Bulletin Vol. 6 No. 2 Oct 1969

speech delivered by Mr. Chik-ho Lam It is indeed a privilege to be able to take part in this graduation dinner. I would like to thank the Vice-Chancellor for th e honour he bestows on me to address the graduates this evening. I take this opportunity to congratulat e you all for what you have achieved and wish you all the success for the years to come. You are the survivors of examinations. Some of you may have sat for a kindergarten entrance examination. Most of yo u had to pass some test to enter primary school . Then came the primary school examination or a n entrance examination for middle school, the school leaving certificate examination, the matriculation examination, the intermediate examination after your secon d year in the University, the Part I degree examination and finally this year, the Part II degree examination. A l l these you have survived. Of course between these examinations you were given some education. In other words you had a year or so to rest up for the next examination. These years between examination s were a great luxury which ou r society provides for a privileged few—years not only to gather knowledge but years to gain a mental and spiritual maturity without the need to earn your own living and without the responsibilities of the ordinary youth in this commercial and industrial community . You enter the real world o f Hong Kong with the luxury of these years of freedom to live with ideas and to gain a sense of values. One thing students alway s learn in a university is how little other people know. Then in sitting for your degree examinations you learn how little you know. So the subject of my speech this evening is T HE PART III E X AM I N A T I ON. If you are something more than just a lucky survivor of the examination system you have made a good start i n preparing for this examination. You have, I hope, a working knowledge of some t h i ng—a trained mind tha t is far better than a leaky head crammed with knowledge. Soon you will learn that knowledge does not keep any better than fish. Today's scientific knowledge will be out of date in a decade. If the same is not true of the social sciences and especially of the arts, the chances are that from these troubled times we shall all be rushing toward a savage social upheaval. For the Part I I I Examination even the best knowledge is not sufficient. The new man and woman need also to have and to hold basic principles. Such principles are based on some spiritual capital which the past has deposited to your account. It may be from Confucius or Mencius, from the Buddha or the Christ, from the prophets of Israel or the ideals of men like Ghandi or Sun Yat-sen. Each of you must invest that capital in you r own way. It is required specially at present in Hong Kong because we live in an age of change. A man without such capital or principles canno t hope to deal with the present situation, for he would be confused by the sheer succession of events . In the four years you have been university students much has happened in the world. The big stories in the newspapers have been the cultural revolution and its effect in Hong Kong, the devaluation of the pound and the Hong Kong dollar, student riots round the world, the Vietnam war, and man's first step on the moon. I n Hong Kong we have seen the sound material gains, the massive expansion of primary and secondary school education, and th e growth of the two universities. With all these developments confronting us, the Part I I I Examination is to test our ability to cope with them according to a pattern of ideas that is coherent to ourselves and, if possible, to others as well. I f we really possess such a pattern and are able t o apply it, we will survive, as you have survived the Par t I I Examination. Survivors and fellow graduates, ladies and gentlemen, we are all, regardless of the year of our graduation, the men an d women who are making the new society. We are all candidates for the Part I I I Examination. May we face the future with high spirits. Let us all rise and drink to the future success of our graduates. Ch i nese - Eng l i sh D i c t i o n a ry P r o j e ct The Chinese-English Dictionary Project under the directorship of Dr . L i n Yutang is making steady progress. The first draft of the MSS in clean typed copy will be ready around the end of 1969. It may be recalled that the Project was started in 1967 with the enthusiastic support of Butterfield & Swire (Hong Kong) Ltd., Lee Hysan Estate Co. Ltd. and Sin Poh Amalgamated (H.K.) Ltd., each contributing $100,000. As th e Project progressed, Island Navigation Corporation, Ltd. put forward $20,000 in October 1968 , and the Reader's Digest Foundation US$2,500 in Januar y 1969—an illustration of the local and international interest it has attracted. — 3 —