A Lifetime in Academia: An autobiography by Rayson Huang

11. Back to Alma Mater

11 Back to Alma Mater I t was almost exactly 30 years after leaving Hong Kong as a refugee from Japanese occupation that I at last returned. Although after the absence . ofthe first eight years I did, on returning to the Far East in 1950, manage to make fairly regular but short visits to the territory, it was a very different matter coming back to live and work and be with my family, relatives and friends again. For well over a year after my return, I had many pleasant surprises bumping into friends and former schoolmates in all sorts ofplaces. For Grace, however, Hong Kong was not a familiar place, and we came without our sons, one ofwhom had gone to Oxford and the other still at school in Singapore. As to the institution for which I now worked, I found myself coming from two ofthe youngest universities in the region to one ofthe oldest and most prestigious. As the sole university in Hong Kong for over halfa century after its establishment, it enjoyed high prestige in the territory through the contributions to the community made by its generations of graduates in the professions, in public service, and in commerce and industry. It was for me a great honour to be called upon, as the first Chinese and the first graduate, to serve as vice-chancellor. I was eager to do my best to justify this trust and was grateful to have nine years, before reaching retirement age, to do this. In the event, I stayed even longer than that. Some two years before retirement was due, I was asked in 1979 by the council to extend my service 106 A Lifetime in Academia for five more years, making me one of the longest-serving vice-chancellors of the university when I finally retired in 1986.. The university was quite a different institution from what it was when I was a student. It was by now some seven or eight times its former size. Apart from much increased enrolments in the existing faculties, new professional disciplines other than medicine and engineering, namely, law and architecture, had been introduced. This made it the only 'comprehensive' university in Hong Kong at the time as its sister university, the Chinese University of Hong Kong which was established in 1963, did not as yet offer any of such courses. It had also introduced postgraduate courses and made considerable progress promoting research as one ofits main concerns. In this way, it had gone a long way towards catching up with its counterparts in the United Kingdom. One other development which I found particularly encouraging about my alma mater was its shedding ofmany ofthe colonial ways which prevailed when I was a student. There were now, for instance, a number of local people who held chairs and headships of department and, as members of the senate and the council, were given a say in the policies and in the governance of the university. When I entered the university in 1938, there was among all the professors only one Chinese, Hsu Ti-shan, professor of Chinese. When he died preD;1aturely in 1939, an Australian was appointed to succeed him. Among the lecturers Mr Koh Nai-poh, an electrical engineer, was the only Chinese. All the other Chinese teachers held only demonstratorships or assistantships which carried no prospects ofpromotion. This was actually just a reflection ofthe then colonial civil service in which no local person could hope to occupy a position of any seniority. I was gratified to find that the alma mater I returned to enjoyed a much larger measure ofautonomy than its counterparts in the region. The council was composed ofa sizeable contingent ofteachers together with lay members drawn from the business circle, the professional sectors, the guild of graduates and so on, but there was no representation from the Hong Kong government. It was now a university grants committee which controlled the allocation ofpublic funds to the institutions ofhigher learning. The length to which this autonomy was honoured was such that, when a certain graduate who was director of one of the government departments sought to get himselfelected to the council, a representation I made to the government pointing out that this might lead to conflict of interest was heeded, and the said director asked to withdraw his candidature. Back to Alma Mater 107 The council was chaired by Sir Albert Rodrigues...