Shandong University

I moved to Jinan from Qinhuangdao, which is a bit like the Chinese equivalent of moving from Monaco to Luton (that would be the shabbiest part of Luton – although Jinan had worse traffic problems and really bad air), and worked at Shandong University in Jinan for five years, on the Hongjialou campus (previously East Old Campus), living initially on the newer Central Campus (formerly East New Campus) and later in an apartment close by Hongjialou. There are currently six more campuses (campii?) of the University – four more in Jinan, plus one in Weihai, and a new one in Qingdao (inaugurated in September 2016 and still under construction). The institution has a long and complex history, being the result of renaming, moves, mergers, closures, wars and revolutions. I’m not going to go through all that, but the above link to Wikipedia’s main article about it is a good starting place. It’s really quite an interesting history.

I visited two of the other Jinan campuses, the medical campus (aka Baotuquan campus), where I often met a colleague for lunch before heading pubwards, and the South campus, which was an additional long journey by bus from there, on the edge of the city, which was still under construction at the time and far from anything of interest other than a hill with good views of some of the rest of the city).