Bulletin Autumn 1988

gramophone as early as the turn o f the century and these have been carefully preserved and can still be enjoyed today. Traditional Chinese operatic singers were artists who somehow made light o f their art; some o f them did not know how to read and write, and many were content to perform and take applause as their reward. It never occurred to them to preserve their art for posterity. Not so Mr. Yu Zhen Fei. He is probably one o f the few who saw a need to collect, record and pass on. But his entire collection o f Kun Opera scores, his academic treatises on the subject o f Kun singing, his press cuttings as well as photographs o f himself and other famous artists, and, most important o f all, the stills and recordings o f their actual performances — all o f that and more were taken away from him during the Cultural Revolution when his house was ransacked by the Red Guards. This priceless collection repre senting half a life's work was then left unattended in the Shanghai Traditional Opera School and later destroyed in a fire. After the excesses o f the Cultural Revolution had subsided, Mr. Yu wanted to re-trace and re-create those famous roles for posterity, but found that ad vancing age had impaired his memory, his voice and his legs. What has been lost is no longer redeemable. He did, however, try to record his every experience in an oral autobiography. This is the book The A r t o f Yu Zhen Fei which is a standard reference work for students and connoisseurs o f Kun and Peking Opera. Mr. Chancellor, for his immense and unique contribution in synthesizing the most appealing ele­ ments o f Kun and Peking Opera, for the millions he had entertained, for the thousands he had taught at Jinan University and as Director o f the Shanghai Traditional Opera School and Peking Opera Troupe o f Shanghai, for the great service he has rendered his country as a member o f the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and as Vice-Chairman o f the China Federation o f lite ra ry and A rt Circles, I have the honour to present Mr. Yu Zhen Fei, artist, educa tionist, calligrapher, literati, aesthete, author, scholar, and founder o f a school o f operatic art known as the Yu School, for the award o f the degree o f Doctor o f Literature, honoris causa. Professor Ching-Wu Chu, BS, MS, PhD, DSc (Fordham), DSc (Northwestern) About six months ago, the American academic world was electrified to learn that the University o f Houston had raised US$1.5 m illion to endow the T.L.L. Temple Chair in Science for a young Chinese scientist. The University o f Houston Strides Research Magazine described the chair as ‘one o f the largest o f its kind in the nation'. The idea that some chairs are larger than others is baffling to local academics, but we are amused and encouraged by the fact that even the New York Times Service reported the news and went on to talk about raids on faculty ranks resulting in the bidding up o f the price o f academic chairs, almost in the style o f land auctions in Hong Kong. The beneficiary o f this latest round o f talent chasing among American universities is Professor Ching-Wu Chu, a native o f Hunan Province who re ceived his first degree at the age o f twenty-one from the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan in 1962 ， but who has since been conferred degrees and honours by Fordham University, Northwestern University and the University o f California, San Diego. Professor Chu has been wooed by many universities and laboratories because he is one o f the world's leading researchers on superconductivity. To find a superconductor, a compound which w ill conduct electric currents w ith no power losses from electrical resistance, has been the dream o f many physicists. But until Professor Chu's revolution ary discovery on 29th January last year, supercon ductivity had only been possible at temperatures close to absolute zero, or minus 273 degrees Celsius, which rendered the concept relatively useless for technological applications. Such an ultra-cold tem perature can only be produced w ith the use o f liquid helium, which is both expensive and rare. Professor Chu's genius is in having put together a compound o f yttrium-barium-copper-oxygen that w ill superconduct at minus 180 degrees Celsius, which puts it w ithin the temperature range o f liquid nitrogen, a coolant that is both inexpensive and more readily available. Professor Chu's discovery has been hailed as 8