Nanjing Normal University – or Nanshida, as it’s locally known (???), has a long and convoluted history, starting from 1902 and involving a series of name changes. In fact, it only became known as NNU in 1984. The university these days is one of the universities listed in the “211 project” in China, which is a list of the best unis in China. In particular, it has a reputation of being one of the best universities in all of China for foreigners to learn Chinese in, and therefore has around a thousand foreign students annually from all over the world.
It has three campuses – the main one on Ninghai Lu (the Suiyaun campus), and the Xianlin and Zijin campuses. It also has affiliated campuses and offices in different parts of the city. According the their website (which is rather ill-equpiied at the moment, English-wise), 36, 093 students graduated in 2008, including 684 PhDs. The uni has 1,784 teachers, including a few dozen foreigners, some of whom work for other schools, such as Longwin, who are just based on the NNU campus.
It also has its own publishing house (all in Chinese though), its own kindergarten, two international hotels (only 200-260 yuan a night for a standard double room, including breakfast – they’re nice places, I’ve stayed in them many times), a gym, and a highly regarded school of music all on the Suiyuan campus. This campus is lush and green, and features a lot of traditional Chinese architecture, making it a truly visually beautiful uni. There’s also a memorial statue of Minnie Vautrin (pictured), the American woman who saved thousands of Chinese lives during the massacre in 1937, by hiding them in this very university, which at that time was called Jiming Women University. This place has a history.
Websites – Chinese www.njnu.edu.cn, English english.nnu.cn, site for overseas students studying Chinese www.lxnjnu.com
