After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the smoke of the Battle of Shanghai rose again, and the situation became critically dangerous. Luo Jialun, the president of Central University, urgently sought help from Lu Zuofu, the manager of the Minsheng Company, to transport most of the university's assets to Chongqing by ship. Consequently, boatloads of instruments and books were rushed from Nanjing to Chongqing via the Yangtze River. However, to Luo's great regret, the large number of superior poultry and livestock breeds that the College of Agriculture had imported at great cost from the United States, Australia, and other places could not be transported due to time constraints and limited transport conditions. Only one pair of the best breeds was selected to travel with the ships. Regarding the remaining livestock, Luo instructed the faculty and staff who had not yet moved west to dispose of them as they saw fit, whether by slaughtering or eating them, ensuring none were left for the Japanese.
However, the faculty and staff could not bear to slaughter these high-quality animals purchased at the school's great expense. Under the leadership of a staff member named Wang Youting, they decided to risk it all and migrate the livestock west. In early December 1937, just before the Japanese troops broke through the defenses of Nanjing, Wang Youting hired four large ships at a high price and led the staff remaining at the college's livestock farm on their journey. They organized the pigs, sheep, and cattle into groups, loaded the chicken and rabbit cages onto the backs of the oxen, and traveled by land and water in a grand procession. Along the way, they endured wind and rain, hunger, and cold, even moving forward amidst the sound of gunfire. It was not until late autumn 1938 that this unique army of people and animals, having traveled thousands of kilometers, finally arrived in Chongqing with a large group of refugees.
There are very few records of this dramatic migration. When people were organizing the name lists of teachers and students of the College of Agriculture in the early days of the New China, they surprisingly found no records of Wang Youting at all, knowing only that he died in Nanjing in the late 1960s.
An ordinary person who had made huge contributions to the breeding of superior poultry and livestock varieties in China was thus buried in the long river of history. History remembers Luo Jialun and Lu Zuofu, but forgets Wang Youting, which is also a source of regret.
