Lifetime in Academia : An Autobiography by Rayson Huang [1 ed.] 9789882201224, 9789622095182

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A Lifetime in Academia

To the memory of Grace, my beloved wife

A Lifetime in Academia An Autobiography by Rayson Huang

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HONG

Ko G U IVERSITY PRESS

Hong Kong University Press 14/F Hing Wai Centre 7 Tin Wan Praya Road Aberdeen Hong Kong

© Hong Kong University Press 2000 ISBN 962 209 518 6 All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher, Hong Kong University Press.

Printed in Hong Kong by United League Graphic & Printing Co. Ltd.

Contents

Preface 1. The Early Years: My Father and Munsang College

Vii

1

2. University Days and the Siege of Hong Kong

13

3. Into Free China as a Refugee: Life in Samkong and Kweilin

21

4. To Chungking: The Wartime Capital

35

5. To England via India: Postgraduate Studies at Oxford

43

6. Post-Doctoral Studies in Chicago

53

7. Starting a Career the Hard Way in Singapore

63

8. The Emergence of a Chinese University

71

9. A New University in a New Country

79

10. Nanyang University: The One and Only

93

11. Back to Alma Mater

105

12. Post-Retirement Activities

125

VI

A Lifetime in Academia

Appendices Appendix I Appendix II Appendix III Appendix IV

139 141 145 151 157

Glossary

163

Preface

U

ntil a few years ago, I had no intention ofwriting an autobiography. While I did not keep a diary I did, not infrequently, make a record of events ofspecial interest to me. Mter retirement, friends had from time to time urged me to write about my life. It would be a pity, they argued, to let the wide variety of my experiences go buried and forgotten. It is true that, during my long life, I did have rather a variety of experiences, under very different circumstances and in different parts of the world - perhaps more than most people. These range from experiences of my undergraduate days at the University of Hong Kong, of life as a refugee in war-time China and as a student in Oxford and Chicago, to working in various capacities in universities under unsettled political climates in emerging or newly emergent nations in southeast Asia. There was a controversial Chinese university in Singapore, the only one ofits kind outside China, which I served during a crucial phase of its development, and my alma mater for which I worked during a period ofits unprecedented growth. There was also the establishment of a university in Shantou, my birth-place in China, and the drafting of the Basic Law for Hong Kong, in which I participated. The single event, however, which finally made me decide to write came . in 1995 when Clifford Matthews, a classmate at the University of Hong Kong in the late 1930s, asked me to join him and other classmates writing

VH1

A Lifetime in Academia

a book on our experiences of our alma mater during the war. This was a request which I could not refuse, but before I finished writing my chapter I had come around, with the ice broken, to make up my mind that I would write an autobiography after all. I was urged to make this decision by a strong desire to put on record my indebtedness to the good people who had influenced my life or helped me in my career or in events in which I played a part. There was, to start with, my father whose unconventional bilingual school in a British colony gave me an education I was to feel grateful for all my life. There were my teachers, my friends and colleagues all along the way who had helped so much. And there ~ were my students whose achievements have given me such good cause for pride and satisfaction. Above all, there was my wife Grace, who came into my life not long after my career started and stayed by me for the next half century. It was indeed as we were beginning to contemplate the celebration of our golden wedding that the accident which claimed her life took place, while we were on a visit to Hong Kong in March 1999. To her loving memory I do now dedicate this book. My thanks are due to two old friends and former colleagues for their greatly appreciated assistance. Professor Mimi Chan read through the whole manuscript, and Professor Dafydd Evans some of the chapters. Both of them gave me very helpful advice.

1

The Early Years: My Father and Munsang College

W

hatever glorious achievement.s accorded. the. Huang Clan in the ancestral records, we - the recent generations of Huangs - came from a humble farming family in the district of Jieyang, to the west of Shantou (Swatow) which is the seaport next to Hong Kong some 150 miles up the South China coast. As a teenager, my grandfather, Huang Sho-ting, met a misfortune that took him away from his native place and brought about a complete change in his life. While working in the field he suffered a serious cut in his right foot which did not respond to herbal treatment, and the wound soon became septic and unmanageable. As he became incapable of working in the field, he found himself less and less popular with members of his large family who came to regard him as someone that ate his meals without contributing to the work needed to produce them. The young man finally decided to seek treatment in nearby Shantou where there was a mission hospital, the Fuyin (Gospel) Hospital. He found his way to the hospital and was admitted. The misfortune thus turned out to be the turning point in his life. It took many weeks to clear up his infected foot, but in the meantime he made himself useful in the hospital kitchen, where he cheerfully lent a hand whenever help was needed. He also attended the daily services in the hospital held for its patients. By the time he got well, he had become a popular member of the hospital family.

2

A Lifetime in Academia

He was soon baptized and encouraged to pursue theological studies, and in due course became an ordained minister. In this capacity, he spent all his working life in Shantou until his retirement. At the invitation of my father, he came to stay with us in Hong Kong at Munsang College. That was around 1936 when I was in my last year at school. I came to know him well as I frequently went with him to churches and gospel halls when he was preaching. As he could only speak the Shantou dialect, his sermons had to be translated for his Cantonese-speaking congregation, and I became his readily available interpreter. I did not see him any more after I left during the war for Free China, and from there to England and the USA. When I finally returned to the Far East in late 1950, I saw him for the last time in Hong Kong on my way to Singapore. He was by then 89 years old and passed away not long afterwards. Like my grandfather, my father, Rufus Huang Ing-jen, also started life inauspiciously, having to go through many years of hardship before better days came. At an early age he lost his mother and upon my grandfather's remarriage to a very harsh and selfish woman, life for him became a miserable existence. He had to get up early every morning to fetch water from the well for the whole family, and was kept working long hours in the kitchen after school, often carrying his baby brother or sister (the stepmother's children) on his back while doing household chores. Carrying water on his shoulder every day had caused a deformity in the right shoulder, which was visible even in the photographs. He was beaten mercilessly when he somehow displeased his stepmother, and was treated more like a slave than the eldest son of the family. Just as my grandfather before him, however, this misfortune turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It happened this way. When my father was in his teens, there came to Shantou a Miss M. Harkness, a new member of the mission who was attached to the same church as my grandfather. She was actually a woman ofsome means, and had taken up missionary work as a volunteer. She took a strong liking for my father and was shocked to see the way he was treated in the family. Eventually, she offered my grandfather to send my father, at her expense, for schooling in Hong Kong. My grandfather was naturally delighted with the offer, which he promptly accepted. Thus at the age of 18, my father was able to go to Hong Kong to study in a famous mission school - St Stephen's College. For him, a new life had begun.

The Early Years

3

At St Stephen's, my father worked very hard indeed so as to catch up on lost years, and through accelerated promotions, managed to complete five years' schoolwork in about half the time. Before he finished the last year of school, he sat the entrance examination of St John's University in Shanghai and was admitted. This was in 1912 and he was already twentyone years old. Miss Harkness, who was immensely pleased with his progress, continued her financial support. My father studied electrical engineering at St John's and completed his studies in 1916. He was now a graduate of one of the prestigious universities in China, and in those days a university graduate was something of an elite in society as university education had only started a few decades before that. About his St John's days, I can remember two stories he told me. In his final year there was a serious typhoid epidemic in Shanghai, and he and a number ofother students fell victim to it. He was already declared a hopeless case; together with three of his fellow students in the same category, he was left lying in a room in the hospital to await their time. Two of the three in fact soon died. My grandfather sailed from Shantou, a voyage taking four or five days, to see him for the last time. Miraculously, however, he recovered. He told me that this was the time when he resolved that since his life had mercifully been spared, he would devote it to the service of his Creator. The other story my father told me was how he decided to take up the violin after listening to one of his teachers, Professor Walker who taught him physics, play the instrument. He got himself a violin and was fortunate to be given free lessons by the professor. He continued to play the violin after returning to Shantou, and often used it to pacify my elder brother, Raymond, when he was a baby. Raymond would stop crying once he heard my father playing a tune to him. This violin of his, incidentally, was left in Shantou when he took the family to Hong Kong in 1923, and some ten years later was given to one of my cousins (son of one of my father's sisters) when he expressed an interest to learn to play the instrument. He took good care of the violin, but some time later when his house was wrecked and flooded by a typhoon, the violin was scattered in several places. He, nevertheless, managed to piece the instrument together, quite amateurishly but not badly at all, and continued playing it. Shortly after my father died in 1991, my brother and I were surprised to receive a letter from this cousin, now a retired doctor, telling us that this violin still existed and offering to return it to us. We accepted this kind

