Cheng Gong Daxue (place)

Cheng Gong Daxue (the actual English name is in Wade-Giles, and is spelled Cheng Kung, but I will use the pinyin here), is a nationally established University in Taiwan, located in the city of Tainan. It is considered to be one of the best universities in Taiwan, and amongst the people of Tainan, getting someone to admit that it is less prestigious than a Taipei based university is much like getting Californians to concede that Harvard or Yale is better than Stanford. Whatever the specifics, it is regarded as a good school.

Founded in the 1930's, under the Japanese occupation, it was originally a simple vocational school. Its name was the Tainan Technical College, but it was later renamed after the famous admiral Zheng Cheng Gong. For many years, it was almost totally a scientific and technical school, and it still focuses on those disciplines. Over time, it added more space to its campus, and added departments of Liberal Arts (including, of the most interest to foreigners, the Chinese Language Center), as well as a Medical College. At the same time as the courses were growing, the University added to the campus, and built a variety of new, larger buildings in a variety of styles, interspersed with large trees, park spaces, ponds, and a variety of modern and abstract sculpture. The pleasent, relatively clean and open campus of Cheng Gong is one of the anchors that makes Tainan Taiwan's university town. Especially noteworthy are the library, one of the largest, most well designed libraries I have been in in my life, and Cheng Gong Hu, the lake that is actually a pond.