Bulletin Summer 1976

Professor John Fairbank delivering a lecture recruited as teachers when suitable vacancies arise. Q. Will the ICS appoint some Visiting Research Fellows too? A. Yes, we will. In fact, the ICS hopes to initiate an Exchange Programme with overseas universities, but with our present strength we can hardly have any real exchange of scholars. At present, we have to be content just with the appointment of visiting fellows, who will do research at the Institute and be accorded full use of its facilities and service. Taking advantage of the presence of these erudite scholars, we may hold lectures in their fields of specialization and have the benefit of their supervision or cooperation in our research projects. Two visiting research fellows will be coming this autumn: Dr. Chun-jo Liu, Professor of Chinese at The University of Minnesota and Dr. Ts'un-yan Liu, Professor and Head of the Department of Chinese at the Australian National University. Dr. Ts'un-yan Liu will teach concurrently at the Chinese Department of New Asia College. Q. I understand the ICS has organised numerous seminars in the past year but not much publicity has been given to them. Would you please tell us the nature of these seminars? A. The ICS has, since last year, organized seminars on Chinese studies every two to three weeks, which have indeed not been widely publicized within the University. Activities organized by the ICS include seminars and public lectures. Public lectures are organized when there is a special occasion, such as the anniversary of the University, or whenever there are world-renowned scholars around and available. There is always wide publicity for such lectures, which are open to members of the University as well as the Hong Kong community. A recent example is the lecture on "American studies of Ch i n a - P r ob l ems and Prospects" by Professor J ohn Fairbank of Harvard University held in May. But our seminars are intended for research fellows to report their research findings, or visiting scholars to deliver lectures on very specialized topics, and are expected to lead on to in-depth discussions. Participants of the seminars are restricted to staff of the Institute and members of the University whose work is closely related to the topic. It is hoped that by such in-depth discussions, we may contribute to the deeper understanding of various aspects of Chinese culture, encourage the exchange of research experience and at the same time further stimulate interest in Chinese studies. Q. The ultimate aim of Chinese studies at the Institute is the interflow of Chinese and western cultures. Will the research efforts of those scholars, who use the traditional approach and publish their findings in Chinese, also contribute to this end? A. A closed-door policy in research is not to be allowed. The aim of Chinese studies should undoubtedly be the promotion of cultural interflow between east and west. No culture is perfect by itself and cultural interflow serves to deepen mutual understanding and bring out the best of both cultures, and through mutual assimilation both will be enriched. Ideally contemporary scholars of Chinese culture should be proficient in the Chinese language as well as the more important of the foreign languages, such as English, French, German, Japanese, Italian and Russian, and adopt the scientific approach in their research. But we must not underrate the research efforts of those who have little knowledge of any foreign language or who use the traditional approach.