4

A Lifetime in Academia

offer gladly, and on one of the occasions when I visited Shantou in connection with my commitments with the university there, I paid a visit to my cousin, and over a simple ceremony received the violin from him. It was only an inexpensive factory product: the purflings, for example, were simply painted lines, and the wood used was of very ordinary quality, although it produced a tolerably good tone. But this was to be expected as my father was by no means an affluent student: this was his violin and that meant a good deal to us! My father's interest in music was passed on to each ofhis three children, my elder brother Raymond, my younger sister Rayann and myself Rayann started learning to play the piano when she was a little girl, and when she passed with distinction Grade 6 (or thereabouts) of the Trinity College of Music in London, she was rewarded with a Morrison piano which was the best make in Hong Kong at the time. It cost over five hundred Hong Kong dollars, more than three times my father's monthly salary. Raymond began learning to play the violin when he was twelve, followed by myself two years later with him as my first teacher. There was frequent music playing in the family; I well remember the music book my father brought home one day: it was a book of trios for two violins and piano' arranged from Beethoven's piano sonatas. Returning to the period of his life spent in Shantou, my father on returning from Shanghai was made vice-principal of the mission secondary school at Jiexi, across the harbour of 5hantou. In 1920, he was offered an opportunity to go to the United States to further his studies. Encouraged by my mother even though she was at the time expecting my arrival, he betook himself to the Teachers College in Columbia University in New York where he enrolled in the MA course in education. Unfortunately, he found the subject he had to take quite uninteresting, and left New York for Chicago where he gained admission to the Armour Institute (the forerunner ofthe Illinois Institute ofTechnology). He returned to the field ofelectrical engineering, and was awarded a graduate diploma in due course. He earned his way by selling embroidered linen sent from 5hantou, and made enough money not only to keep himselfgoing, but to support his family back home. On returning to China from the United States, he was appointed principal of the school to which he had been attached. In 1923, he moved with the whole family to Hong Kong, and was employed by his alma mater, 5t 5tephen's College, as a teacher of science

The Early Years

5

and mathematics. Shortly afterwards, he was engaged as principal of a new school, Munsang College, which was about to be set up in the new development area of Kowloon City. It was a district consisting of nine short streets under the Lion Rock, overlooking Kowloon Bay and adjoining Hong Kong's only aerodrome, tucked away in one corner of Kowloon. When the school opened its doors for students in 1926, I enrolled as one of the first pupils in the primary section and continued from Primary One to Senior Middle Three in 1937. Before long, Japan's invasion of China began. The occupation of the Eastern Three Provinces ('Manchuria') in 1931 was followed by the invasion of Shanghai the following year, when the Japanese troops were for a while gallantly repulsed by China's 19th Route Army despite its inferiority in numbers and equipment. One of its senior officers - a returned student from France and a Shantou man - was indeed a frien.d of my father's, and his son a schoolmate of mine at Munsang. Invasion on a large scale started on 7 July 1937, as my brother and I were about to leave for St John's University in Shanghai. We were in fact already equipped with our personal outfits and had booked passages on the SS Empress of Canada leaving for Shanghai on 28 August but the war broke out in earnest on the 13th and grew in scope until total war engulfed all China. There was no choice but to stay on in Hong Kong and await developments. In the following year, I found my way to the University of Hong Kong, having been fortunate enough to be awarded a scholarship on the results of the matriculation examination. The school my father built was distinctive in several ways. It was a Christian school, but not related to any church or mission. It placed great emphasis on the moral and spiritual development of its pupils, and set great store by the cultivation of an esprit de corps for the alma mater. It prepared its students for the public secondary examination and for entrance to the University of Hong Kong, which required an adequate command of the English language. It also sought to put in a good grounding for the mastery of the mother tongue first, before bringing in English in heavier doses. While all the government schools and aided schools (including most mission schools) taught English as the first language and Chinese as the second, indeed a poor second, Munsang began teaching its pupils classical Chinese (wenyan), followed by modern literary Chinese (baihua). English

6

A Lifetime in Academia

was introduced in increasing doses and as the teaching medium in an increasing number of subjects until in the final years when the students were proficient in both. Munsang's graduates were thus able to find their way not only into the University ofHong Kong, but also the well-established universities in China, such as Yenching, St John's and Lingnan. Apart from this stress on the mother tongue, adequate time was devoted to the teaching of the history and geography of China, and in keeping us informed of affairs on the Mainland. Thus although brought up in a colony, we were conscious and proud of our cultural heritage, and were aware of what was going on in the home country. Another special feature of Munsang was the teaching of Mandarin (Putonghua) which my father insisted that all of us should learn. Although it was the national language of China, it was hardly spoken in the colony at the time. Apart from having some of the subjects taught by Mandarinspeaking teachers, we used to devote the last hours ofevery Saturday morning to public speaking in Mandarin, and we were required to take turns to participate in the contest. It gave us not only opportunities to practise Putonghua, but also experience in public speaking. The emphasis on teaching the Chinese language was maintained at considerable cost. Munsang started with only a small endowment of ten thousand dollars from each of the two donors, Mr Au Chak-mun and Mr Mok Kon-sang (hence Munsang). The money did not last very long beyond the opening of the school. To keep the school going while maintaining an adequate standard, a continuing source of financial support was essential, but there was no other source available except government funding. The Education Department, however, thought Munsang fell foul of the rules applicable to aided schools in the teaching of languages, but on this score Munsang would not compromise. In the meantime, resources were beginning to run out. That was the darkest hour in the life of the school and a time came when members of the college council fought shy of attending meetings for fear of being called upon to share the burden. For one of these convened meetings, only the chairman, Dr S.W Tso, and my father turned up. The chairman went as far as suggesting to my father that the school be closed. To this day, I remember hearing him telling my mother the depressing news when he came back from town after the aborted council meeting. The Education Department actually did not take Munsang seriously

The Early Years

7

for years, apart from sending annually its inspector of schools, one Mr Brown, to the school for a routine visit and report. I remember Mr Brown on one of the occasions of his visit. One day when I was in Junior Middle One, he was shown to our classroom by my father. He was a very big, rather fat man, and had a red face. He quickly sat down facing us, and asked a few simple questions. He seemed very relaxed and very sure of himsel£ and simply floated out of the room after a little while. Among the things he told my father, the most important was that the school was spending too much time on the teaching of Chinese. Presumably, this was highlighted in his report. In this fashion Mr Brown came for a number ofyears, each time turning in much the same report after an hour or so ofa casual visit. As time dragged on, and as the need for a government grant became more urgent, my father took it upon himself to make a representation to the Director ofEducation. He requested an in-depth examination of the school and, rather boldly, asked for someone other than Mr Brown to undertake the job. To the credit of the director, he took this petition seriously, and picked the headmaster of Queen's College, the most prestigious among the government schools, one Mr Handyside, to undertake this assignment. Mr Handyside's examination of the school took him three mornings. Subsequently,- he presented a report to the director, listing the qualities of the school and recommending that while Munsang could not be given an annual grant in the usual way, it deserved support in the form of a special grant. This report was accepted by the director, who approved an annual grant of $6000, a sizeable sum in those days. Thereafter, Munsang occupied a special position among aided schools, as reflected in the salutation in official communications which the department sent to the schools in the whole territory which read, 'To the Heads of all Government Schools, Aided Schools, and Munsang College.' At about this time, Munsang was visited by two people who had done much to influence my father's life: Miss Harkness, my father's benefactor, and Dr Pott, president ofSt John's University. Miss Harkness was delighted to see what her act of kindness to an unfortunate lad had brought about and thought that was the best thing she ever did in her life. Dr Pott was equally delighted, and I heard him telling my father, 'Rufus, I am proud of you.' Thereafter, all Munsang graduates were accorded direct admission into St John's University.

