With half of Taiwan's population and five-sixths its area, Belgium, one of the three little countries in the lowlands of Western Europe, attracts students from nearly 100 countries.

Brussels' loss was Leuven's gain: "'Leuven' is a concept, not only in Belgium but also far beyond its borders throughout the entire world," shamelessly boasts an introduction printed by the school. Most Belgians agree that this is no exaggeration. While Belgium has existed as an independent country for only 160 years, Leuven, the world's oldest Catholic university, has a history that exceeds 560 years. It is listed as one of Europe's oldest universities among such prestigious schools as Paris and Oxford.

So that students in the Netherlands (which then covered the area of present-day Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg) wouldn't have to travel to Paris or Cologne to attend university, Pope Martin V gave official approval as early as 1425 to set up a university in what is now Belgium. Populous and prosperous Brussels was first considered as a site for the school, but the city refused, "fearing that it would badly influence the chastity of its women."

And thus Brussels missed the chance to get a university that would become world famous. The small town of Leuven, 25 kilometers to the east, whose church and government were enthusiastically behind the school, was selected for the campus.

Originally three schools--of letters and science, law and medicine -- were established. Seven years later a school of theology was added. Steeped in tradition, these schools are still extremely renowned. The school of medicine has five hospitals set up under its auspices. All told they hold 2,300 beds, and patients are transferred here from not only Belgium but from other European countries and Africa as well. The school of philosophy, because it holds the manuscripts and papers of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, is famous worldwide for its own brand of phenomenological research.

Take a look at the famous alumni of Leuven, and the university shines even brighter. Going a long way back, Adrian of Utrecht (Pope Adrian VI) was a student here in the 16th century. More recently, the current prime minister of Belgium, the former minister of foreign affairs, and the minister of the treasury all studied here and went on to become men of great achievement in Belgium.

Family crisis: Yet this splendid history has been no match for political and economic realities. The university was once shut down during wartime, and twice it was damaged by bombs. But these disasters are nothing beside the great change of 20 years ago. Located between Holland and France, Belgium has two major ethnic groups: the Flemish of the north, whose language is a kind of Dutch, and the Walloons of the south, who speak French. Leuven is in the middle leaning north, in a Dutch speaking area. But because the politics and economy of Belgium were earlier dominated by French speakers and because Leuven was the greatest university in the land, instruction was given in French. Most courses did not start to adopt both French and Dutch until 1936. In the sixties, with the economic development of the Dutch speaking area outstripping the French speaking zone, the tensions between the two groups became serious, eventually resulting in the breaking apart of Leuven University.

"At that time there was incessant student unrest. Students would occupy classrooms and would not allow the old French-speaking professors to teach. If class was held, Flemish and Walloon students would often fight in front of the lecturer's podium. When the fighting became too fierce, the police had to separate the two groups by putting themselves in the middle," recalls Shen Ching-sung, a Leuven doctor with a philosophy degree and the Chairman of the Philosophy Department at National Chengchi University who personally witnessed the process of the university breaking apart. He remembers when old Leuven became an entirely Dutch school, and the French instructors and students went south to the new campus in the Walloon area. They couldn't take the buildings with them and the equipment could be reacquired, but no one was willing to give way on the issue of precious books. "Some original manuscripts or out-of-print sets were split in half, with old Leuven getting the first, third and fifth volumes and new Leuven getting the second, fourth and sixth."

Years go by like days: And so it was that in 1970 Leuven was split into two independent schools that were both given the name Catholic University of Leuven. Since one used Dutch and one used French, the different spellings reduced possible confusion. Yet both of the schools inherited and extended the same tradition of excellence.

Because they are Catholic universities, crosses are hung in the classrooms and black-robed priests are to be seen strolling about both campuses. What's more, the divisions between the young and the old are rigid and the students cannot directly call a professor's name. When called to a meeting with a teacher, the male students must wear suits and the female students long skirts. Though teachers themselves, younger faculty members are extremely reverential of their elders. Imbued with ancient Europe an culture, Leuven has an aura of elegance about it. Unlike America, here you rarely see students wearing sneakers. The academic system is also in the European tradition. The time limits for obtaining degrees are set as two years for a master's and four to six years, in theory anyway, for a doctorate. But in the humanities and law, the degrees take an extremely long time. Tsai Cheng-wen, a professor of politics at National Taiwan University, toiled at Leuven for 10 years. Yuan Chu-cheng, a doctoral candidate in philosophy, just laughs when he is asked how many more years before he graduates. "Another one who doesn't understand the situation," he says. Shih Chao-Ying, who already got a master's in Taiwan, has been in Leuven already five years and says that graduation is still far off.

