Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1981

Twenty-Third Congregation Address by Professor Cheng Te-K'un Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, fellow colleagues and students, ladies and gentlemen, I feel greatly honoured to have been asked by the Vice-Chancellor to address the Congregation to-day. First of all, let me, on behalf of my fellow honorary graduates, express our thanks and respect for The Chinese University. At this Congregation, The Chinese University is honouring such fields as social welfare, popular entertainment, electrical engineering, electronics education, medicine, haematology, art and archaeology. However, the profuse compliments which the Public Orator showered on us really made us blush. I am a student of Chinese art and archaeology and the history of the Chinese people and culture constitutes the subject of my study. I propose to take this opportunity to present a brief survey on the contribution which archaeology has made towards the development in this field. Culture is the totality of behaviour of the human species in the struggle for survival. To survive, the human species has to be able to cope with three different situations. First, they must be able to utilize natural resources and create a material civilization. Secondly, they must cooperate with each other in order to create an orderly society in which people may live peacefully together in contentment. Finally, they have to cultivate their own moral character in order to achieve mental balance and peace of mind. Owing to the difference in environment, races of the world have created their own varied and multifarious cultures, which are all results of their struggle for survival and should not be classified as high or low, primitive or sophisticated. The Chinese people have a long history and a considerably complete record has been kept of its continuous efforts to cope with these situations so as to establish a civilized and prosperous country. The early achievements were compiled by ancient historians and nearly all basic inventions and teachings were ascribed to pre-Ch'in-Han sages. It is said that we are the descendants o f Huang-ti, and counting from this first ancestor, our culture is but four to five thousand years old. In the last hundred years or so, our country was greatly weakened, experiencing defeat in various wars and our door was forced open to numerous Western merchants and missionaries as well as scholars. Unfamiliar with some of the basic knowledge of Chinese history and teachings as their background, these Western scholars were sceptical about what was contained in the ancient works, either belittling or expressing ridiculous views on Chinese culture. Some of them even put forth such theories as: Hsia and Shang were legendary dynasties; China before the Chou Dynasty was unpopulated; the Chou people belonged to the Turkish tribe; many of China's basic material civilization and art originated from the West. Unfortunately these ridiculous views were adopted by many Western authors in their works, propagating what were erroneous. In the national anthem of the early Republic of China there was the line 'The Chinese people originated from the peak of K'unlun Mountain', fully reflecting the foreign-worship psychology of our fellow countrymen. The development of culture follows an erratic course and a nation alternates between prosperity and decline. In the past few decades, Chinese culture entered a period of renaissance under a new environment. Brilliant results have been achieved in all branches of learning, archaeology being one. Archaeological finds have led to new discoveries in the origin of the people and the development of culture in China. We now know that this vast country was already populated during the Pleistocene, which 6