunder outside my window…”

The thunder remains. The song no longer fills the campus from morning until night. Yet somehow, hidden within the thunder, I can still hear its melody.

I was never an undergraduate at Peking University. In that sense, I cannot claim to be a “true” Beida alumnus. Yet my years in Yanyuan transformed my life more profoundly than perhaps any other period. Even if I had never come to Peking University, I would almost certainly have gone on to the United States eventually. The broad direction of my life might have remained unchanged.

But those two short years in Yanyuan gave me something no other place possibly could. I was only thirty years old, already serving as an associate professor at China’s foremost university. I designed and taught my own courses. I supervised graduate students. Living and working in such an extraordinary intellectual community fundamentally reshaped my confidence and broadened my horizons. The nourishment I received there was not merely academic. It was intellectual, cultural, and spiritual. Looking back over the decades that followed, I can see how deeply those years influenced the person I became.

No university in the world—not even those I encountered later in America—could have offered me precisely what Peking University gave during that formative chapter of my life.

Weiming Lake is today a protected cultural heritage site of Beijing. According to local tradition, the grounds of what is now Yanyuan were once part of the private estate of Heshen, the infamous Qing dynasty official whose wealth became legendary. Later, the property became the campus of Yenching University before eventually becoming part of Peking University. The American missionary and educator John Leighton Stuart is buried near the lake, although we were unable to find his grave during our visit.

Throughout the campus stand countless elegant buildings dating from the Republican era, each preserving its own quiet charm. Eventually we reached the university’s main gate, where we stopped to take photographs of some of Yanyuan’s most iconic views.

My wife and I have lived in Princeton for more than twenty years. Comparing the two campuses, the contrast could hardly be greater. Peking University embodies the elegance of traditional Chinese garden architecture, with its winding paths, pavilions, lakes, and ancient trees. Princeton, by contrast, is defined by its stately Collegiate Gothic buildings, whose stone towers and arches evoke the great universities of Europe.

The two campuses could scarcely look more different. Yet together they frame the two most important chapters of our lives.

Near the lakeshore we came upon a group of students posing for graduation photographs. Curious, my wife struck up a conversation and asked about the colors of their academic jackets.

At Princeton, the university’s colors are black and orange, reflecting the tiger that appears on its crest. Faculty and students alike wear the same school colors, without distinction.

Peking University, however, assigns different colors according to academic status. Undergraduates wear red, master’s students blue, and doctoral students black. It struck me that even at a university celebrated for its commitment to intellectual freedom and independent thought, the subtle design of its campus attire still reflected an underlying inclination to distinguish one group from another.

Had I not spent more than three decades living in the United States, I doubt I would ever have noticed such a small cultural difference. I sometimes wonder whether other old friends from Yanyuan who have spent much of their lives overseas feel the same quiet contrast when they return.

We continued walking around the lake, stopping often to photograph it from different angles. It was then that my wife said something she had never expressed so openly before.

She reflected that she had worked first at Peking University, one of China’s finest universities, and later at Princeton, one of the world’s great institutions. Both universities, she observed with a smile, begin with the letter “P.” Such an extraordinary journey had all begun because she had met me.

She had grown up in a small town in Zhejiang Province before following me from place to place, eventually building a life that stretched across both China and the United States.

As she spoke, I sensed a tenderness in her voice that I had rarely heard before.

The following day, at a gathering with old classmates, she spoke again with quiet emotion. Had she never met me, she said, perhaps her life would have been steadier, more comfortable, less filled with uncertainty. She would not have spent half a lifetime following me through so many changes, challenges, and continents.

Such is life.

One person can alter the course of another’s life completely. Everything depends on whom you choose to walk beside.

My wife and I began our journey together beside Weiming Lake. From there we went on to Northwestern University in the United States, where we studied and built a new life along the shores of Lake Michigan.

When we first arrived at Peking University, our eldest daughter had just turned three. She was small and rather frail. She attended kindergarten in Yanyuan for three years, gradually growing stronger, healthier, and delightfully round-cheeked. Everyone who met her adored her. Later, after we settled near Chicago, our second and third children were born. Thirty-six years after leaving Weiming Lake, we found ourselves standing beside it once again. We were no longer the young couple who had first arrived there full of ambition and uncertainty. Yet the lake before us looked almost exactly as it always had.

Reluctantly, we left Weiming Lake and headed toward Shaoyuan Guest House. Along the way we passed a covered lakeside corridor beside a lotus pond.

Two weeks earlier, while walking along the Yongxing River in Beijing’s Daxing District, I had already seen the first lotus buds beginning to emerge. Here at Peking University, however, not a single blossom had appeared. The pond was carpeted with broad green lotus leaves, layered one upon another until they covered the entire surface of the water. Perhaps the different conditions of sunlight within the campus explained why the flowers had not yet bloomed.

Leaving the lotus pond behind, we continued toward Shaoyuan. Shaoyuan has always occupied a special place within Peking University. It serves as the residence for international students, bringing together young people from all over the world.

Back in those days, there was a Japanese female student named Yamamoto who often joined our group to play volleyball on the courts beside Shaoyuan. Whenever she spotted us from a distance, she would call out the name of our friend “Hu Tianhua” in cheerful Mandarin colored by a distinctly Japanese accent.

More than thirty years have passed, yet I can still hear her voice as clearly as if it were yesterday. I have no idea where life eventually took her.

In those days, the entire area consisted of volleyball courts. Today they have all been converted into tennis courts. The chain-link fences remain, but the nets are lower now, and the familiar atmosphere has disappeared. I stood quietly beside the courts, hoping to recover some trace of the excitement we once shared there. But although the courts themselves remained, the game had changed. Beneath the gray afternoon sky, not a single player was to be seen.

Leaving Shaoyuan behind, we retraced our old route toward the South Gate. Along the way my wife mentioned the Triangle once again and wondered whether we might try to find it after all.

I smiled and told her there was little point. “The Triangle,” I said, “was always a place where controversy seemed to flourish. It was certainly one of Peking University’s distinctive landmarks, but perhaps it eventually became more trouble than the university wished to manage. It has long since been demolished. There’s nothing left to see.”

By the time we had completed our walk around the campus, we found ourselves once again standing at the South Gate. We paused for a few moments to chat with the security guard on duty. Earlier that day, he had stopped us because our reservation had not yet been approved. Now, as we prepared to leave, I found myself genuinely grateful to him. He had simply done his job, carefully following the university’s rules, and in the end he had still helped make it possible for us to spend a full day rediscovering Yanyuan.

We took a few final photographs beside the gate. As we were leaving, the guard smiled warmly and said, “You’re always welcome to come back.”

A week has now passed since our return to Weiming Lake, yet every moment of that day remains vividly engraved in my mind.

It is early summer in Beijing once again. The shade beneath the trees is cool; the sunlight still carries the promise of summer’s heat. I walk alone through the park, watching people pass in every direction, while my thoughts wander once more through the pathways of Yanyuan. To me, Weiming Lake is like the banyan tree that has rooted itself deep within my life. It was where my youth first took flight. And by returning there after so many years, I found not merely the memories of an earlier life, but the quiet beginning of a new one.