8

A Lifetime in Academia

Through the thick and thin of those fateful years, the person who was constantly at my father's side was my mother, Roseland Liu Sze-Ian. Born into the family of the minister of the other church in Shantou, she was educated at the teachers training college in Xiamen (Amoy), run by missionaries. As the kindly, sympatheti~ wife of the headmaster, she was a friend to the teachers and a mother to the students, especially the boarders, of whom there were quite a number, coming mainly from Shantou. It was a terrible blow to all of us when she died in late 1936, at the age of forty. In 1938, my father married Miss Kathleen Luey Yan-po, a teacher in the primary school, and by her had four sons, Rayton, Rayland, Ray John and Raywin. One of the advantages I reaped from my father's long tenure of office .as headmaster was my being able to receive all my education, from Primary One to Senior Middle Three, in one single school. During those twelye years, I was fortunate to be taught by a number of caring and devoted teachers whose memory remain with me until this day. There were the Confucian scholars who had in their time succeeded in securing the titles of Siu Chai, Jli Ren, and Kung Shen in the imperial examinations of the Qing dynasty. They taught us the classics including the ConfucianAnalects, as well as composition in the classical style, and corrected our weekly essays without fail. Our highest achievement which we attained in the last year of school was to compose, within two hours, an essay of some 300 characters, in our handwriting executed in ink and brush. There were native English-speaking teachers who taught us English, right from primary one when we began to learn the alphabet. Among them I remember particularly well Mrs Anne Luck and Mr John Blofeld. The latter was to become a close lifelong friend of mine after I left school, and I will return to him later. There were also the teachers ofMandarin and history, graduates from universities in China including especially Mr Yen Ren-jin and Mr Yang Si-tuan.And I must not fail to mention an outstanding teacher ofscience and mathematics, Mr Mak Kai-hung, a graduate ofthe University of Hong Kong, whose daughter Euphine Mak Yiu-fan (Mrs Chung) I encountered with great delight when I returned to the university in 1972, to find her Librarian in the Medical Faculty. The Confucian scholars were distinctly a class by themselves. Well versed in the teaching of the Master, they conducted themselves with great dignity and civility. Their conversation, usually enriched with quotations from the

The Early Years

9

classics and with clauses in wenyan of their own composition, was a delight to listen to. One of them had a weakness for wines and not infrequently came to class after lunch genial and expansive, having obviously indulged in a glass or two. He would compose impromptu couplets right and left, and have us follow him chanting the classics, which we did with glee. On one occasion, the singing was so enthusiastic that my father came round to see what was going on. But he was always rather indulgent to these aged, erudite scholars. Mter all, there were not many of them left in the 1930s as imperial examinations had long been abolished by then. Our scholar-teachers treated the Analects with almost religious reverence. These did, of course, play a great part in their lives. For hundreds of years, the imperial examination was the only avenue through which all scholars, from however poor or humble a family, could rise to high positions in the imperial court through distinguished performance in the examination. Some indeed reached a position described as being 'under one man but above thousands and thousands of others', i.e. that of the prime minister, the 'one man' being of course the emperor. The ultimate objective of the scholar, after years and years of hard work, was to achieve such success and thus bring honour to his ancestors and his family, and incidentally to start a lifelong career. The language of the Analects is dignified and very concise, and often open to more than one interpretation. One of the verses, for instance, contains only eight characters, but our teacher took one whole forty-minute lesson to expound on four of these characters. The commentary on this verse, which was written by a scholar called Zhu Xi and came with the textbook, contains three hundred characters. Although we spent a good deal of time each week learning the classics and quite a lot ofit by heart, learning to read and write wenyan and practising calligraphy with ink and brush, looking back today I do not think it was a waste of time. In fact, if I were given an option today, I would probably still choose this form of education. There was, at times, also some fun learning the classics. While our teachers treated the teachings of the sages with the utmost respect, we tended to regard them less seriously. We were in an age when a modern generation of scholars had emerged. They often gave a different interpretation to the Analects and sometimes even tried to put the masters in their places. There was among the publications by these scholars a journal, entitled Luen Yu (the same title as the Book ofLuen Yu), which

10

A Lifetime in Academia

was particularly critical and which occasionally even ridiculed the Master's teaching. In one of the chapters in the Book ofLuen Yu, it was recorded how Confucius, having paid a visit to the great beauty of the time, a woman called NanZhi, and incurred the disapproval of one of his disciples, Zhi Lu, had to explain why he took the trip and went as far as swearing that he had done nothing wrong and that if he did, he was willing to be subject to the scorn of Heaven. The Luen Yu interpreted this episode as showing that the Saint had a weakness for the opposite sex, and that going to the length of swearing merely showed that he was nursing a feeling of guilt for the visit. Another pupil, it was recorded, was scolded unceremoniously by the Master for taking afternoon naps. As I myselfindulge in this habit nowadays, I suppose I no longer qualify to be a Confucian scholar. The Bo~k ofLuen Yu also recorded some of the living habits of the Master, which made interesting reading for us. 'The Master invariably had ginger in his food.' No doubt this is why this substance is a must in all Chinese cooking. 'The Master did not talk at meals, nor when he went to bed. The Master did not eat any food that was not cut into the proper size and shape.' What a fussy man he was, we thought. Among all my teachers, the one who had the greatest influence in my life was Mr John Blofeld. He was actually only seven years my senior. He came straight from Cambridge when he ventured east to see the China of his dreams, and landed in Munsang College as a teacher. I came to know him well and I looked upon him as my mentor. We became great friends and met for many years after Munsang, in Kweilin and Chungking during the war and afterwards in England, Malaya and Hong Kong, and many a time in Bangkok where he spent the last thirty years of his life. For the first eight or nine years of Munsang's existence, the school was housed in rented quarters at Kai Tak Bund and Kai Yen Road, with a large playground adjoining the main building. With expanding student numbers, my father began planning to acquire a campus of the school's own. A tundraising campaign was organized to meet this objective to which the whole school rallied enthusiastically. My class (Senior Middle One), ofabout twenty pupils, organized a variety concert, complete with a short play entitled Good Son in which I figured. Several months' work was expended on this concert which fetched eighty-three dollars. It was not much of a financial return, but in terms of rallying to the call of the alma mater and of promoting the esprit de corps for which Munsang was well-known, it was worth the effort.

The Early Years

11

A large piece of farmland at the end of Grampian Road, opposite the ancient walls ofKowloon City, was acquired. Application to the government for converting it into a building lot was approved. Soon the first building was put up, consisting oftwo wings housing twelve classrooms, and a central section housing the assembly hall and the school offices. There was ample ground for sports activities, which the school had always encouraged, and until today Munsang can still boast of being one of the very few schools in Hong Kong which enjoy such spacious sports facilities. Thus when my father left the service ofthe school in 1940 after fourteen years as headmaster, Munsang was already well established as one of Hong Kong's foremost schools, with a distinctive character of its own. And as Munsang came of age, her alumni grew in numbers and in stature. These were an active and cohesive lot at all times, loyal and supportive to their alma mater. Their many contributions to the school constituted a major source of pride and satisfaction to my father in his latter years.

2

.University Days and the Siege ofHong Kong

A

lt~o~gh established in

1911, the University of H.o~g Ko~g in fact

originates from the Hong Kong College of Medicine which came into being in 1881, and which boasted of having Dr Sun Yat-sen, father of the Republic of China, as one ofits first graduates. The founder of the university was Lord Lugard who had the vision of the university serving China, partaking in the education of its young and functioning as a meeting place for East and West. For many decades after the university came into being, this ideal of the founder was hardly realized: there was little if any interaction between the university and its sister institutions on the Mainland; nor was there any significant number of Mainland students studying in it. Two factors contributed to this situation. The teachers, professors and lecturers were almost entirely British and very few of them, as far as I knew, were interested in China. The language of instruction was English and admission confined to those who had passed the matriculation examination which was conducted in English and in Hong Kong only, so that very few if any students from China could hope to qualify. It was also expensive to study in the University of Hong Kong as tuition fees were high and being completely residential, living expenses were also considerable. Thus, most of the students came from relatively wealthy families within Hong Kong and the university came to be regarded as an elite institution for the rich. There were, however, a reasonable number ofscholarships, provided mainly

14

A Lifetime in Academia

by the Hong Kong government and awarded on the results of the matriculation examination, which enabled children from families ofmodest means to enter. I was one of these. Having been prevented from joining St John's University in 1937 by the outbreak of war, I had in fact taken in the following year the entrance examination conducted in Hong Kong by Yenching University and was one of four, out of the twelve that sat the examination, who qualified. However, the government scholarship at the University of Hong Kong that paid for all the fees and living expenses, was too attractive to set aside. Besides, Yenching was a long way from home, and at the time was under the threat of being taken over by Japanese troops. I joined the University of Hong Kong in September 1938. With my school background, it was not surprising that I found myself a little out of place among my fellow students, but I soon adapted myself To my delight, however, I encountered a few who, due largely to their family background, had a similar outlook as mine. Among them I got on particularly well with Patrick Yu Shuk-siu and Lau Din-cheuk and we became good friends. Patrick was later to become a lawyer of outstanding reputation in Hong Kong and Din-cheuk a professor of Chinese at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I started off as a student in the Faculty ofArts, taking the science group of subjects, and transferred a little later to the newly established Faculty of Science. We had a general curriculum offive subjects in the first and second years, three in the third, and two in the fourth (final) year. During the first two years, English was one of the subjects, and we attended lectures and tutorials with the arts students. I did not consider the study of English language and literature, for a student ofscience, a waste of time - far from it. I found lectures on Shakespeare, Milton, Shaw and Sheridan, and many others, interesting and uplifting - a welcome change from the other lectures. Besides, there were all those pretty 'co-eds' in the Arts Faculty, whereas science, engineering and medical students were predominantly male. Coming straight from a boys' school, I found exposure to these fellow students a new experience, exhilarating if also rather distracting. Our first-year work was a bit of a waste of time as a good part of the ground covered was a repeat of schoolwork. This had bad effects on some of us as they began their university career taking life easy, and took in large doses of extracurricular activities to the extent that they failed their examinations. My class started with about ten students in the first year; it

