Newsletter No. 219

They've Come a Long Way: Thirty-two Receive Long Service Award At the Long Service Award 2002 presentation ceremony held at the University Guest House on 17th Ma r c h , Vice-Chancellor P r o f . Ambrose King presented awards to 32 colleagues who have been with CUHK for 25 years. In this issue we will share with you the thoughts and experiences of some of the award recipients. The Scholar's Tale Robert Elliot Allinson, Department of Philosophy Wh en I first came to Hong Kong, Shatin was rice paddies and farmers t r udg i ng along behind water buffalo. The train to Kowloon was a steam train that ran once per hour. There were no mobile phones but every store offered a free phone for local calls to customer and non-customer alike. When you stopped at any small retail store the proprietor frequently offered you tea or a soft drink and there was no strong pressure to buy something or an annoyed look if y ou o n l y w e n t ' l o o k i n g a r o u n d ' . Daipaidongs were everywhere. N ow it is rare to find one where you can get a decent yu pin cheuk (魚片粥 ). Iren é , my spouse, and I know a secret spot still existing where a kind and always smiling Chinese chef can make one like the old days. Our great friends, however, like the Ch'an Doll Maker, Michael Lee of Shanghai Street, are regrettably no longer w i th us. Chinese University was clearly a rural location and the scenery that surrounded the campus was truly spectacular. There was no Tolo highway and Taipo Road was a sleepy and stunning back c o u n t ry r o ad w i t h green mo u n t a i ns and masses of f l o u r i s h i ng trees s t o od w h e re there are n o w h o u s i ng developments and perennial construction sites. Across Tolo Harbour one could not see Beverly Hills or even one smokestack. I lived for my first three years here without a car, taking a bus to Hong Kong island several times a week (which took one and one half hours in those days) for the purpose of studying Yoga w i th a great sage. I lived for the first three years without air conditioning just to prove that I could do it. (Bamboo mattresses are de rigueur). The students were eager beavers then and even read books outside of the syllabus. I can remember several superb female students who carried Jacques Lacan and James Joyce's Ulysses w i t h t h em into class and kept i n touch w i t h me for years afterwards, inviting me to their homes to meet their families and gathering for dinners or d im sum. One brilliant male student was a double major in physics and philosophy and lived in a tiny tin hut in wh i ch he housed the complete works of both Kant and Karl Marx. He was captain of the CU swimming team as well. He traveled to India and brought back for me a leaf from the Bodhi tree under wh i ch Buddha had sat wh en he had received his famous enlightenment. Another equally brilliant student for wh om I wrote a recommendation for the San Miguel scholarship, which he won, returned to visit me after having graduated some 15 years earlier. He had become a musician and lived in Holland. When I asked h im if he had family in Hong Kong or what teachers he had come to see, his answer humbled me. He had come to visit solely to see his former teacher, yours truly. When I first went to mainland China to be a visiting professor from the University to Fudan University in Shanghai and Beijing University, everyone still wore Mao suits. Students were so eager to learn that there was standing room only in the lecture halls that must have held 200-300 students per lecture and more students crowded into the doorways, standing patiently in the hallway to catch a few words of the lecture. I felt as a kind of pioneer, being the first and only professor (and non-Chinese at that!) from my department to visit and offer classes in the PRC for many years to come. A t Beida, I was invited to lecture at the Edgar Snow House. The graduate students swarmed around me continually asking penetrating questions about Sartre, Camus and Existentialist thinkers. A t Fudan my wife and I were given the same quarters where President Nixon slept during his historic trip to China. One of my proudest possessions is a pair of graceful, egg-shell Chinese vases that were personally given to me by the president of Fudan. There were many moments to eat and talk w i t h philosophy colleagues late into the night. We left w i th tears in our eyes. M y remembrances of Chinese Un i v e r s i ty are forever interwoven w i t h my intellectual wo rk in Chinese philosophy. For 24 of my 25 years, I was the only Westerner in my department. My colleagues in those earlier days included such figures as Lao Yu ng Wei and L i u Shu-hsien, senior figures i n Chinese philosophy. I chatted daily w i th them on fine points in Chinese philosophy and issues in politics and shared my writings on Chinese philosophy w i th them. I was able to publish one of the few wo r ks Lao Yung Wei ever wrote i n English on Chinese philosophy i n the book I published called Understanding the Chinese Mind: The Philosophical Roots w i th Oxford University Press (now i n its 10th impression). I am very proud to be able to do this. I was humbled when he told me that my articles in Chinese philosophy represented 'a significant contribution to Chinese philosophy'. L i u Shu-hsien, our former chair professor who originally brought me to CU, took me to overseas conferences w i t h h i m i n Chinese philosophy and introduced me to such illustrious figures as Chung-ying Cheng and Charles Fu. Later he invited me to co-edit a book w i th h im for Chinese University Press w h i ch we entitled, Harmony and Strife: