Huize Building of Yunnan University

At No. 2 Cuihu North Road in Kunming, ninety-five blue stone steps rise from the street toward a grand late French Renaissance facade. This is the Huize Building, constructed between 1923 and 1924 on the Donglu Campus of Yunnan University. It stands directly on the ground where Ming and Qing dynasty candidates once sat for imperial civil service exams at the Mingyuan Tower.

In 1922, Governor Tang Jiyao founded the private Donglu University. He first donated ten thousand silver yuan as start-up funds and later contributed an additional five hundred thousand. The building was named “Huize” after Tang Jiyao's literary name. Engineer Zhang Banghan, trained in Paris and Belgium, designed the symmetrical, H-shaped structure. He chose to build with local materials, combining red bricks fired in Kunming kilns with blue stone quarried from the West Mountain. He imported cement from France via the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway and laid floors of Vietnamese teak.

The building bears the physical marks of human hands and historical crises. In 1927, calligrapher Chen Rongchang composed the inscription for a bronze plaque, which was later cast and mounted on the lobby wall. Visitors can touch its cold, metallic surface. On the facade, four ten-meter-tall Roman columns rise, their stone capitals carved with delicate leaf patterns.

During World War II, Japanese warplanes targeted the prominent structure. On October 13, 1940, and again on May 12, 1941, bombs pierced the roof and tore through two levels of teak flooring before hitting the ground. The building remained standing. After the war, civil engineering professor Wang Jingxian designed the repairs, reinforcing the structure and adding a third-floor section known as the Yangzhi Pavilion. In July 1948, the building became a fortress. Student protesters barricaded themselves inside during the July 15 Movement. To block advancing security forces, the students blocked and destroyed the staircase leading to the upper floors with large stones.

Today, the first floor houses the Yunnan University History Museum, which opened in December 2020. Visitors walking up the ninety-five steps tread on the same West Mountain stone where generations of graduates have stood.