Editor's note: GoKunming is publishing photos from the collection of Auguste François (1857-1935), who served as French consul in south China between 1896 and 1904, during which he spent several years in Kunming. The photos have been provided by Kunming resident and private collector Yin Xiaojun (殷晓俊). GoKunming thanks Yin Xiaojun for providing us a glimpse of Yunnan at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Year: 1903
Subject: Gongyuan
Location: Present-day Yunnan University

Background:

Kunming's roots as an educational hub for Yunnan trace back to the Qing Dynasty, well before the Yundas, Shidas and Jingmao Daxues of today started cranking out graduates.

As Yunnan's administrative center, Kunming was where young men from around the province came to take China's notoriously difficult and stressful civil service examinations. Those who succeeded had the chance to go on to the national exams in Beijing, those who failed generally turned to drink or did the dignified thing and drowned themselves.

In Kunming, the provincial-level exams were administered at the current location of Yunnan University, at an educational institution known as Gongyuan (贡院).

Every three years 1,500 hopeful scholars who had passed their county/prefecture exams to become xiucai (秀才) would come to Gongyuan to take the provincial exam. The few candidates who passed the exam in Gongyuan would be designated as juren (举人) and would be allowed to proceed to the national exams. Those who passed the national level exams were designated jinshi (进士), after which they were eligible for high-level official positions.

The above photo by Auguste François - taken 19 years before the founding of Yunnan University - is of Gongyuan's front gate, which is strikingly bare compared to the lush front gate of Yunnan University today, pictured below.


Related article: Auguste François, Yin Xiaojun and Kunming at the end of the Qing Dynasty

Tags: Auguste François, education, Gongyuan, old Kunming, Yin Xiaojun, Yunnan University

Friday: Local rock showcase at On The Go
Tonight the new Kundu bar On The Go will host a night of local rock featuring Broken String (断弦), Kou Xuan (口玄), Kua Fu and No Answer (打死我也不说). The free show starts at 9:30. On The Go is located on the second floor of the building across from Top One's main entrance.

Saturday: Children's piano concert at TCG Nordica
TCG Nordica will be holding a children's piano concert Saturday night in conjunction with Beautiful Heart piano training center. The 8 pm show is 5 yuan for children, 15 yuan for adults.

Saturday: Halloween pub crawl
For the second year in a row, a Halloween pub crawl of the Yunda/Wenlin Jie area has been organized, once again starting 8 pm at the Sunshine Bar, about 50 meters south of Yunnan University's north gate. Drink discounts will be available for all costumed revelers at the Sunshine Bar as well as Must Colombian Café (9:00), Salvador's Coffee House (10:00), The Box (11:00) and Chapter One (midnight and onward). The pub crawl is open to anyone with an interest in drinking while in costume.

Tags: Broken String, Halloween, Kou Xuan, Kua Fu, live music, Must Colombian Coffee, No Answer, On The Go, pub crawl, Salvador's Coffee House, Sunshine Bar, TCG Nordica, Wenlin Jie, Yunnan University

Fossilized crustaceans linked together in head-to-tail chains recently discovered near Kunming have been recognized as the earliest form of collective behavior on Earth and an important link in the evolution of life – and have raised new questions about some of the planet's earliest life forms.

The 525 million year-old shrimplike specimens, located in the fossil-rich Chengjiang Lagerstätte roughly 50 kilometers southeast of Kunming, have been studied by a team of scientists from Yunnan University and University of Oxford and University of Leicester in the UK with their results published in the journal Science.

The Chengjiang Lagerstätte is known among paleontologists for the fossilized sea life it contains, collectively referred to as 'Chengjiang Fauna'. Chengjiang Fauna is considered one of the 'Three faunas of the evolution of early life forms' along with Burgess Shale Fauna in western Canada and the Ediacaran Fauna of South Australia.

Chengjiang Fauna centers around Maotian Mountain (帽天山) and contains numerous important discoveries, including Fuxianhuia, the ancestor of modern insects, which was discovered in 1994. It is known for its abundance of ancient arthropods, which include insects, spiders and crustaceans.

A report in The Times of London speculates on how the chain of animals was preserved so well, during the act of migration:



It is theorized that the animals may have simply 'surfed' currents or perhaps moved through a pulsating movement. According to Oxford professor Derek Siveter "It's still a bit of a mystery and there doesn't seem to be a direct comparison with any living animal."

