China's 'West Point' a beacon

Editor's Note: Whampoa, China's first modern military academy, founded 90 years ago, was a beacon of liberation and the training ground of many of China's best-known revolutionaries during the following three decades. World War I, in which 140,000 Chinese served on the European Western Front, ended 100 years ago, and next year will be the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the most devastating global conflict in history, marked by the Holocaust and prefigured in China by the start of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1937 and the Nanjing Massacre that followed. In this series, China Daily honors those whose sacrifices in the wars of the last century helped to ensure the peace and prosperity enjoyed by the vast majority of humankind today.

Many overseas Chinese returned for training at Whampoa academy, Zhao Xu reports in Beijing.

Fu Guoqian spends most of his time sitting in his 6-square-meter room in a traditional part of southern Beijing that is dominated by nondescript, age-old one-story buildings and narrow, well-trodden alleyways. Fu's room, the only space that belongs to the 94-year-old, is half-filled by a bed that faces directly toward the dilapidated wooden door.