WHAT do China's vice-president Rong Yiren, architect I. M. Pei, banker Jing Shu-ping and the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Office Director Lu Ping have in common? They all studied at St John's University, the elitist tertiary institution of old Shanghai which provided China with some of her top bureaucrats, diplomats, doctors, scientists and entrepreneurs.
This was despite an accusation shortly after the communist takeover that the average student at St John's was more familiar with the names of Hollywood stars than current developments in China.
Set up in 1879, the university where the rich and famous sent their children for higher education was closed in 1952.
The campus now houses the East China College of Political Science and Law.
But that did not stop some 1,300 former students from around the world - including Mr Jing and Mr Lu - from turning up for the third world reunion in Shanghai yesterday.
The first reunion was held in Hong Kong in 1988 and the second came in 1992 in Shanghai. The third was to have been held in Taipei in 1995, but visa problems for mainlanders caused it to be rescheduled to the later date.
Men and women in their 60s, 70s and even 80s gathered in the Shanghai Exhibition Centre along Nanjing West Road to reminisce.