Old Acquaintances from Shanghai

Unfortunately, this is not a very good photo taken using my Blackberry. Last Thursday, I was scheduled to give a talk at East China Normal University, which was arranged by Ben Chow who is on the faculty there. I was picked up by Zheng Yu (rightmost standing) and Shen Chun-Li (second from left standing). I met Shen in 1979, when he was still a graduate student at Fudan. He was one of the more outgoing and friendly people in the department, so I remembered him quite well.

When I met Shen at our hotel, he asked me if I would like to see Gu Chao-Hao and his wife Hu He-Sheng (sitting in front). I immediately said yes. Gu has been a friend of my father since high school. He and his wife were math professors at Fudan for many years. I also first met them in 1979; I think I might have seen them one more time at my parents' house. Gu had broken his hip recently, so he has been recuperating in a hospital. I was delighted to see that both Gu and Hu seem to be in rather good shape. I was also delighted to see Xu Wen-Hao (leftmost standing) there, too. Xu was, as I recall, the Party representative in the Fudan math department in 1979, and he was assigned to accompany my father and me when we traveled around China. As I recall, we went to Beijing, Kunming, Guilin together. He might have even come with us to Wenzhou and my father's village. He's very friendly easygoing guy and helped us a lot during that time.

These four people (Gu, Hu, Shen, Xu) were the four people from my visit in 1979 that I most wanted to see again. So it was wonderful when this really happened, almost by accident.