University Days and the Siege of Hong Kong

15

dwindled down to seven in the second year, to three in the third and ended in the final year with just the two of us, Miss Lam Yung-tai and myself We did not finish our final-year studies, however, as Hong Kong fell to the Japanese at the end of 1941. That was some four months before our final examinations were to take place, and we were awarded 'war degrees'. This was probably just as well as I too had begun to take life a little easy and might well have failed my final examination and never become a graduate of the University of Hong Kong! Among my teachers, the one who to this day I have held in the highest respect is Professor WaIter Brown, professor of mathematics and dean of science. He put a lot into his teaching and always lectured without notes. His lectures, in applied mathematics, I found to be really inspiring. Mrs Jean Faid, who taught us pure mathematics, was a conscientious teacher and well liked by all of us. Professor Byrne, professor of chemistry, was a fatherly figure, but his lectures consisted mainly ofwriting down rows and rows. of equations on the blackboard, and these we dutifully copied down in our notebooks. He was, however, the only teacher we had who was interested in doing some research. Most of the others who lectured us, I fear, had little claim to be inspiring. Some of them simply read from their notes, some of which were many years old. Professor Brown was one ofthe few teachers who took a personal interest in his students. At the end of our third year he had Yung-tai and me go back to his office during the summer vacation, and gave us tutorials to prepare us for our final-year course. When the university was about to close down after the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, it was he who proposed to the senate that all final-year students be awarded 'war degrees'. We would then have qualifications on which to earn a living, facing as we did at the time a very bleak and uncertain future. Before he left the campus to go into internment with the other European members of the faculty and staft he called me to his office and told me that I would do well to have a testimonial with me, and wrote me one. This document, which I still have with me to this day, proved very useful when I later went into Free China. Professor Brown did not return to Hong Kong after the war. He stayed on in Glasgow and when I visited the United Kingdom in 1954 on study leave from the University of Malaya in Singapore, I called on him with my family to pay him our respects and to express once again my deep gratitude to him. Two other teachers whom I must mention are Miss Hui Wai-haan and

16

A Lifetime in Academia

Mrs Ada Chung, demonstrators in the Chemistry Department. I was one ofthe very few students who had come up to the university without studying chemistry at school and found practical work particularly difficult. Theory I could learn and make up by hard work, but practical skills were difficult for a beginner to catch up in a short time. Both Miss Hui and Mrs Chung were understanding and sympathetic, and made it a habit of taking time off to give me extra attention during practical classes. To this day, whenever I pass the ground floor in the Loke Yew Building, where the chemistry laboratories were situated in those days, I think of the two good ladies. Miss Hui stayed on with the university after the war, and when I came back in 1972 she was still teaching in the department, now a senior lecturer. I am glad that in recognition of her lifelong service and her exemplary performance as a teacher, the university honoured her just before she retired in 1981 by conferring on her an honorary degree of LLD. She continued to serve the department after retirement and some years later gave her alma mater a sizeable donation just before she left Hong Kong to settle in Canada. In my time, all students had to be residential unless specially exempted for good reasons. The hostel I belonged to was StJohn's Hall, which was on Bonham Road opposite the main building. There were only sixty odd rooms and we were given one each, which I must say was quite a luxury. We were all well served, indeed pampered by our room-boys, one to about eight rooms, who served us breakfast in our rooms and brought tea and coffee and other drinks to us in the common room on request. They were on call almost all hours ofthe day. They cleaned our rooms and polished our shoes. In all we almost lived like princes. In St John's Hall, I made some really good and lasting frien·ds, including Clifford Matthews, that most cheerful and genial of mortals, who was also my partner at physics practical classes. He and I have somehow run into each other all through the years all over the place - in London where I attended his wedding, in Oxford, Chicago and Hong Kong. There was also John Huang Hsing-tsung (known to most of us as HT) who is now in the United States, and Steve M. W Cheung, now in Singapore, both ofwhom I have been able to see regularly all through these years nay, decades. St John's Hall had little hall spirit to boast of: we were all individualists, if you like. I remember when our basketball team had a match against the team from May Hall, the strongest in the university at the time, only six men in the whole St John's contingent turned up. The six comprised four

University Days and the Siege of Hong Kong

17

members ofthe ten-strong team, the honorary secretary ofthe student body (Luke Lim) and the No. 1 boy who carried our refreshments. Not one single other member of the hall came to support us. It was quite a surprise to all that we still managed to score seventeen points against our opponents' fifty-three points. Needless to say, the four of us (myselfone of them) toiled very hard indeed, doing the work of five players without relief: and were flat out at the end of the game. Our captain, Yeo Choo-teck from Thailand, deserved most of the credit. He performed spectacularly, as did the captain ofthe opposing team, none other than the formidable Kenneth Hui Kwanlun, who was to become one of my greatest friends after the war. St John's Hall, however, had the great distinction of being the first hall ever to organize an orchestra - the St John' Hall orchestra which performed on a number of occasions in the Hall and in the Loke Yew Hall. My brother Raymond and Michael C. T. Tang played first violin, and I played second fiddle, among others. Pieces we played included the Eine Kleine Nachmusik, the overture to The Barber of Seville, and movements of the Surprise Symphony, and the No. 6 Brandenburg Concerto. Ours turned out to be the first orchestra to be formed in the university and the last for a long time until much later, in around 1982, after the establishment of the Music Department. St John's Hall had quite a number of students from Malaya. A few of them, coming from wealthy families, had such a good time in Hong Kong that they thought not of return. Attractions aplenty there were in Hong Kong in those days, as now, and there was little to deter these young men, far away from home, from lapping up these pleasures. Although we had roll-call in hall every night at 9.30 p.m., it was not difficult for the determined ones to leave the premises afterwards unnoticed, to have some fun in town. In those days, students in the Arts Faculty could fail any number of times in their annual examination without getting thrown out, and thus it transpired that a certain senior member ofSt John's managed to cling on to the university life he loved for years and years in the role of what some people call 'professional student'. He was a nice enough chap, an excellent football player and the mainstay ofour football team. When I entered the hall as a 'greenhorn', he was already a revered 'senior gentleman' in his third-year arts course. When I graduated with a 'war degree' three and a half years later, he was still a third-year student and as such, poor chap, was not entitled to the award of a degree. These happy days were soon to end for in the early morning of 8

18

A Lifetime in Academia

December 1941, we heard the sound of planes flying over Kai Tak and exploding bombs. We thought at first that it was the Royal Air Force practising, but soon realized that all was not well when we discerned the insignia of the rising sun on the wings of the aircrafts. The siege of Hong Kong had begun. Hong Kong had actually no chance at all despite what the government repeatedly told us over the radio and in the papers right till the very last day that Hong Kong was well provided for in defence. This, I suppose, had to be done to avoid panic among the population. We were, as a matter of fact, in a pretty desperate situation. Unknown to us, the inhabitants in Hong Kong, there was actually little left by the way ofdefence as the armed forces had largely been recalled to defend Britain against the triumphant Nazis in Europe. There were only a couple ofRoyal Navy frigates left and a few airforce trainer planes, and the land forces were no match at all for the formidable imperial army ofJapan. The invaders, however, did not do much damage to the colony, despite their huge superiority in the air. To them, the territory was already as good as theirs, so why damage what was going to be their property within a week or two? Kowloon soon fell a few days after invasion had started, and their commander understandably took over the prestigious and completely intact Peninsula Hotel as his headquarters. Decades later, when I attended a conference ofAsian-US educators organized by the Institute ofInternational Education in 1970, I stayed in the hotel and was still able to find a couple of staff members who served the Japanese after they took over, and heard some interesting stories from them. Mter Kowloon fell I was completely cut off from my family. Then came the siege ofHong Kong Island. The big guns installed for Hong Kong's defence all pointed the wrong way, expecting the attack of the enemy to come from the sea, but they came from the back - from the New Territories. The few batteries built on the hill facing the harbour were picked out one by one and soon destroyed. On Christmas Day, Hong Kong surrendered. Shortly before hostilities began, H. T. Huang and I were made ARP gas officers (ARP stood for Air Raid Precaution) and were given a brief training by Professor Byrne on the use ofthe outfits provided us for detection ofwar gases. When St John's Hall went out of function, we were billeted by the ARP to Mr Ip Ding-sun's house at 53 Conduit Road, on top of the university. The Ip family - Mr and Mrs Ip and their three daughters,