Images: Nature.com

Tags: Chengjiang, Chengjiang Fauna, Chengjiang Lagerstätte, fossils, Leicester, Maotian Mountain, Oxford, paleontology, Yunnan University, 帽天山

Today Chinese media nationwide have broken the story of the murder of Mu Hongzhang (木鸿章), almost three weeks after the discovery of his remains. Mu, a Lijiang resident who was a manager at the Lijiang Highway and Bridge Management Company, was initially reported missing on December 19 of last year. He was reportedly murdered and hacked into more than 260 pieces that night.

The murder has sent shock waves through Lijiang, as has the identity of Mu's alleged murderer. The accused murderer is Mu's reported lover, 19 year-old Beijing native Zhang Chao (张超), a second-year student at Yunnan University's Tourism Culture Institute in Lijiang. The story has caught the interest of China's national and local media, with news outlets throughout the country running articles on the case today.

Zhang Chao

According to interviews with some of Zhang's classmates, the new arrival from Beijing quickly adapted to her new environment in Lijiang and led a life of leisure and barhopping. Zhang's classmates claimed that the woman met the married Mu - whose age has not been disclosed - during her nights out and the two quickly established a relationship in which Zhang would spend time with Mu in exchange for cash, with some deposits by Mu into Zhang's bank account as high as 30,000 yuan.

Details regarding Zhang's possible motive for murdering Mu have yet to surface and a trial date has yet to be announced.

The case is the second brutal murder case involving a Yunnan University student in the last four years. In June of 2004, Yunnan University student Ma Jiajue was executed for bludgeoning four of his classmates to death. Ma reportedly said that he murdered the four because they accused him of cheating in a game of cards.

Image: www.clzg.cn

Tags: Lijiang, Ma Jiajue, Mu Hongzhang, murder, Yunnan University, Zhang Chao

Yunnan University and Mumbai University have reached an agreement to begin educational exchanges aimed at improving relations between the two Asian countries, according to Indian media reports.

Under the agreement between the schools, Yunnan University will begin offering courses in September that are expected to include subjects such as Indian history, Buddhism, Indian philosophy, Sanskrit and Hindi. Professors and experts from India will teach the courses in Yunnan. Indian software experts will also help Yunnan University establish a software institute.

As part of the exchange, Chinese professors and experts will go to India to teach courses related to Chinese culture and history. A tentative course list includes Chinese language, Taoism and Chinese philosophy.

Tags: education, India, Mumbai University, Yunnan University

It doesn't have the name recognition of Peking University, Tsinghua University or Nankai University, nevertheless Yunnan University has been attracting a growing number of high-profile international visitors.

In the last two weeks Yunnan University has hosted an American Nobel Laureate in Economics and a delegation from the Iranian government. Now Yunnan province's largest university is preparing to host the upcoming ETHICOMP Working Conference on computer ethics, organized by De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. A schedule for the two-day event, which will be held on April 2-3 can be found here.

What is computer ethics? We're not sure either, but we're guessing the Honghe, Yunnan native who was recently arrested for his connection to the 'Good news-bearing Golden Pig' mutation of the Panda computer virus could have used some computer ethics guidance.

Computer ethics aside, Yunnan University was visited on the 13th of this month by Joseph E. Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001 and is author of the book Making Globalization Work. Stiglitz addressed students and faculty, supporting China's efforts at economic development and asserting that China's rise directly promotes development of the US and global economies.

Two days later Iran's Cultural Attache to Beijing, Mohammad-Javad Aghajari, addressed government officials, students and faculty at Yunnan University, calling on China and Iran to increase their scientific and cultural ties. Aghajari called upon the students and faculty of Yunnan University's Iranian Studies Department to work to introduce Iran to the Chinese people. He also emphasized the two countries' ancient ties via the Silk Road and called for more educational exchanges between the two states.

Tags: Joseph Stiglitz, Yunnan University

This weekend comes during the brief period in which Kunming's cherry trees are in full bloom. Two of the best places to take in the beautiful and fragrant trees are Yunnan University and the Kunming Zoo on Yuantong Shan.

The trees blossom but several days each year, this year's blossoms are already beginning to fall from their branches. This weekend will be the last opportunity to enjoy the vivid colors and narcotic perfume put out by some of Kunming's most underappreciated residents. To preserve the fleeting beauty of these trees, we've added a Yunnan University photo gallery to our photo galleries.

If you have any photos of cherry blossoms, Yunnan University or anything else Kunming-related that you would like to share with GoKunming and its readers, please send them in via our contact form. (If you want to send a bunch, we'd be grateful if you zip them up first.)

Tags: flowers, Yunnan University