In 1905, Yu Youren and Shao Lizi left Zhendan Public School to support Ma Xiangbo in founding Fudan Public School in Wusong. The school’s name was chosen from the “Biography of Yuxia” in the Classic of History, where the two characters fù复 (“return”) and dàn旦 (“dawn”) are found in the lines “Auspicious clouds are splendid, they gather and fill the sky; Brilliant are the sunshine and moonlight, again the morning glory after the night.” The original meaning was the pursuit of greatness, and it implies self-run education and the revival of China. Ma Xiangbo and Yanfu each held the post of school president. Li Denghui was president from 1913 until 1936. During his 23-year tenure, Fudan developed into a distinguished private university renowned for developing applied skills in the fields of business, economics, news reporting, education, and civil engineering, with a complete program from middle school through graduate school.
After the outbreak of the Anti-JapaneseWar in 1937, some Fudan teachers and students moved to Beibei in Chongqing. In 1941 an agricultural college was added. On New Year’s Day 1942, the National Government’s Administrative Department ratified changing Fudan from private to state-run, with the full name Fudan State-run University. Wu Nanxuan was school president, followed by Zhang Yi. In the summer of 1946, the Chongqing school moved back to the original location in Shanghai’s Jiangwan, combining with the Shanghai school, and the school again increased in scale.