Time is counted here by years--whether in the ancient campus of Leuven City or the new campus by the mountains. Senior students who have already completed their course work and are hard at work on their theses naturally spend great lengths of time at their research, but for those taking classes, course work also revolves on a one-year cycle.

Marks once a year: Students all have examinations once a year, for which they can choose either July or September. Basically, their futures are decided by this single exam. If a student gets a 10 or more in all courses (a perfect score is 20; honors is 14 and above; and below ten is failing), he can advance. If he misses the mark on the first try, he can petition to take the exams again in September. If he still doesn't make the grade, no credits are given for that year and he must take all the course work over again.

Students are given individual oral tests given in the same way for centuries. Every July, during the examination period, one sees fully dressed students gathered everywhere on campus, waiting outside of classrooms to be summoned. After being called, the professor first gives the topic and a student is given 20 minutes to think and respond. In accordance with the different habits of professors, some request a written answer to be followed by an on-the-spot oral exam, whereas others prefer just oral tests. After the students have finished being tested, the professors sit around a conference table and discuss which students can advance. The results are announced publicly.

"There is tremendous pressure that accumulates from one year of studies being judged all at once," says Chen Chuan-sheng, a third year doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering who is also an assistant teacher and responsible for helping Belgian students with their theses. It's not only foreign students who, because of the language problem, are scared of the oral exams. The Belgians are terrorized by this decisive test too.

"For freshmen in particular, quite often the whole family comes along. Wearing suits makes it a bit simpler for the men. The women often have their mothers helping with their appearance in the hope that it will make a good impression on the professors," points out Chen Chuan-sheng. In the last two years there have been woman students from Taiwan who thought that they only had to come with T-shirts and jeans. When they understand what's the deal, they nervously write home for skirts.

Beer is the campus drink: Except for the exam period, the days go by slowly and contentedly. Leuven City is a beautiful city, built after the ninth century. The architecture is of varying styles--Roman, Gothic, renaissance, baroque--and half of these styles can be found on the old campus. Currently, a third of the 85,000 people living in the town are Leuven students.

While there are many of the establishments typical of a college town -- bookstores and eateries--there are even more small beer halls. They can be found anywhere the small slate streets wind and beside the plaza in front of the town hall and campus library. "Leuven and beer are inseparable," Chen Chuan-sheng says. On Friday the school doesn't ordinarily schedule classes. "On Thursday night, the beer halls are packed, and it's as if Leuven's night never comes," says Yuan Chu-cheng. Even when exams roll around, the students have a book in one hand and a beer mug in the other. In particular, the beer brewery Stella Artois, head-quartered in the suburbs, can be said to offer up the "campus drink."

"Don't try getting on a train after 3:00 on a Friday afternoon" is something every arriving foreign student hears. Trains are Leuven's main link to the outside world. "The Belgians have a strong sense of family," says Yuan Chu-cheng. "Very few students don't go back home on weekends, carrying bags of dirty laundry. On Monday they'll come back with a jar of mother's food." And when the Belgian students depart, leaving only the foreign students behind, Leuven suddenly becomes very quiet.

Currently old Leuven has 1,500 foreign students, more than any other school in Belgium and far more than the 300 on the new campus. The major reason for this is that when the university split in 1970, old Leuven adopted the slogan of "facing the world" and designed an "international curriculum" taught in English, making it the only famous university in continental Europe with degrees offered for programs taught in English. Furthermore, most of the people in the Dutch-speaking sector--unlike the French-speaking zone--speak English, which makes it very easy for English-speaking foreign students. It has thus attracted a great number of students who are interested in studying in Europe but would otherwise be linguistically handicapped.

