By the winter of 1948, the Kuomintang saw that it was headed for defeat in civil war with the Communists, and turned its attention to building up a base for itself in Taiwan. After careful consideration, the Nationalist government named Fu Ssu-nien president of National Taiwan University as part of its bid to stabilize the situation in Taiwan. Prior to the appointment, Fu had been serving as acting president of Peking University.

But Fu refused the job when education minister Chu Chia-hua told him about it. Chu then organized a band of friends to take turns persuading Fu to take the post, which he finally did reluctantly. Even then, however, he remained ambivalent and didn't actually take up his duties for a time.

In mid-January 1949, Fu holed up at his home in Nanjing and fretted about the future. Pacing back and forth in a black mood, he recited a verse written by Tao Yuanming in the 5th century: "I planted mulberries along the Yangtse / Expecting to pick fruit after three years. / They were just becoming lush / When the kingdom was toppled. / The trees, broken and stripped of their leaves, / Drift rootless toward the ocean. / But the ground was not fertile in the first place, / So what's to regret?" Fu eventually decided to take up the post in Taiwan, though the prospect inspired little enthusiasm. He thought he would just have a look around and perhaps be back to the mainland quite soon. So he only took part of his family along. Little did he know that he would devote the rest of his life to Taiwan and NTU.

Fu Garden, with its Greek mausoleum, stands as a memorial to the man who will forever be the school's guiding spirit. Situated on the right as you enter the NTU campus, it is part of everyday life for NTU students. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

University for the universe

A graduate of Peking University, Fu had studied abroad in Britain and Germany. At age 30 he established the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, to which he attracted three big-name academics (Chen Yin-ke, Chao Yuan-jen, and Li Chi) to head up three of the Institute's departments. Fu was noted for his idea that academics should get out of the ivory tower, roll up their sleeves, and get involved in the nitty-gritty work of digging up and evaluating first-hand historical materials.

Fu was over 50 when he became acting president of Peking University. In addition to being a formidable scholar and outstanding administrator, Fu also spoke out vociferously on public affairs. Not long after the end of the war against Japan, with people still reveling in the sweetness of victory, Fu shocked the nation with an editorial in Century Commentary entitled "T.V. Soong Must Go." Soong was head of the KMT cabinet, but after news organizations across China reprinted Fu's editorial, Soong came under heavy pressure and was forced to resign.

When Fu arrived in Taiwan in 1949, NTU was in chaos, and soon thereafter the infamous April 6th Incident sparked a high tide of student protests. The incident was sparked when police stopped a pair of students from NTU and Taipei Teachers' College for riding double on a bicycle. When the students proved uncooperative, the police beat and detained them, setting off a chain of events that eventually led to mass arrests by the military police.

Furious that police had entered the NTU campus to arrest students without so much as a nod to proper legal procedure, Fu protested at the highest levels of the KMT leadership. He said the police could not arbitrarily arrest people without carefully established proof, and even with such proof, the university president's approval was required before NTU students could be arrested. He even told Peng Meng-chi, then an official in the Taiwan Garrison Command: "If any students' blood is shed, I'm coming after you!"

The student protests eventually died down, and in November of that same year Fu presided for the first time over celebrations marking the anniversary of NTU's founding. In his address, he stated: "When Taiwan was under Japanese rule, this university was run for a specific purpose: to further Japan's colonial policies, and help Japan expand into Southeast Asia. Now that we're in charge of NTU, we're running it strictly as a university. The old policies are gone, and we won't allow the university to be used for anything other than academic purposes." He closed his address by encouraging students to work hard, and be inspired by the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, who considered that the spirit of the universe is the pursuit of truth. "We dedicate this university to the spirit of the universe," he told them.

More competent than Hu Shih

Having come to NTU at a time of crisis, Fu's main job was to pull the school out of the morass it was in. When the Nationalist government fled to Taiwan, huge numbers of university students came along. The student body at NTU suddenly shot to 3000, up from just a few hundred. Classroom buildings and dormitories were insufficient, so Fu worked hard to buy books and equipment, build teaching and dormitory facilities, hire more professors, reform the NTU Hospital, and screen students carefully. Fu's bold action changed NTU completely.

Professor Chu Wan-li, of NTU's College of Liberal Arts, has written in unreserved praise of Fu's principled admissions policy. Under Fu, no one could skip the entrance exams and get into NTU on the strength of connections. As for the exams themselves, the questions were formulated with extreme care, and the security measures surrounding the printing of the exam sheets went beyond what anyone not involved could imagine. The windows at the printing plant were all papered over, while guards patrolled outside. Some commented that it was like "preparing for battle." Chu Wan-li once spent three straight evenings "locked up" in just such a "temporary prison."

A scholar with great respect for other scholars, Fu relied on his extensive ties throughout academia to bring in many leading lights from overseas, including Lao Kan, Tung Tso-pin, Ying Chien-li, Tao Pao-kai, and Tung Wen-chi. Here they kept alive the flickering flame of Confucian education. Mediocre talents, by contrast, found it impossible to slip into the school past Fu's watchful eye, no matter who they might have wangled a recommendation from. Rigorous hiring standards helped greatly to raise the status of educators at NTU.

Fu was an extraordinarily effective advocate for NTU, and no task was too menial if it furthered his goal of ensuring that the university would grow and prosper far into the future. He was especially noted for his close ties to the all-powerful Chiang Kai-shek.

Every time he went to the Generalissimo's residence on Yangmingshan to ask for funding, he invariably came down from the mountain richly rewarded for his time. Small wonder, then, that Fu once said: "Hu Shih is a much better man than me, but I'm a more effective administrator than him."

21-bell "Fu salute"

On the afternoon of 20 May 1950, Fu attended a session of the Taiwan Provincial Assembly, which was then in charge of the university's budget appropriations. Fu was hectored about the theft of educational equipment from the mainland being stored at NTU, and was pressed to relax admission standards. The browbeating angered him so deeply that he had a stroke and died later that evening. He was 55 years old.

Fu was buried on the NTU campus, with a Greek mausoleum erected over his grave. His quiet burial spot is named Fu Garden. The Fu Campanile was put up later directly across from the school's main administration building, and the bells are struck 21 times to mark the beginning and end of classes. The number 21 was chosen in commemoration of one of Fu's more famous lines: "There are only 21 hours in a day. The other three are for reflection."

A half-century after his death, Fu's legacy survives in NTU's tradition of excellence, and in the very layout of the campus. Fu Garden, Fu Campanile, and the walkways lined with NTU's trademark azaleas and coconut palms live in the minds of the Taiwanese as symbols of the tradition of academic freedom.

Though he was president of NTU for less than two years, the proud and feisty Fu will forever live on in NTU lore. The man may be long gone, but his spirit will never die.