The first time I visited Lianchi Academy as a worker, I drove a train to Taiyuan Locomotive and Rolling Stock Factory in the 1970s to repair, and when I left Fengtai to be on standby in Baoding, I slipped into Lianchi, at that time, there was no reform and opening up, and I was still criticizing the sealing of capital repairs, of course, I could not see any cultural relics. The Lotus Pond Academy was named after the Lotus Pond, which was originally built in 1227-1234 by Zhang Rou, the King of Runan, in the Yuan Dynasty, and was damaged by an earthquake until the end of the Ming Dynasty.
In the eleventh year of Yongzheng (1733), Li Wei, the governor of Zhili, was instructed to establish Lianchi Academy, also known as "Zhili Academy", which gradually developed into the highest school in the north. Qianlong visited Lianchi Academy three times. In its heyday, Lianchi Academy and Hunan Yuelu Academy were intertwined from north to south, with Wang Shihan, Zhang Xuecheng, Huang Pengnian, He Qiutao, Wang Zhengang, Zhang Yuzhao, Wu Rulun and many other masters of the world teaching, and successively trained Liu Chunlin, Wang Fagui, Hu Jinggui, Wang Shutong, Meng Qingrong, Fu Zengxiang, Feng Guozhang, and a large number of high-ranking disciples who were in the future generations, brilliantly interpreting the glory of Lotus Pond for nearly two centuries until it was discontinued in 1903.
Chairman Mao visited The Lotus Pond Academy twice, and in 1953 he said that "The Lotus Pond is famous because there is a Lotus Pond Academy."
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Lotus Pond College not only deserved to be called the top academy in the country, but also set up a unique way to set up Western (English) and Eastern (Japanese) schools to recruit foreign students and hire foreign teachers. The mentor-apprentice relationship between Zhang Yuzhao and Japanese student Daihachi Miyajima is also a good story of the academy.
After Zhongxiucai, Liu Chunlin studied hard at Lianchi Academy for ten years, laying a solid foundation in language and literature, history, poetry, world politics, English and Japanese, and only then did he try to win the championship in one fell swoop.
Lotus Pond Academy has a large collection of books, and the most abundant in the 10,000-volume building was more than 30,000 volumes. Unfortunately, in the autumn of 1900, the British, French, German and Italian forces captured Baoding, causing the pavilions of Lianchi Academy to be reduced to ashes, the precious cultural relics were looted, and the remaining 2680 kinds of books are now in the Baoding Library. There is also a high style of calligraphy, superb skills, and the precious academy "stone book" "Lotus Pond Academy Fa Ti" carved 38 square stones, well preserved.