By the middle of December 1937, many students had to leave to fight the Japanese when the city of Nanjing fell to enemy forces.

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 remote and mountainous southwest.

In these extraordinary wartime circumstances for eight years, staff, professors and students had to survive and operate in makeshift quarters that were 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 managed to conduct the running of a modern university.

Over those years of war (1937-1945), Lianda became famous nationwide for having and producing many of China's most prominent scientists and intellectuals, including the Nobel Prize laureates Yang Chen-Ning and Tsung-Dao Lee.