Society

Univ opens new hall to welcome returning alumni

By Chen Jia (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-11 08:21

BEIJING - Tsinghua University, one of China's leading seats of learning in Beijing, will open a new hall, containing 42,000 square meters of space, after the old one was destroyed in a fire.

The opening will be a way of welcoming the alumni who return for the university's 100-year anniversary this month.

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"Construction on the main part of the new Tsinghua University Hall was finished on Sunday," said workers with the Beijing-based Shouhua wooden company, which was in charge of the project. "It included 96 pairs of specially designed anti-fire doors."

The university invested around 9,000 yuan ($1,377) for each door after a blaze had engulfed the 99-year-old hall last year.

A special material named perlite has been added to the doors. The substance can stop fires from spreading for 92 minutes and decrease sound levels by 32 decibels.

"The anti-fire door weighs nearly 80 kg, six times heavier than a normal door," a worker was quoted as saying by Beijing Youth Daily on Saturday.

The fire broke out at about 1 am on Nov 13, 2010, at the "Tsinghua College", a German-style building that extends for 800 square meters.

Although no casualties were reported and the building's front stone wall remained intact, its ceiling collapsed and many of its walls were damaged.

The "Tsinghua College", from which came the current Tsinghua University, was built in 1911. It is now under repair and is considered a historical site under State protection.

"It is great to know the university has taken effective actions to protect the new building from fire," Jing Qin, a Tsinghua graduate who works for an IT company, told China Daily on Sunday.

"The damaged old building is a great symbol of the university's history," she said. "The new hall will be the future of the university's architecture."

The new Tsinghua University Hall contains three parts: a concert hall, a university history museum and a theater.

The theater will hold regular concerts, stage plays and other events in a room containing 520 seats.

The history museum is a six-story building with two underground floors and contains 5,200 square meters of space. The concert hall has 2,011 seats.

Located in the northwestern suburbs of Beijing, Tsinghua University was established in 1911 on the site of "Qing Hua Yuan (Tsinghua Garden)" - a former royal garden of the Qing Dynasty.

Partly paid for by the "Gengzi Indemnity", also known as the "Boxer Indemnity", it functioned at first as a preparatory school called "Tsinghua Xuetang (Tsing Hua Imperial College)". It was used to educate students who were later sent by the government to study in the United States.