Shiing-shen Chern's former residence Ningyuan Garden reopened to the public after a renovation on December 3, the fifth anniversary of his death.
Chern, one of the leaders in differential geometry of the twentieth century, was born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province and moved to Tianjin in 1922. He studied mathematics at Nankai University from 1926 and graduated there in 1930.
In 1985 Chern returned to China from the US, where he had been living for 21 years, and founded the Chern Institute of Mathematics at Nankai University. The two-storey Ningyuan garden, located at Nankai, was built for him before his return.