Before the Anti-Japanese War, China's university admissions exams were conducted by each school on its own.

Since 1938, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China has carried out unified enrollment. The country has been divided into 15 enrollment districts, and the main examination areas are in the west, after all, most of the land in the east has fallen. The provincial examination authorities may guarantee outstanding high school graduates, who do not need to take the examination, but the number of guaranteed students shall not exceed 10% of the total number of students admitted.

The admission ticket will be issued at the end of June every year, the examination will start in early July, and the admission notice will be obtained in August.

Wang Zengqi, who is known as "China's last scholar doctor" and "the last writer of the Beijing School," had to take a boat from Shanghai to Hong Kong, from Hong Kong to Vietnam, and then to Kunming by land from Vietnam in order to take the Southwest Associated University entrance examination.

In order to ensure that the exam was on time, Wang Zengqi came to Kunming more than half a month in advance. He lived in the student dormitory for several days, and ate in the cafeteria with college students every day, but he was not found to be abnormal from beginning to end.

Today, Wang Zengqi met Zhou Hexuan at his meeting and invited everyone to eat pork. Forty years later, he wrote in an article titled "Zhou Mingcheng and the Southwest Associated University":

"Southwest Associated University has five colleges: Arts, Science, Law, Engineering, and Normal College, with the School of Chinese, the School of Law, and the School of Science in the northwest corner of Kunming, and the College of Engineering and the College of Teachers in the west of Kunming respectively. On the fifth day of my arrival at Southwest Associated University, I encountered a grand event that was later talked about by alumni - Zhou Mingcheng's pig killing banquet. ”

At that time, the teachers and students of the School of Engineering received the news and traveled through most of Kunming City to attend the banquet. When it was getting dark, everyone lit torches and crossed the streets, making the police in Kunming feel like they were facing a big enemy, thinking that the students were going to engage in sports. The Teachers' College, which was closer to the school headquarters, sang "March of the Broadsword", but changed the lyrics to "The Broadsword cuts off the heads of the fat pigs", which is quite a bit of the generosity of "Ambition to Eat Hulu Meat". ”

"The reason why I traveled thousands of miles to apply for the Southwest Associated University is mainly because there are Mr. Wen Yiduo, Mr. Zhu Ziqing, and Mr. Shen Congwen. To my delight, I met Mr. Zhou Hexuan, who is famous all over the world, before I took the entrance exam. What he brought this time was not a book of historiography, but ten big fat pigs, and boxes and boxes of cigarettes. ”

"Cigarettes are wartime control materials, and you can buy a few packs as long as you have money, but it is more difficult to buy them in large quantities and they are high-quality cigarettes. Later, I heard that Mr. Zhou asked the bodyguard to take his handwritten letter and went to find Long Shenzeng (Long Yun's third son), and those fat pigs and cigarettes were urgently allocated by Long Sangongzi. ”

"These cigarettes have a story behind them. When Mr. Zhou first arrived in Kunming, he was looking for someone to ask for directions, and he happened to meet Professor Huang Ziqing, a physical chemist. Professor Huang paid for his own experiments with his students, but he was so poor that he couldn't even afford cigarettes, so he wandered around the cigarette vendors for a long time, so he bought two sticks and took a big gulp on the spot. ”

It is said that Mr. Zhou was so moved that he burst into tears, and when he ran the alarm, he heard that many professors had stopped smoking cigarettes, so he asked the bodyguards to buy good cigarettes. At that time, it was not Mr. Huang Ziqing who smoked the hardest, but Mr. Hua Luogeng, who smoked while eating meat, and as a result, he smoked and got drunk before the meat was eaten, and fell asleep on the ground. ”

That night, a bonfire was lit in the open space next to the school building, and the teachers and students were very excited to eat the pork, and began to sing and dance around the fire. As musical instruments were hard to find, Mr. Tang Yongtong, Head of the Department of Philosophy, used a basin as a drum, Professor Wu Dayou and his wife Mr. Ruan Guanshi knocked on the bowl to accompaniment, and Mr. Zhou sang the song "Hong Yan" at the instigation of teachers and students. Mr. Wen Yiduo's poems have musical beauty, but his own singing is really hard to listen to, and his singing voice is always not in tune......"

