Jiaying University, located in Meizhou, Guangdong, China, is a public provincial undergraduate university, which grew out of the Women's Normal School established in 1913. The University is thus named because Meizhou City was known as Jiaying City in the Qing Dynasty. Meizhou is a famous historic city, the hometown of Marshal Ye Jianying, which has been given the titles of “China's excellent tourism city”, “The Hakka Capital”, “China’s city with the strongest sense of safety”, “Homeland of culture”, “Homeland of football” and “Homeland of overseas Chinese”.
The University covers an area of 1,016,666 square meters (or 101 hectares) with a construction area of 550,000 square meters. It has a total of 170 million yuan RMB’s worth of teaching instruments and equipment, including 31 laboratories with advanced equipment, and houses a collection of 1.82 million books, a wide array of over 100,000 electronic books and more than 1,500 domestic and foreign periodicals.
At present, the University has a staff of 1,508, including 1,050 teachers, among them 90 professors and 262 associate professors, and 61 Doctorate degree and 475 Master degree holders. Famous experts and scholars from home and abroad have been invited as visiting or honorary professors, such as Qiu Chengtong, Han Suyin, Daisaku Ikeda, Pan Yugang and Wang Fosong.
The University has 19,282 full-time students and 8,499 part-time students from 22 provinces of China. Currently the University offers 45 undergraduate majors in 19 schools and 2 teaching departments, which fall into 10 disciplines, such as the arts, the sciences, engineering, law and medicine.
Jiaying University adheres to the goal of “establishing itself in Meizhou, being oriented towards grassroots organizations, serving Guangdong Province, radiating nationwide, and extending abroad”. The University sticks to its educational guideline of “emphasizing the cultivation of talents, taking pride in serving the society, and running the University with characteristics”. It has formed a multi-level and multi-type system, with undergraduate education being the core, supplemented by junior college education, adult education and international education, with the aim of turning out innovative students who can fulfill the needs of the development of the local economy and society.
The University has the features of being rooted in the Hakka homeland, serving mountainous areas and promoting Hakka culture. Since the University was founded, it has received donations a total sum of 100 million yuan RMB from domestic and overseas outstanding compatriots and alumni, notably Dr. Zeng Xianzi and Dr. Tian Jiabing. Its Hakka Research Institute is a key provincial-level research base in humanities and social sciences as well as the research base of Guangdong Hakka studies, and its School of Hakka Studies is the first of its kind in China.
In 2006, the University successfully passed the undergraduate education evaluation by the Ministry of Education of China. Now it aims to become eligible to award Master degrees around 2013, its 100 anniversary, and to build itself into a local comprehensive university of high quality with distinctive local characteristics renowned in Guangdong Province and throughout China.