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By summer 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army had bombed Nankai University to the ground in Tianjin and occupied areas including the campuses of two of the country's leading universities in Beijing - Beida University and Tsinghua University. These three universities, which were the some of the country's most prestigious, modern educational institutions of higher learning and research, with the agreement of those who led the institutions - men of high standing who had been educated abroad - decided to retreat to Changsha, the capital city of Hunan province, (about 900 miles away from Beijing) in order to unite together. Although by the middle of December 1937, many students had to leave to fight the Japanese when the city of Nanjing fell to the enemy forces.

As the Japanese forces were gaining more territory they eventually bombed Changsha in February 1938. The 800 staff faculty and students who were left had to flee and made the 1,000 mile journey to Kunming, capital of Yunnan province in China's southwest. It was here that the National Southwest Associated University (known commonly as Lianda for short). In these extraordinary wartime circustances for eight years, staff, professors and students had to survive and operate in makeshift quarters that were constantly being subjected to sporadic bombing campaigns by the Imperial Japanese forces. There were dire shortages of food, equipment, books, clothing and other essential needs, but they did manage to conduct the running of a modern university. Over those eight years of war (1937-1945), Lianda became famous nationwide for having and producing many, if not most, of China's most prominent academics, scholars, scientists and intellectuals.