University Days and the Siege of Hong Kong

19

Lillian, Gertrude and Anita, and son nicknamed 'Woo Tao' - were all very kind to us. The daughters were in fact students at the university, and it was on their initiative that we asked to be billeted to their house. We were very grateful for the accommodation they gave us during the briefwar, and even more so for sheltering us after the surrender. They let us partake of the food they had managed to store up, at a time when all over Hong Kong food was fast becoming a rare commodity. We simply could not let them do this for long, and so as soon as we found that the temporary hospital at the University (converted from the residential halls) was feeding those of its students, including all the students from Malaya who had no home to go to, we went over to eat there instead. The hospital was able to do this as it had earlier laid away a large stock of rice, corned beef and soya beans. And so for a good many days thereafter we were fed rice, corned beef and boiled beans twice a day, seven days a week. Somewhat monotonous fare though it was, it was food and pretty sustaining food, and at a time like that, who dared to be choosy? We were lucky in fact, as many in the territory were starving. This was war! War had meant the disruption of practically all normal activities and this state of affairs persisted after the surrender. Nearly all business ceased. In the streets, all sorts ofhawkers appeared, trying to make what little money they could to eke out a meagre living, as did beggars in large numbers, some of whom were obviously starving. It was upsetting to come across these people without being able to offer them any help; we ourselves were, indeed, not much better off than they were. A worse experience was having to walk through certain streets and passing the same starving, homeless and probably sick people lying there, day in and day out, until the day when I noticed that they moved no more, and as corpses were carted away. Those were days of deep despair. For some little time after the surrender, the population were still naIvely entertaining hopes that Hong Kong would soon be liberated by allied forces, but such hopes soon faded. Hong Kong remaining under the iron grip ofthe Japanese army for a considerable time, probably years, became a virtual certainty and, encouraged by broadcasts from Free China urging the younger generation to move back to the mother country, many began to make plans to get out of Hong Kong. As Raymond and I were the two grown-up sons in the family, we were hesitant about doing this and leaving our father, under such difficult circumstances, to keep alive the rest of the family which consisted of our

20

A Lifetime in Academia

sister, stepmother and her two very young sons. Our father, however, insisted that we leave, as he could see absolutely no future for us in Hong Kong. With God's help, he said confidently, he could pull through. It was with heavy hearts that we finally took leave of them, worried as we were about their safety and their livelihood, and fearful for ourselves of the unknown perils which lay in wait for us on our long and perilous way to Free China.

3

Into Free China as a Refugee: Life in Samkong and Kweilin

O

n 31 July 1942, my brother and I and Leslie Sung, a friend from the university, having joined a group of other refugees, left for China. We had a guide who at an agreed price was to meet us at the other side of the border and would take us, through an area known as 'no man's land', to the first outpost of the Chinese army. We were dressed in simple labourers' clothes and equipped with exit permits issued by the occupation forces. Actually we did not look much like common labourers, least of all as both my brother and I carried a violin, but the Japanese soldiers at the checking points that we went through did not seem to care. We came to know later that the authorities in fact were by now anxious to get rid of some of the population, as food supplies had become increasingly difficult to acquire. Our group boarded a lorry with our belongings and headed for Shatoukok, on the north-east border of the New Territories. Here a fishing boat had been hired for us, and we set sail for the north shore of Mirs Bay, and for freedom. I remember how happy I was to see, I thought, the last of the Japanese soldiers, having lived under them for seven months. They had searched our luggage and had helped themselves to a pair of gun-boots which I brought, and a clinical thermometer, among other lesser things. Never had I felt so good about leaving anybody anywhere, but I was soon to be disappointed. There was a fairly strong wind blowing and our boat

22

A Lifetime in Academia

was making some headway, but within an hour or so after we had started, a heavy storm broke, bringing heavy rain, thunder and strong winds. We were completely soaked through and the boatman had no choice but to turn back. As we drew up to the pier again, the sentries watched us with amusement. They searched one of the other boats, occupied by another group of refugees, and now discovered a large catch of watches which someone was trying to smuggle into China. We had no alternative but to spend the night at Shatoukok and put ourselves up in the only little inn available. We were put in a dark, filthy and bug-infested room upstairs, where we turned in for the night. Not long after midnight, there was a loud knock at the door, and sure enough a couple ofJapanese soldiers appeared. They had come to search our luggage again, as they obviously hoped to find more watches or valuable articles like those they found in the other boat. I had a feeling that this visit was quite 'unofficial', but in any case they were disappointed after a careful search and left at daybreak. Somehow they did not appear at all interested in our violins. There was no mishap the next morning and we managed to get to a little village on the opposite shore, where our guide met us. Heavy rain during the next two days prevented us from proceeding any further and we had to shelter ourselves in a farmhouse, eating simply in order to conserve our financial resources. When the weather cleared, we started our walking trip to Darnshui, where the Nationalist army was stationed. We crossed 'no-man's land', territory of the guerillas who were simply bandits before the war broke out not so long ago. They collected 'protection money' from us but let us through without molesting us. The walk to Darnshui took one whole day, but we were able to secure the services ofHakka woman porters to carry our luggage. I had two suitcases for the porter, but kept the violin for myself as I could not trust my porter to take good care of it. My porter, like the rest, was a big, husky amazon, wearing a large circular straw hat which until recently was still a familiar sight on building sites in Hong Kong. She lifted the suitcases one by one and exclaimed 'Hau jung aw!' ('how awfully heavy!'); then she started the bargaining process with me as to how much I should pay her. I gave her the benefit of every doubt, but after the price was agreed, the suitcases seemed to have become much lighter as she swung them effortlessly around over the ends of a pole, lifted them over her shoulder, and started her charge

Into Free China as a Refugee

23

forward. The speed at which the porters moved amazed us. After going forward some distance well ahead of us, they would sit on the luggage to wait for us, weaklings in their eyes, struggling to catch up. I was told that in the Hakka community which populated the area we were going through, women did all the hard work in the field and in the house, while the menfolk stayed at home, albeit still the masters of the house. In the morning the menfolk would congregate at the tea house, sipping tea and tasting dim sum. Some would bring cages containing their pet birds to discuss the 'great events under heaven', while the women went on with their productive labour in the field without complaint. Despite such an attractive Utopia for men beckoning me, I was not at all tempted to tarry but pressed on with my journey. From Darnshui we took a small riverboat to Wai Chow and thence by another boat up the East River to Laulung, a voyage which took two days. At Laulung, we were accommodated at the YMCA and started immediately to arrange for transportation, by road, to our destination Kukong where relief was available. What we had to do was to persuade some of the lorry drivers on the route to give us a lift, at a price to be settled between us. The drivers, of course, were doing this for extra earnings, and did very well by us. Before leaving Laulung, I did something which I had never done before and am most unlikely to do again- I went on the street hawking. A fellow traveller, a student from Malaya, needed money to augment his travel expenses by selling some of his belongings and I tagged along to help him. It was a funny feeling soliciting in the street in a strange place, but then nobody knew us. We spent a whole morning out there without selling a thing. The trip from Laulung to Kukong, this southernmost outpost of a town in Free China, was a rough one. The driver who took me let me perch on the top of the cargo behind, which consisted of bags of salt. Lorries in China in those days were run on charcoal which, being a rather inefficient fuel, had to be turned offwhen going up a slope however gentle, and replaced by alcohol (petrol being an extremely rare commodity in war-time China). On level roads, our lorry managed to roll along at about twenty kilometres an hour; uphill however, progress became painfully slow, and the driver's assistant had to jump off the lorry quite frequently to place a wooden block behind one of the rear wheels to prevent the lorry from slipping back! It

24

A Lifetime in Academia

was, nevertheless, good to feel that we were moving on, but I soon developed a very high temperature. I had contracted malaria during the river journey and the disease had begun to develop. My temperature went up to 104 F one day and dropped to 95 F the next. At the time I did not know what it was. On arriving at Kukong, after some four or five days on the road, my brother took me immediately to the Hong Kong Government Relief Office across the river to seek assistance. This was housed in a boat moored near the Ho Sai Hospital. I was all bundled up in towels and shivering in the summer heat when I stumbled into the boat and to my surprise and delight, I discerned that the person seated behind the official desk was a friend of mine from Hong Kong, none other than Arthur Bentley. He exclaimed on seeing me all pale and so unofficiously attired, ~nd who have we got here!' Arthur was the chief government pharmacist in Hong Kong. He and I had come to know each other rather well playing violins in the Hong Kong Chamber Orchestra which had, only a fortnight before the war began, given a concert at the Loke Yew Hall. He promptly put me in hospital where I came under the care of one Dr Bee, a graduate of the University of Hong Kong. Before I left the hospital, Leslie joined me suffering from the same malady. We were again fortunate to find accommodation in a large room with wooden bunks in the YMCA, and had our meals there. Kukong used to be one of the cities which attracted the attention of Japanese planes and had on occasions been heavily bombed. Fortunately for us, these raids were no more although there was still a false air raid alarm from time to time. It was by now time to get ourselves jobs. Leslie and I found no difficulty doing this and were soon engaged as teachers by the True Light Middle School, while my brother joined Lingnan University, about an hour's train journey north of Kukong, to continue his studies. The True Light Middle School was a famous girls' school in Hong Kong which had, like us, moved away and found itself premises in Samkong, a tiny city tucked away in the district of Lienshien, surrounded by beautiful undulating hills, some eight hours by train and road from Kukong. Without much delay, we moved in there with the headmaster, Dr Ho Yam-tong and some of the teachers and students, all refugees like us from Hong Kong. The True Light School, now co-educational taking in boys to fill its ranks, made its home in a church and a two-storey building across the road

