They gave up Shanghai for Xi'an 62 years ago. That is, 4,400 teachers and students traded their lives in a cosmopolitan coastal metropolis to teach or study in what was then a backward western settlement.

Xi'an Jiaotong University's early years is their story. Its future is their legacy.

"The central government made the very important decision to move our school (from Shanghai) to the western city (of Xi'an)," says 85-year-old Hu Naisai, who came to Shaanxi's provincial capital as an instructor at age 23.

Retired professor Zhu Jizhou recalls arriving with the last group of teachers from Shanghai in 1958. He worked in Xi'an for six decades.

"We had to abandon too many familiar things and transformed our lifestyles for many years," Zhu recalls.

"The old teachers had to bring their families. Young people had to leave their parents in Shanghai to work in a strange place full of hardships."

He recalls teachers had to trek to the local flour mill with empty sacks on their shoulders and lug full sacks back when the university was under construction.

"Sometimes, we had to get flour by going to fields outside the city and helping the farmers cut wheat during the summer harvests."

Fifteen senior professors sent a letter to President Xi Jinping in November 2017 to tell their Shanghai-to-Xi'an story. Xi answered, offering his respect and blessings. He expressed hopes that the students and teachers could pass on the contemporary go-west campaign's spirit.

His words encouraged teachers, students and alumni, says deputy secretary of Xi'an Jiaotong University's committee of the Communist Party of China, Zhao Junwu.

Tan Xiaosheng, technology president and chief security officer of Qihoo 360 Co, who graduated from Xi'an Jiaotong, says his company has proposed establishing a national network-security innovation base in the university.

Its past seems worth chronicling. Its future remains unwritten yet seemingly promising.