Academic refuge

Lizhuang, which covered an area of 1 square km, had 3,000 inhabitants at the time. To accommodate 12,000 students and scholars, locals volunteered to provide them with their own homes and temples as teaching buildings and residences free of charge, said Fan Wangna, a town guide.

As the Japanese army never entered Sichuan, the National Tongji University never stopped enrolling students in Lizhuang, and the institutions that relocated staff there continued to work.

Adhering to the belief of saving the country with science and serving the country with academics at a time marked by the shortage of materials, and the struggle against poverty, the scholars never stopped learning or research.

Visitors to the Palace Museum in Beijing may find a stone carving of more than 1,800 years ago that portrays a naked man and a woman hugging and kissing. The carving, 49 centimeters tall and 43 cm wide, and commonly referred to as "the first kiss under heaven", appears unusual because it was made during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) when personal intimacy was kept private.

The carving, one of China's earliest portrayals of sex in art, was excavated in Jiangkou town in Pengshan county, Sichuan, in 1942, after the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, the preparation department of the Central Museum, and the Society for the Study of Chinese Architecture in Peking moved their staff and campuses to Lizhuang. An archaeological team consisting of staff members of the three institutions worked on cliff tombs in Jiangkou and excavated many cultural relics, including the stone carving.