Into Ffee China as a Refugee

25

outside the ancient city of Samkong. The upstairs rooms were used to accommodate women teachers and girl students, and the downstairs rooms as classrooms, with two of the smaller ones as living quarters for male teachers. The boy students were put in the disused city tower up the road. There were three beds in our room and these took up half the total area. This room took me, Leslie and Mr Kwong Hon-sek, the biology teacher and a graduate ofLingnan University. Our not plentiful luggage went under our respective beds. The very meagre amenities available reminded us strongly that we were refugees in a war-torn country. Geographically we were ·in a remote part in the north of Guangdong Province, far away from any town of any size, and therefore safely out of reach of the Japanese army and did not attract any interest from the Japanese air force. There was no electricity supply, and each of us carried around after dark our own little oil lamp which served us while preparing lessons and marking papers. There was no running water: the whole school depended on a well in the backyard of the school building for its water supply. We used to carry half a bucket of water each from this well and went for our baths in a small shed in the school grounds. Despite these primitive conditions, however, we were in good spirits. It was a friendly community in which we found ourselves. We were fellow refugees from Hong Kong, and it was comforting to find a home like this far away from home. Leslie and I turned out to be the lucky ones as far as accommodation was concerned. Not long after our arrival, we came to know Mr and Mrs Montgomery, who lived next to the school. Mr Montgomery was a missionary from the USA and his Chinese wife, Dr Yu, was .a doctor practising medicine in the area. They had a clinic right next to the school. One of Dr Yu's jobs was to go up to the Yeow people in the mountains to dispense medical care as best she could. Not long after we came to know them, the couple very kindly invited us to move over to live in their house and let us use the attic which proved quite comfortable. For the rest of our stay in Samkong, we stayed with this kindly couple. My monthly salary was four hundred dollars, national currency, plus accommodation and meals. The salary, however, was quickly eroded by inflation and the food went steadily downhill in quality until towards the end of our stay, our lunch consisted of two pieces ofsweet potato and a cup of tea. It was not surprising that we spent the greater part of our salary on

26

A Lifetime in Academia

food and we were lucky in being able to do so as we did not need to buy any items ofclothing, which were very expensive indeed. There was no incentive whatsoever for one to save any money as it depreciated rapidly and mercilessly all the time. Samkongwas a little city, old but still intact, with one main street inside the city wall running east and west, from one gate to the other. On both sides of the street, inside and outside the city wall, there were simple, one-storey structures which housed a number of small shops and cafes. Samkong was a bewitchingly beautiful place. It was situated at the meeting point of three rivers (hence Samkong meaning three rivers) and surrounded by low undulating hills. It had the reputation of having scenic beauties which surpassed even those of Kweilin (Guilin) which was generally considered as 'the most beautiful place under heaven'. Leslie and I used to make the most of this aspect of Samkong. Each day, after school which ran from early morning until about noon, we would have lunch at school and then take ourselves to one of the little eating shops along the main street and enjoy a much-needed supplementary lunch, after which we would take a long walk across the green fields to the hills. Those were very enjoyable hours, strolling in such fascinating surroundings and in very good company. To this day, these excursions which we could only enjoy in the autumn, remain fresh and dear in my memory. When winter came and the weather became unfriendly, we were denied this daily treat. The school held daily morning prayers, lasting some twenty minutes, before classes began. Monday mornings, however, were reserved for the political session when the director of counselling and discipline, one Mr To, gave his sermon, mainly on SunYat-sen's Three Principles. His sermons, which usually lasted over half an hour, were rather dry and evoked little enthusiasm, although no one would dare to show openly his or her lack of interest. To make sure we were attentive all the time, our director would make reference, periodically and without warning, to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek when we were all supposed to click our heels and sit up sharply to show our respect. To catch the few whose minds still wandered, he would use a variation of titles for him such as 'the Generalissimo', 'our supreme leader', 'our great Commander-in-Chief', and so on. His job was obviously involved in thought control, that is, keeping the youngsters' thought from straying to the left. I must say I did not envy him at all. I taught the following subjects: physics to Junior Middle Three,

Into Free China as a Refugee

27

trigonometry to Senior Middle One, higher algebra to Senior Middle Two, and physics and co-ordinate geometry to Senior Middle Three. There were some sixteen one-hour lessons to be given each week and with every lesson ,. having to be prepared, it was quite a teaching load. There were no practical classes, as there were no laboratories at all; it was difficult enough to get sufficient copies of textbooks to go around! During our stay in Samkong, we had an occasion to pay a visit to the Yeow people in the nearby mountains when we went on a school picnic. It was actually more of an excursion than a picnic, as we had to cover considerable distance on foot across some mountainous terrain. I found the Yeow people all strong and sturdy and was told later that this was because living the very hard life they did, only the fittest among them survived. They lived in mud huts with tiny windows. The front room I noticed was used to keep livestock, chickens and pigs, while the humans slept in the back room. Their menfolk came down regularly to Samkong to attend twicem-onthly fairs and to sell whatever produce they managed to get out of the farm from fertile earth in their area. Their produce was exchanged for the barest minimum of consumer goods and common salt. We left for Kweilin the following March, Leslie to go on to Liuzhou, and I to take up an assistantship in chemistry at the National Kwangsi University in Lianfung nearby. I had decided to take up this post as it afforded me an opportunity to carry on with my studies, and the university was the only place where I could do this and, with luck, even to do some research. To this day, I still feel sorry that to a certain extent I had let my students down as it was a couple ofmonths before their public examination. However, I did put in a good deal of overtime to cover the whole year's syllabus before I left. By now the testimonial written for me by Professor Brown proved useful on more than one occasion. It helped me get the teaching job at the True Light Middle School and now the post at Kwangsi University, and it was to prove helpful again later as it helped secure me a scholarship from the Rhodes Trust in Oxford. It had travelled with me from Hong Kong carefully hidden between the sole and the upper part of a sandal. This was done to avoid getting me into trouble with the Japanese sentries at the border, who were known to be hostile to university teachers and students as representing the section of the Chinese population which most ardently supported the war of resistance. I did not hide the document in a pair of shoes because this

28

A Lifetime in Academia

would be tempting to those sentries, on either side of the border. Indeed, it was common knowledge that they would not hesitate to help themselves to anything they fancied in the luggage of refugees. The university in Kweilin was one of two campuses which made up the National University of Kwangsi. It was situated in Lianfung, some twenty kilometres out of the city of Kweilin. The campus consisted of two parts on either side ofthe highway. The administration and residential part occupied what had been at one time a famous villa belonging to a very wealthy family. This was a large compound, complete with small rivers, bridges, pagodas, and bungalows scattered all over the garden. The teaching part ofthe campus was right across the highway; it comprised a number of modern buildings including a good-sized library. The Chemistry Department occupied one of these buildings, containing lecture rooms, laboratories, and a large staff office. There was some equipment around, including sensitive balances, autoclaves, and a fair stock of glassware. There was also a reasonable store of chemicals for both teaching and research. These were indeed rare amenities in war-time China, not to be found anymore even in the most prestigious universities such as Peking and Tsinghua - premier institutions in the ancient capital which had moved all the way from the north-east to the south-west of the country since the war started. Located all along in the relatively backward south-west, the National University of Kwangsi enjoyed the advantage of not attracting the attention of the Japanese army or air force, and the campus was still intact, untouched by even one single Japanese bomb. During my first term at the university, I was assigned to one Professor Ding Shu-shien, an honours graduate from the University of London and one time a Boxer Indemnity Fund scholar. I assisted him teaching quantitative analysis. My teaching duties consisted of running the practical classes two afternoons a week and making preparations for these. I was also required to attend the professor's lectures so that I knew what the students were supposed to know. For the rest of the time, I was free to pursue my own research. This was a far cry from the heavy teaching duties I had to perform in Samkong, and I fully utilized the time I had at my disposal undertaking my own research. I was fortunate to be offered financial aid by OswaldCheung's father, who gave me three thousand dollars to support any research project for which I could find facilities in the laboratory. Oswald, a good friend of

