A New Era Begins 1975-78

Addendum: A Message to the Colleges The Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Choh-Ming Li's speech at the Chung Chi College Founders' Day Thanksgiving Service on 28th October, 1977: On this Twenty-sixth Anniversary Day of Chung Chi College, it is only logical, I suppose, for the College to invite a Christian to speak here before the assembly. It is something of a surprise to learn that you have decided instead to invite me, a non-Christian, and this is certainly a great honour which one can hardly turn down. Though never a practicing Christian, I am in no way a pagan. I collect all the editions of the Bible, and I have read through the whole Book from cover to cover. Moreover, except for the brief period in my early childhood when I was taught by a private tutor, I went through my primary school, secondary school and university education in institutes run by Christian missionaries in China. That is why I can claim a close tie to missionary educational institutes, and I would say that I know them quite well. To be fair, one must acknowledge the contribution that missionary schools have made to education in modern China. This cannot be denied, nor is it necessary for me to substantiate it. Let me tell you of an experience of mine in boarding school which was run by a missionary. I must have been six or seven years old then. One fine Sunday, a schoolmate rode on a bicycle and bumped against no other person than our principal, who ran towards him and pushed him o ff the bicycle. The poor boy cried. Being a devout Christian, our principal was convinced that there should be no sports of any kind on the Sabbath day. This incident, though trivial, left us with a deep impression. Yet that was almost 60 years ago, and unreasonable deeds like this are seldom witnessed these days. I wouldn't be surprised i f this sounds like an exotic tale to you. Another thing which disturbed me is the fact that missionary universities in former days all over China had the practice of appointing fresh graduates from the American universities to be members of the faculty. Needless to say, not all the missionaries were scholars. The American universities themselves were then in their consolidating stage. When the learned scholars were not willing to come to lands like China to teach, there was little choice left but to employ fresh graduates. In spite of the good intentions the results were not always very satisfactory. That English is one's mother-tongue does in no way guarantee one's competence in teaching the English language——not to mention other subjects. Those missionary universities had to start with first year courses, and added more each year to complete the undergraduate programme. This inevitably brought adverse effects on the quality as well as the progress of the universities. Should some Western universities 33