These past few days, I’ve been busy with graduation-related matters - modifying thesis format, developing graduation projects, internship certificates, and so on, which took quite a long time. It wasn’t until the moment I finished my defense that I felt truly liberated.

That evening, I had dinner with my roommate, and the next day we were scheduled to take graduation photos. The timing was very tight, as if not a moment could be wasted.

After taking graduation photos, it was my roommate’s whim - he wanted to visit other campuses. I’m ashamed to say that during my four years of university, I basically spent all my time on the new campus, rarely visited the old campus, and never went to the new-new campus that just opened this year. When I was preparing for graduate school, I mentioned that I must visit other campuses before graduating. Taking advantage of the gap after graduation defense, I took some time off from work and had the opportunity to relax and experience these final university days.

So we decided to go. That evening, we looked at the map and planned our route. Initially, we wanted to go to the new-new campus because it has complete facilities and just opened, so it should be great for photos (mainly because I had been to the old campus with another classmate in my freshman year, so I wanted to explore new territory hhh). But it was too far away - we’d need to spend 50 yuan on a high-speed rail ticket, and after arriving at the station, we’d still need to take a taxi for over 10 kilometers, so we gave up. So we turned our attention to the old campus, which only required a bus ride to reach.

The old campus’s geographical location is really remote. I heard from teachers that it’s because of the poor geographical location that the school never developed properly, and now they want to move to the new-new campus to escape environmental limitations. I didn’t have a deep understanding of this statement from my previous two visits, until today when I truly realized its significance.

The city where the old campus is located is a lukewarm small county town. It was once glorious, but then slowly faded into history textbooks. Before I explored its veil, what I saw from short video platforms were drum towers, imperial tombs, and city walls. Until I actually got there…

I remember it was a sunny morning when my roommate and I bought tickets for the bus from the new campus to the old campus location, then set foot in that familiar yet strange city.

As luck would have it, perhaps because we were too focused on browsing the destinations we were about to visit, or focused on the scenery outside the window, or enthusiastic about discussing our plans with my roommate, we naturally missed our stop. This might have also foreshadowed the misfortunes of the journey ahead.

Although we missed the stop, fortunately the distance between the two stations wasn’t too far. After getting off the bus, we decided to make the historically rich drum tower our first stop of the trip. Though it’s called an ancient site, the station is only about one kilometer away from the ancient site. On our way walking to the drum tower, what we saw wasn’t retro or imitation ancient architecture, but old city districts built at the beginning of the century. Walking into it, you can clearly feel the former prosperity, but due to the geographical factors of the small county town, many physical stores opened there, then closed, transferred, reopened, and ultimately failed to develop, gradually declining with empty buildings.

On our way to the drum tower, I happened to chat with my roommate about the recent online discussion about the drum tower collapse, only to realize it was exactly our destination. This made our journey even more dramatic, and we imagined many possibilities on the way. I remember my roommate saying that as long as it wasn’t completely surrounded by scaffolding, it would be worth seeing. Along the way, we awkwardly discussed the worst possible outcomes. As expected, without any surprises, the entire drum tower was wrapped in scaffolding with security guards watching. Our first stop was thus abandoned.

Leaving the drum tower, we decided to head to the main destination of our journey - the old campus. The old campus is located at a corner of an intersection, bustling with cars and people coming and going. Unlike the new campus surrounded by suburbs on all sides, the old campus has shops on one side and roads on the other, looking quite “prosperous.” Entering the campus, it was the day before the Dragon Boat Festival holiday, and students were still in class. The streets only had scattered elderly people, students, and staff… I can only say we came at the right time - off-peak travel, I’m a professional XD (this is also a major factor in why we chose to have our graduation trip after the Dragon Boat Festival).

Unlike the new campus, where one shared bike, five minutes, full speed, and you can see the entire campus at a glance. The old campus is huge - so huge that there’s another section across the road, so huge that you can raise ducks, cows, sheep, and other livestock as graduation projects, so huge that the plane trees can completely block the glaring sunlight. Everything looks so beautiful - the breeze on your face, the sunshine, the green shade, adding some charm to the originally dilapidated teaching buildings. This might be a unique landscape of the old campus. The previous bad memories of the drum tower vanished at this moment. Except for the unchanged cafeteria between the new and old campuses. Although we didn’t have much hope from the beginning and didn’t plan to have a full meal at the old campus, seeing the identical menus at two campuses in two cities, we couldn’t help but feel a little fortunate. Fortunate to have avoided the trap in advance, fortunate for this beautiful moment.

During this time, we passed by a lotus pond full of mud, occasionally smelling of fish, and even encountered an angler casting his rod. Indeed, wherever there’s water, no matter how harsh the environment, anglers won’t be absent (they’ll just come back empty-handed hhh). Then, we went up the pedestrian bridge unique to the school, crossed the road, and reached another corner of the school. During this time, we couldn’t help but sigh at how difficult it was for old campus students to attend classes, having to walk back and forth between two places under the scorching sun. At this moment, the small size of the new campus became one of its few advantages.

Leaving the old campus, we planned to have lunch at the county center’s shopping mall and take a short rest to prepare for the afternoon journey. From the drum tower to the old campus to the shopping mall, we didn’t feel the cultural heritage radiating from the drum tower, but instead continuously experienced dilapidated old city districts and closed commercial areas. On our floor of shops, only scattered ones were open, most were closed, and it was hard to imagine a shopping mall could be so desolate during the busiest lunch hour. Some non-operating stores had already put up Children’s Day advertisements, perhaps this is the arrogance of “three years without business, but when business comes, it feeds you for three years.” The grilled fish for lunch was quite to our taste - good price, large portions, and filling. After a full meal, we decided to head to our next check-in spot - the city walls.