Into Free China as a Refugee

29

mine from the University of Hong Kong, had earlier found his way into China, and was at this time working with the British Army Aid Group (BAAG) stationed in Kweilin, and I had no doubt it was at his suggestion that his father extended me a helping hand. It was not an easy matter choosing a research project, as one had to consider the availability offacilities as well as research materials. I finally decided to investigate the cracking of tung oil, an abundant local product, to produce petrol-like chemicals as petrol was a very scarce commodity at the time. The catalyst needed lime - was also readily available and cheap. I managed to make some progress in this work before I left Lianfung later in the year on being awarded a scholarship to go to Oxford. In the second term, I was moved over to work with Professor Dalgen Chin, a graduate ofKwangsi University who subsequently obtained a master's degree from a university in the USA. Under him I taught practical organic chemistry. My association with him, however, was cut short when I left in October for Chungking and Oxford. Years later, I was fortunate to meet him again in Singapore when he came to teach at the newly founded Nanyang University and again in Taiwan after he retired. He remained a member of the Taiwan National Assembly, representing Kwangsi, a seat to which he was elected decades ago in China. In March 1943 my salary was, to start with, six hundred dollars which, in view of the rapid rate of inflation, was actually much the same in value as the four hundred dollars I drew in Samkong. This was, however, .augmented by an all-important subsidy of rice, no less than forty catties (about fifty pounds) of it. As rice increased in value with inflation and was indeed one of the standards by which the value of banknotes was assessed, this subsidy was the mainstay of my support. I used to hand my supply of rice to the staff canteen and got in return two reasonably substantial meals a day, and spent my salary on a few small necessities, and on breakfasts and snacks in the little shops lining the highway. These were regular meeting places for friends and colleagues, and were understandably popular establishments. As an assistant in chemistry, I was a teacher, albeit a very junior one. As such, I was accommodated in the staff quarters assigned to assistants. The building I found myself in was a one-storey wooden bungalow, facing a stone bridge over a small river. On moonlit nights the atmosphere was particularly romantic, and I used to sit on the steps ofthe bridge and played my violin. In this way, I more or less serenaded the whole campus, with

30

A Lifetime in Academia

pieces such as the serenades by Toselli, Drigo and Schubert. The music I occasionally made seemed well appreciated by my friends and colleagues living on the campus, as some of them were kind enough to go out of their way to tell me. Life during the war, in an out-of-the-way place like Lianfung with little entertainment or diversions of any kind available, was monotonous, and I was the only violinist on the whole campus. In 1996, my wife and I, while taking a tour of Kweilin, found our way to Lianfung to look up this war-time refuge of mine over half a century ago. We found the site of the campus, but the bungalow I lived in was there no more. However, the stone bridge, though in bad disrepair, and the tiny river were still there. The fact that the bungalow was no longer standing was to be expected since, like many a historic building in China, it was made of wood. But the bridge with its unmistakable steps on which I used to sit and play my violin assured me that this was the place where I spent some seven months of my war-time existence. The one and only experience I had of the university clinic gave me a good impression ofits service. The doctor in charge was an American Chinese woman who had returned to China some years back. She and I got on rather well as she enjoyed talking in English with me, for a change, and she told me she liked the music I made from time to time. She diagnosed my complaint as a recurrence of the malaria I had contracted a year before on my way out ofHong Kong, and prescribed quinine for me, which incidently did the job, as up to this day the disease has never recurred. I might have just been lucky, however, in that the medicine I needed was available. I do not know the range of medicines stocked by the clinic, but quinine was certainly relatively plentiful in China during the war years. It was even carried by the Chinese armies as one of its essentials. A friend of mine who had served in the medical corps ofone ofthe armies told me that dispensing ofmedicines was very simple, as there were only three drugs available anyway: quinine, aspirin, and iodine. This was, I understand, the situation with most of the armies, but not with crack troops of the Generalissimo, which were of course much better looked after. There was a branch of the YMCA on the campus, which was situated between the villa and the group of modern buildings, near the highway. It was housed in a separate building amidst the green fields, and proudly possessed one of the two pianos in the whole university. There was a small assembly hall where various functions were held, including weekly services.

Into Free China as a Refugee

31

I was invited to give a sermon on one occasion and had no difficulty doing so. I was well acquainted with the scriptures to start with and having interpreted for my grandfather on many an occasion, I could give one almost any time without much notice. The sermon I gave was entitled 'The Samaritan Woman's Progress' (cf'The Pilgrim's Progress') and depicted her gradual recognition of Christ from her first utterance of 'Thou, being a Jew' to 'I perceive thou art a prophet' to, finally, 'Is not this the Christ?' (Gospel according to St John, Chapter 4). The good work of the YMCA throughout China deserved high praise. Starting from my Hong Kong days, I was aware of it and even participated in some of its activities when I was at school. It used to organize, among other things, inter-school competitions in sports, essay writing in both Chinese and English, and Mandarin public speaking. As a matter of fact, I took part in some of these representing Munsang, and managed to win a number of prizes for my alma mater, including the championship shield in Mandarin public speaking in 1936. In the early summer of 1942, the medical corps of the Japanese Army in Hong Kong organized an anti-cholera campaign, which my brother and I joined. We went around with one ofthe teams to give the population anti-cholera injections. At the time, the Chinese YMCA at Waterloo Road in Kowloon was used as the headquarters for the campaign, and as workers, we were accommodated in the dormitories upstairs. And, as I have recorded earlier, throughout my trip as a refugee I found branches of the YMCA in the most unexpected of places: Wai Chow, Laulung, Kukong, Kweilin, and now, Lianfung. Their work deserves a warm tribute from me and the many others who have benefited from it. Academically, Kwangsi University did not enjoy anything like a great reputation, tucked away as it was in the relatively underdeveloped southwest of the country. I would, for instance, never have dreamed of having my higher education there. It was, however, a university under the Ministry of Education and as such given the same support and subject to the same control as all the other national universities. Significant among the controls was that of political activities of the students, and even an attempt at influencing their political thought through the dean of counselling and discipline and his sizeable department. As in other national universities, the system for promotion of the teaching staff was also rather rigid. For at least up to the rank of associate professorship, promotion was based solely on length of service, and not on output of research or performance in

32

A Lifetime in Academia

teaching. Thus, a new graduate with a bachelor's degree would serve as an assistant for three years, then automatically promoted to a lectureship in which he or she would serve for four years. He or she would then be made an assistant professor and after four years promoted to associate professor. Relevant experience meant the years spent taking a higher degree and/or in teaching, whether this be at university or school level. Thus, someone I knew from Hong Kong who, after graduation from the University of Hong Kong, had taken two years of postgraduate study followed by seven or eight years of school teaching was accorded the rank of associate professor. No wonder that research, by and large, was not prosecuted with any great vigour. A certain assistant in engineering living near me in the same bungalow spent most of his time marketing and cooking for himself and his family! Several factors contributed to making my stay at Lianfung happy and content. There were first the facilities and time to do some research, and secondly, the beautiful and serene surroundings afforded by the campus was all that anyone could have wished for. Last but not least was the company I found myselfin, there being some six or seven students from the University of Hong Kong studying there, all refugees like me. Among these friends some I was to meet again later, long after the war. There was Lim Kee-chin who became Singapore Commissioner to Hong Kong. There was Simon Li .Fook-seen, who was to become one of Hong Kong's appeal court judges, and during 1985-90 was a colleague on the Basic Law drafting committee. Among the women students from Hong Kong, I came to know Vivienne Chong Chook-yew, a very attractive and vivacious girl from Kuala Lumpur. We got on very well together, but she soon left for Lingnan University where there was a much stronger department in English literature. Before I moved up to Chungking later in the year to go to Oxford, I called on her to bid her farewell, and we were engaged. Our engagement, however, did not last the wear and tear of time and the uncertainties ofwar, and she broke it off after I was in Oxford for about a year. One interesting experience I had before leaving Kweilin was the three days and nights spent in a hotel in town, as a member of a team entrusted with copying out examination papers. There had been a leak during the previous examination, and the university decided to appoint a team ofabout six people to undertake the job of preparing these papers. We went out to a good hotel in town and locked ourselves in like a jury adjudicating a case. At the end of the three days, I felt really relieved to be set free and swore I

Into Free China as a Retugee

33

would never undertake a similar job again, despite the pleasant enough company I had, the quality accommodation and excellent food the university spared no cost providing us, which were great treats in war-time China. One very happy memory ofmy Lianfung days was the visit in September 1943 of myoid teacher in Munsang, Mr John Blofeld. John had always taken a special interest in me when he taught me at school and it was a really pleasant surprise to meet this teacher, friend and mentor in this remote part of China. He was by this time Cultural Attache at the British Embassy in Chungking, and in this capacity visited various universities in the country to promote understanding and to establish friendly ties between universities in the two countries. As he knew the Chinese language well, both spoken and written, and was conversant with the traditional culture of China, it was not surprising that he became a very popular figure in the universities all over. He spent several days in Lianfung, and before he left he took my testimonials with him, ~though he did not tell me what he wanted these for. And then not long afterwards, one bright morning a letter from him arrived bearing tidings of great joy: he had nominated me, and successfully, for the award of the Postgraduate Studentship which the Rhodes Trust at Oxford made available for a graduate of the University of Hong Kong. This promised no less than a new lease oflife for me and exceeded all expectations I could ever have entertained. I resigned from my post and after travelling to Lingnan University, near Kukong, to see my brother and Vivienne, I headed north for the war-time capital.

