This essay discusses the various images of the
university during the Anti-Japanese War, using Qian Zhongshu's Wei Cheng (Besiege)
and Lu Qiao's Wei Yang Ge (The Song Has not Ended) as examples. It explores the relationship between shifts in ideology and the corresponding changes in the image of the
university, as reflected in the different critical receptions of Yang Mo's Song of Youth and the book by the real-life model of its
protagonist, Zhang Zhongxing. Yu Yongze, protagonist of the former work, was subject to disparagement in the cultural milieu of the 1950s and 1960s while Zhang met with unusual success in the 1980s and 1990s as he reminisced life in the old PKU in Fu Xuan San Hua. Indeed, the centennial celebration of PKU witnessed the emergence of a large number of nostalgic “old stories in the university". The images of the university discussed here, however, are not only nostalgic, but also self-reflective, referring to both the history of the university and the reconstruction of its spirit.