Race the Rising Sun A Chinese University's Exodus during the Second World War

This book is about Zhejiang University, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in China, which was forced to evacuate from the Hangzhou when the Japanese arrived in 1937 and began torturing civilians, raping women, bombing towns, burning farms, and destroying factories, homes, schools, and libraries. The faculty, staff, and students fled to a succession of towns where they sought refuge from the war and set up temporary classrooms to continue with their educational mission. This exodus lasted eight years and spanned over a thousand miles. They faced constant fear and worry due to malnutrition, disease, abject poverty, and enemy air strikes. But with the resilience and spirit of its faculty and students, the University survived to help revitalize a devastated nation.

Chiao-Min Hsieh graduated from the Department of History and Geography of Zhejiang University in 1941, and now is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been awarded the Fulbright Research Professor three times and has been a senior fellow at the National Endowment for the Humanities. Jean Kan Hsieh graduated from the Department of History and Geography at Zhejiang University in 1944 and was a Professor of Cartography in the Department of Geography at both the National Taiwan University and the Chinese Cultural University in Taiwan. She received her Master's degree in Geography from Syracuse University and lectured at Trinity College in Washington D.C.