The pig killing banquet held by Mr. Zhou made the teachers and students of the school excited, and the news that he was going to open a scientific chicken farm in Kunming also spread rapidly. Teachers and students were looking forward to this, and professors from the Faculty of Engineering volunteered to help build the plant, and teachers and students from other Faculty also helped dig earthworms. Before the chicken farm was built, several ponds of earthworms had been raised, and the students were all experts in raising earthworms. ”

"Mr. Zhou's chicken farm really benefits the teachers and students, and the student cafeteria has two meals a week of scrambled eggs, each with a crystal clear egg soup, which we call 'Mingcheng eggs'. Eggs are also a subsidy given by the school to teachers, and each teacher can receive five eggs per week to improve their diet, based on the size of their family. ”

"In 1943, the situation took a turn for the worse, and due to the shortage of school funds and high prices, the eggs received by the teachers were taken to the vegetable market for money."

"No one wants to eat it because life is too hard. Once, when Hu Dingbang saw Professor Wu Han walking around with a vegetable basket in the morning market, he thought he was carefully selecting good dishes, but when he got closer, he realized that he was looking for cheap vegetables all over the market. ”

"Due to the lack of food, Jin Yuelin, Zhu Ziqing and other gentlemen formed a vegetable planting group, and elected Professor Li Jitong, a botanist, as the leader of the vegetable planting group, and Mr. Shen Tong, a lecturer of the Department of Biology, as the assistant of vegetable planting.

"Professor Zhu Ziqing suffered from severe stomach problems due to hunger. Once he had dysentery and insisted on correcting his homework overnight, with a toilet next to his desk, he rectified his composition overnight, pulled it more than 30 times, and collapsed the next day, and went to class as usual without washing his face. ”

"Professors of science and engineering have more tricks than liberal arts professors, using crude machinery and raw materials to make their own soap, ink, alcohol, etc. We often say that if you learn mathematics, physics and chemistry well, you will not be afraid to go all over the world, and this was really the case at that time. ”

"Our students are not having a good time, and those who were able to study in college during the Republic of China were basically born in solid families. In the past, many children of rich families, girls took their mothers to class, and boys let the porter run errands. But when you arrive in Yunnan, you have to do everything, wash your own clothes, sew and mend by yourself, and change your torn shirt into a vest by yourself. At that time, it was most popular for students to wear old clothes sent by welfare organizations such as the Red Cross, and the students of the United Nations University wore these clothes to the streets, just like asking for food, and even the robbers did not bother to look at them. ”

"But compared to the teachers, we students at least don't have to worry about money. Tuition, food and dormitory fees are all free, and you can also receive a loan of 8 yuan per month, which can be used to buy study and daily necessities. Until one day, we found that eight yuan was not enough to buy a bottle of ink – from 1937 to 1943 prices rose 200 times, and by 1944 they had risen more than 2,000 times. Where do teachers pay enough to support their families? I had to exchange Mr. Zhou's eggs for money to buy coarse grains to eat. ”

"I remember that at the end of 1943, Mr. Zhou shipped 3,500 sets of cotton shoes, clothes and pants from Chongqing, and purchased more than a dozen truckloads of materials in Kunming. That winter, the teachers and students all wore new clothes and had meat to eat for the Chinese New Year. I heard that not only Southwest Associated University, but also Central University, Jinling University and other internal relocation schools, Mr. Zhou has donated a large number of materials, and it is difficult to calculate the amount of money spent. There are also some students who like to joke, every time they see the truck delivering supplies, they shout: "Our father has sent food and clothing again......"