Early years Professor Ke Hsin Kuo was bo in Beijing in 1923,and his childhood was spent in Harbin in northeaste China where his father worked as an engineer to build the local railroad.His early education was at best characterized by frequent disruptions,the first of which being the "9.18 Incident" of 1931 when the Japanese Kwantung Army launched an assault in Shenyang (Mukden) on the local Chinese troops and quickly took control of all the Northeaste Provinces (Manchuria).He moved to Tianjin in the spring of 1936,where he continued his education by enrolling in the famous Nankai High School.However,his school life at Nankai was soon disrupted again by the eruption of full-scale war in July of 1937 after Japan attacked and occupied Peking.Together with his brothers,he fled to join his parents who had previously relocated to Chongqing.He studied in Chongqing for four more years to complete his high school education,during which classes were constantly being disrupted due to the frequent bombings of the city by Japanese airplanes.These bombings not only left him with long lasting memories of the war,but also bore him a permanent bum scar on his back as a result of a bomb that exploded just meters away from him.