First Impressions of Tsing Hua (by Prof. Liou)

First Impressions of Tsing Hua
1. What comes to your mind when you first come to this campus?
2. Is Tsing Hua your first choice?
3. How is Tsing Hua different from other schools you know of?
4. How is life here in your first month?
5. Good things you know about Tsing Hua, and things you dislike so far.
6. Any changes of impressions in the very beginning and now? For instance, now you know more places for better foods. So dining is tolerable compared with food you had in the very beginning.

Here're some of my first impressions.
　　I feel this campus does have lots of grass and trees. Compared with ceramic jungles in other scholls, Tsing Hua has Cheng-Kung Lakes and even some small hills. Old trees are particularly attractive, stimulating our creative thoughts which definitely inclulde romantic ones.
　　I visited Tsing Hua in August of 1989 the first time, as I already obtained a job here and came to register. Although a lot of Taiwanese commented that Tsing Hua has a beautiful campus after they knew I worked there, I like my own school more where I went for graduate study in the USA (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, http://www.uiuc.edu/). Although lots of people told me Tsing Hua has a beautiful campus, I really think it just fine compared with two American universities I had studied (another school is Iowa State U, http://www.iastate.edu/). Over the years, I increasingly like the campus at Tsing Hua. In Chinese; Tsing means water and Hua means flower/woods. It is pretty with lakes and trees. With a school of humanities and social sciences, people here seem to know how to better the campus by adding this and that--definitely some of them were not as successful.
　　People in this campus are generally hard-working--day and night as well as weekdays and weekends. They are thus more productive. The campus is full of energy and dynamics: events, conferences, speeches, movies, performance, etc. When we work and live with outstanding scholars here, we tend to be motivated or stimulated by their behaviors, working styles, and their achievements. We want to be like them in the future. We can find role models at Tsing Hua in various academic disciplines.
　　As I know more about the campus, building, talents, people (role models), and achievements, I like this school and the location (Hsinchu) better as I stay here longer. I hope I can contribute to the campus and the school as well.