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Zheli Building, Old Campus of Liaoning University
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
In the early 2010s, Liaoning University received an unusual letter from Russia. The original designers of the Zheli Building were writing to warn that their three-story brick-and-mortar creation had reached its sixty-year design limit. Completed in December 1952 at 66 Chongshan Middle Road, the structure has long outlived that expiration date.
Originally named the Zhejing Building, it housed the Philosophy, Economics, Chinese, and History departments. Today, it anchors the Chongshan Campus as a Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit. The architecture presents a heavy Soviet-Russian silhouette softened by European Gothic and Baroque flourishes. Red climbing ivy grips the historic masonry, while golden leaves from the adjacent Ginkgo Road drift across its steps every autumn.
Generations of scholars have worn down the interior floors. When an alumnus secured a three-million-yuan donation for a recent restoration, engineers adhered strictly to an "old-as-old" philosophy. They preserved the exterior walls and original layout while reinforcing the aging plaster and repairing the fourth-floor auditorium during a sixty-day project in 2019. Now, the School of Mathematics and Statistics shares these reinforced halls with the School of Information and a provincial big data center monitoring coal mine disasters.
The building remains the ultimate symbol of the institution's academic heritage. Look closely at the official Liaoning University emblem. The Zheli Building sits at the exact center, resting heavily above a globe motif. Above the roofline, the university's name appears in the distinct calligraphy of Zhu De. The structure stands as a continuous dialogue between the humanities scholars who first walked its corridors and the data scientists who occupy them today. The kiln-fired bricks and mortar hold the memory of 1952, anchoring the campus in a quiet, enduring permanence.