Contemporary Perspectives East and West. We invited all the department to join, the last joint departmental effort of this kind. Lao Yung Wei joked w i th me that now I was forever 'married' to Shu-hsien. Of course he d id not mean married as I was to my beautiful and beloved wife Irene without whose constant and brilliant support my works as St. Thomas said wou ld have been as straw. Later I was to write another book on the Chuang-Tzu which the late renowned Charles Fu who was one of our department's external assessors did me the honour of listing as one of nine recommended books on Chinese p h i l o s o p hy i n the Companion Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy published by Routledge. Now, my Chuang Tzu For Spiritual Transformation (how can I resist getting in a plug?) is being translated into Chinese and w i l l be published in the Foreign Studies series by my Beijing University editor this year. This year, the Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy, edited by Antonio Cua, was published by Routledge. I am humbled to be the sole existing departmental member now who was a member of the department selected to prepare an entry. It has also been a sincere privilege that for many years I have been the only member of our department to be so honoured to serve on the board of editors of Asian Philosophy in the UK and the only current member to serve on the Board of Editors of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy i n the USA. These days I am honoured by my students, too. One recently came to my office w i th two of my books that he had bought (very expensive books at that!) to obtain my signatures on them and an inscription to encourage h i m to keep up his studies in philosophy. I was moved by his request and very happy to do this of course. M y student's act reminded me of my doctoral advisor, Charles Hartshorne, signing my books. I thought of the passage of time and the change of places. Hartshorne, for those of y o u w h o may n ot k n o w , has been c a l l ed ' t he l e a d i ng metaphysician in the world' by Encyclopedia Britannica and was the student of such worthies as Lord Alfred No r th Whitehead, Husserl and Heidegger. Having such an eminent teacher kept me humble and hard working in my attempts to follow in his path. I have a long way to travel, however, since he lived to be 102 and fulfilled one of his minor ambitions to be the first and possibly the last philosopher to live in three centuries. His motto for doing philosophy I have adopted as my own. It is: 'We learn from others yet fresh impulses come chiefly from rather solitary reflections, courageously insisted upon'. He was also an ornithologist and wrote a delightful book about birds w i th the title. Born to Sing. I was glad to also do something for birds — my wife and I especially love the wonderful variety nesting behind the Chung Chi triangle —b y writing a chapter for a volume to be published by the United Nations University press concerning sustaining the environment of the Hong Kong birds of Long Valley. So many events of note have occurred that space defies the possibility of relating them to you. However, I shall close w i t h three. The first occurred during one of my scholarly trips to Japan when I was researching the unpublished works of Suzuki Daisetz at Otani University in Kyoto. A t the end of my studies, D.T's personal secretary, Mihoko, escorted me to the train. She related to me little k n own and gratifying stories such as the knowledge that Suzuki wrote all of his books in bed lying d own on his back (this was gratifying as it had personal echoes). As she stood outside the platform and the doors to the train closed she said, 'What Suzuki always said was, "Remember the Unborn'". I felt a great sense of liberation as she said this, feeling privileged that she had said it to me. She must have thought that I, too, thought too much of the ways of the world. I have remembered this ever since. The second also happened in Japan. This time it was in Tokyo years later when I was conducting research at the Far Eastern Institute. One day I was visiting w i t h the incomparable comparativist, Hajime Nakamura, in his director's office. He excused himself and left his office. Sitting there in his room I was startled to hear someone knocking on the door. When I arose to let in the person, it was the great Nakamura himself. It was only then that I realized what true humility was. The third story was in Hong Kong. I was very fortunate to have been able to study the Buddhist sutras w i th the great master, Reverend Yen Why, who was the last l i v i ng disciple of Empty Clouds who lived to be 120 years old (leaving Hartshorne in the shade), who himself was the last Ch'an Master of old China. When he was in his nineties, Reverend Yen, one day, all of a sudden, handed me his b owl and his chopsticks (a traditional symbol a master chooses when he wishes to confer his legacy onto a disciple). I was taken aback and began mumb l i ng how unworthy I was. He replied in the double innuendo of his irrepressible Ch'an that 'these ivory chopsticks and painted bowl were as nothing'. I still have them today in my kitchen at CUHK and these humble implements are among my very proudest possessions. They symbolize to me all that China stands for and what my experience here has bequeathed to me. H ow very proud I am to have these and to have had the privilege of being here so many years to serve you. Thank you Chinese University and all here who have been so kind, accepting and dear to me! 人事處鄧利麗珍 (前中，揮手者） 新雅中國語文研習所 盧譚飛燕 正在教授外籍學生中文 生物系胡應劭 3 No. 219 4th April 2003