Two generations, two attitudes: In the book-and-beer town of Leuven, more than ten students from the Republic of China took advantage of a rare opportunity to get together on one serene afternoon and discussed what it's like to study abroad. They differ in age and when they arrived in Leuven, but differ more in their attitudes and motives for selecting Leuven. They quite obviously fall into two different generations. Chu Yuan-san, who has been in Leuven for six years studying electrical engineering, is up front about saying that Leuven was not his first choice. "It's not easy to attend the good universities in America with a degree from Feng Chia College, and both tuition and living costs are high in the States," he says, speaking of his considerations at the time.

Belgium is a socialist country, where educational expenses are almost entirely borne by the government. Registration fees for a year at the university are only about NT$5-600 and students from developing countries are charged the same. Hence, it costs almost nothing to study. What's more, the nearby Haasrode Industrial Park is the high-tech center of Belgium. It closely cooperates with the university, adding to the strength and prestige of Leuven's college of Engineering. Considering everything, Chu Yuan-san came to Belgium.

"Taiwan students who came here early on all have a complex about this place being second rate, about coming here only because they couldn't go to the United States," says another "senior" foreign student. In fact, early on there weren't many students here from Taiwan at all. Seven or eight years ago, when he first arrived, there were only 20 students here from Taiwan.

"Three years ago, the number coming suddenly began to rise," says Lee Shu-cheng, a secretary for the Ministry of Education stationed in Belgium who is a Leuven alumnus himself. That year alone 25 new students arrived. And now there are 80 students from Taiwan at old Leuven, twice as many as at the new campus.

More for pleasure than serious study: Unlike these early arrivals who are focused on attaining their doctorates, most of the new students have entered master's programs and have selected high-cost courses which were designed for foreign students, such as those in European research, business management, architecture, education, etc., where it's quite easy to spend upwards of NT$100,000 a year.

"Our perception of the world has changed," says Lee Shu-cheng. "In the past when 'abroad' was mentioned, one thought only of America. Now people will think of going to check out Europe. With the improved economic situation in Taiwan, there's only the language problem, which Leuven has solved by providing the international curriculum. So all at once everyone began coming." Here he makes a short critique: "Those coming for travel and study--without clear study objectives, with the aim of adding to what they've seen and experienced--are more numerous than those coming in pursuit of scholarship."

Lo Shih-wei, a graduate of National Taiwan University's Graduate School of Civil Engineering, after working for six years and accumulating enough money to live for a couple of years without worry, selected Leuven for his doctoral studies. While he is near in age to the students who arrived in the earlier period, his attitude is completely different. "As far as architecture is concerned, Europe is tops. Lueven has an English curriculum and Belgium is in the heart of Western Europe. It's the same distance to such major European cities as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne. One can come to understand the varied faces of both traditional and modern European culture," says Lo, explaining his reason for coming to Leuven.

Body in Leuven, spirit in all of Europe: Some question this method of study. By studying in English for a degree in a non-English speaking country, where you understand neither newspaper nor radio, where you can only make friends using English, a language that is neither party's native tongue, can you really enter society and understand local culture?

The answer is that they don't really care how much they understand of Belgian culture or how much they blend in. Here, they watch the BBC and CNN on television, listen to radio from all over Europe, and whenever there is a holiday they go to any of several European countries to travel. For them, the key isn't that they're in Belgium but that they're in Europe, looking out on the world.

In meeting this need, the international curriculum of Leuven attracts not only students from Taiwan but also from many English-speaking coun tries to come and to see Europe. It is now more convenient to promote academic exchange with Britain and America, and the school's reputation has taken one more step forward. Abundant money is yet another concrete result.

The French-speaking new campus has no way to take the same route to fill its coffers and must at the same time pay the many huge bills associated with building a university from the ground up. Its economic situation is not as good as that of the old campus, but it has another way of making money.

Meticulously planned campus: The new campus of Leuven was built on three farms. It is spacious with lush grass and trees. When planning the construction of the school, the first floor of both sides of the main street have been completely developed as a commercial district, sold and rented out to shops, bringing with it human spirit and vitality, meeting faculty and student needs for daily necessities and generating income.

Therefore, below the classrooms are restaurants, clothing stores and movie theaters and next door are book stores and record shops--a lively college town has slowly taken shape. Although some of the architecture is modern in style and the parking lot is built underneath the campus town, most of the new buildings were purposely built in the style of the Middle Ages. In particular, there are lots of small lanes paved in slate, which wind in new directions every 10 meters or so. "Visitors have difficulty finding an address and have to ask the 'city residents,'" remarks Chen Shu-zhen, a doctoral candidate at the new Leuven University who has a degree from the graduate school of linguistics at Fu Jen Catholic University.

The streets are, like those on the old campus, made of blocks of slate, laid out one layer after another on the slope. These are for the pedestrians; different roads are provided for cars. There are 8 students in each dorm unit, which is complete with a living room and kitchen, and the students cook and live together like families.

A place that belongs to people: "Everywhere in this meticulously planned college town one can see that care was taken to encourage human interaction. Old Leuven is also a college town with residents, but rarely does one see students interacting with the residents because the streets are not designed for interaction and discussion," praises Sheng Ching-sung, who has studied on both campuses. "The design of new Leuven lets the people leaving classrooms and stores bump into each other, adding to opportunities for contact."

Hence, during a normal day of classes, the many small plazas around town are often full of people coming out of buildings or turning off of the small lanes and running into each other. It is unusually lively. But as soon as the weekend comes, the 20,000 Belgium students leave, and the city is even more desolate than old Leuven. "There's no sound of people, and the stores are closed too. Only a few foreigners remain here, like lonely souls and ghosts," describes Shih Chao-ying.

"You've got to be able to take the loneliness," says Su Wei-wen, laughing. "This is really a good place for serious studying." She studied French in Taiwan. When she got here she strengthened her language skills and then started studying mass communications. Because instruction is in French, most students from Taiwan have a similar background. Most of them studied French in Taiwan, and they reflect the ratio of sexes found in the French programs there. Women make up as much as 70 percent of them, and the situation is very different from other schools where Taiwanese students are mostly men.

The break: Leuven is not the only famous University which has broken up. For example, Lyon University in France 20 years ago also split in two and then in three. But Leuven is the only example of such a school meeting with even more glory after its break.

Twenty years after a split that sapped the vitality of the schools at the time, the new Leuven has tied its fortunes together with business and finished building its campus. The old campus has broken new ground with degrees granted for an English-language curriculum, which has helped to raise the school's prestige to new heights. Not only has it reached its goal of "facing the world," but it has stepped onto the world stage itself.

This old school, rich with tradition, has an unusual story of creating success in modern society.

[Picture Caption]

(Left) Leuven was twice damaged by bombs during World War Ⅱ. The library, which is in the middle of the old city of Leuven, was rebuilt by donations from American universities. Their names are carved into the pillars in front of its door.

Dutch with Chinese en face? This is a sign at Leuven's China Europe Institute.

A number of classrooms at Leuven have been listed as national historic sites.

With creativity anything you pick up can be used as material. The photo shows the desk of an architecture student.

The bicycle race held every October is a major event on the new campus. (photo courtesy of Chen Shu-zhen)

Drinking holes abound in Leuven. Beer is called "the school drink."

Lo Shih-wei (first on right) brought his whole family with him to study abroad.

Leuven is a typical college town. Out of every three people, one is a Leuven student. In the town square, old books are laid out for sale.

The new campus has been gradually built over the last 20 years. Most of the building were intentionally done in the style of the Middle Ages. A small number have a relatively more modern appearance.

Stores, classrooms, and dorms are all mixed in together--a special characteristic of the new campus.

The railway is the main link New Leuven has with the outside.

In winter and summer alike, the library is a magnet for those serious about hitting the books.

Dutch with Chinese en face? This is a sign at Leuven's China Europe Institute.

A number of classrooms at Leuven have been listed as national historic sites.

With creativity anything you pick up can be used as material. The photo shows the desk of an architecture student.

The bicycle race held every October is a major event on the new campus. （photo courtesy of Chen Shu-zhen）

Drinking holes abound in Leuven. Beer is called "the school drink.".

Lo Shih-wei （first on right） brought his whole family with him to study abroad.

Leuven is a typical college town. Out of every three people, one is a Leuven student. In the town square, old books are laid out for sale.

The new campus has been gradually built over the last 20 years. Most of the building were intentionally done in the style of the Middle Ages. A small number have a relatively more modern appearance.

The railway is the main link New Leuven has with the outside.

Stores, classrooms, and dorms are all mixed in together--a special characteristic of the new campus.

In winter and summer alike, the library is a magnet for those serious about hitting the books.