4

To Chungking: The War-time Capital

A

nd so I was on the road again, this time with much better prospects and in much higher spirits than when I left Hong Kong as a refugee a little over a year ago. This time I was bound for Chungking and ultimately Oxford. My travel was to take me from Kweilin by train to Liuzhou and Jinchengjiang, thence by road through Kweiyang to Chungking, and from there by air, across the Himalayas to India and then by sea to England. I felt so elated that even the possibility, indeed likelihood, of encountering Japanese planes in the air and German submarines at sea did not daunt me at all. For the road journey from Jinchengjiang to Chungking, I was lucky to get a lift on a BAAG lorry which Professor Lindsay Ride had kindly arranged for me. Professor Ride, who headed the BAAG in Kweilin, was professor of physiology at the University of Hong Kong, and indeed was to become the vice-chancellor of the university after the war. The lorry on which I found myselfwas a class above all the other lorries I had encountered since coming into China. It was run not on charcoal but on alcohol, which is a much more efficient fuel, although it is still inferior to petrol. Thus we found ourselves about the fastest vehicle on the road, travelling at a speed ofsome forty kilometres (not miles) an hour much of the time and overtaking a large number of other vehicles, and was never once overtaken. The trip took five days, two from Jinchengjiang to Kweiyang, and two

36

A Lifetime in Academia

from there to Chungking, with a day's rest at Kweiyang. We drove through high and rugged mountains, awesome but picturesque, on a road that was better built and better kept than any in the other parts of China which I had gone through. Mter all, this was the only link between the capital and Kunming in the extreme south-west, and from there to India through the Burma Road - China's only outlet to the outside world. It might be of interest to the reader to know who my companions were on this last stretch of the journey to Chungking. The lorry was actually loaned by BAAG to a certain General Lee from Hunan; it was to take him to the capital on 'promotion' to a new post there. General Lee, as I came to know later, had had an army under him earlier and was a regional warlord of sorts, but when he was ordered by Generalissimo Chiang to engage the Japanese army and promised support from the central government failed to materialize, his army was understandably decimated. Now, with no army to assert his authority, he had no choice but to accept this promotion to Chungking. I was told that this was in fact one of the ways Chiang used to liquidate some of his potential opponents. General Lee travelled with a number of aides, some four of them, and a good deal of luggage as his coming stay in Chungking was obviously going to be a long one. But the passenger who engaged our attention most was his female companion. She was a young, beautiful woman who was obviously not Mrs Lee but possibly the general's second or third wife, or concubine. All the time she was meticulously made-up and splendidly dressed in a colourful, tight-fitting cheongsam not at all in keeping with the rugged travelling we were undertaking across the wild west of China. Nevertheless, she provided a fascinating spectacle for her all-male travelling companions and added welcome spice to our dull and bumpy journey. To crown this spectacle, she carried in her arms her little Pekingese dog wherever she went. Our day off at Kweiyang actually found us a little listless, as there was nowhere ofinterest to visit. Kweiyangwas the capital ofKweizhou Province, one of the poorest in China and noted for its poor soil and mountainous terrain and uninviting climate. As a Chinese saying goes, it is where 'fine weather never lasts up to three days and level ground never extends up to three feet'. In fact, Kweiyang was such an unattractive place that it used to be the joint where officials in the old days who had somehow displeased the emperor were sent to spend varying periods ofrustication. As these officials

To Chungking

37

were all scholars, there is in the literature no lack of essays, poems and the like composed by them to while away their plentiful leisure hours during their unwelcome stay here. While my companions idled away their day, I paid a visit to the National University of Kweizhou in town, and was pleasantly surprised to find a number ofmedical students from Hong Kong studying here, some ofwhom I knew. Like their counterparts whom I came across in the universities along the route I had taken, from Kukong to Kweiyang, and in fact further up to Chungking later, they were in good spirits although, existing as they did solely on the meagre bursaries they received from the Ministry of Education, life was understandably spartan. But unlike the days of despair during the siege of Hong Kong and after its surrender, they now had a future to look forward to. Thanks to the reliefprogramme that had been set up by Professor Cordon King, every student from the University of Hong Kong who found his or her way into Free China was given a bursary, and found a place in a university to continue his or her studies. This reliefwork of considerable dimensions was organized by Professor Cordon King, professor ofgynaecology and obstetrics in Hong Kong, after he had managed to slip away from Hong Kong in the early days of the surrender. Years later in 1973, the university was able, although belatedly, to accord him recognition of his outstanding contribution by the conferment of the honorary degree of LLD. Nearing Chungking I went through an experience which I had never gone through before, nor likely to do so ever after. Our lorry came across a division of the central army marching down south along the road. The commanding officer apparently knew our CeneralLee, as he ordered his troops to line up in single file along the road to greet us. I felt grand to be driven past some halfa mile ofsoldiers, all standing to attention and saluting us as we drove through. I realized they were saluting the general, not me, but felt the reflected glory all the same. We finally came to the notorious descent to Chungking from the mountains, down the so-called 'Seventy-two Bends'. To save fuel, the driver simply turned the engine offand let the truck glide all the way down. It was a misty morning and visibility was poor, but the driver seemed to know every turn. For me, it was just as well not being able to see too well the steep slope below us, as we coasted merrily along, turning one sharp corner after another. We finally reached the banks of the Ch'i River and followed it to

38

A Lifetime in Academia

the Yangtse River which we crossed on board a raft and arrived at the renowned war-time capital, Chungking. I hired a rickshaw and headed for John Blofeld's house. The roads in town were steep and despite my relatively light weight and little luggage, the coolie seemed to have to work so hard pulling me uphill that I felt like getting off to help him. But that was apparently one standard mode of public transport. John bade me a warm welcome. It was indeed a long and arduous trip! It was mid-November 1943, and as it transpired I was going to spend the next hundred days or so with him, enjoying his kindness and hospitality while awaiting travel arrangements to be completed for my trip over to India and eventually to England. That same night I had a taste of the famous Chungking food as John's guest. He took me to a restaurant and treated me to a grand feast including Peking duck, which was served in three courses, and a dish called 'Bombing Tokyo'. This dish was prepared right in front of us by the waiter. He poured a thick gravy made from chicken and vegetables over freshly prepared rice crispies, producing ceremoniously a cracking sound in a wishful act of revenge against the Japanese for their incessant and merciless bombing of Chungking in the earlier days of the war. In this power centre, I was soon able to feel the presence of China's supreme war-time leader, GeneralissimoChiang Kai-shek about whom I had heard so much. His pictures were everywhere; so were his teachings, in his own calligraphy, exhorting the population to love the motherland, to resist the enemy until the end, to observe Confucius' teaching on being loyal to the state and filial to one's parents, and so on. He had also written a book entitled Chinas Destiny which most people who could read, including mysel£ read. Whatever might have been said about him then and afterwards, Chiang was a great war-time leader. Under him a fragmented China, after years of civil war, did come together to be unified against the common enemy. Great credit must be accorded him for achieving this. He was the all-powerful commander-in-chief and a dictatorial leader, perhaps quite necessary for a country at war, and a country like China at the time. For a great man like Chiang, it was not surprising that all sorts of stories about him, some true and others only partly true, floated all over the place. He was known to hold a large number of posts, many honorary but quite a few substantive, apart of course from his main occupation of

To Chungking

39

conducting the war and running the country. Many an institution considered it advantageous to have a link with the great man; others invited his participation in some form so as to please him. One institution in which he held a substantive post was none other than the National Central University, of which he was the president. I visited the university once, situated some ten kilometres outside Chungking, and was surprised to find the entrance to the administration building heavily guarded by smartly dressed gendarmes until I was told by my host that the president was actually in his office at the time. I was given to understand that the university was very proud to have the Generalissimo taking his appointment so seriously, as he was in the habit of regularly coming in to the office, for a half hour or so each time. A story illustrating the effect of his taking on so many jobs was that of a young secretary in the department of General Chang Tze-jung, aide to the Generalissimo. The young man, who had proved himself extremely capable and promising and was well liked by his superiors, was getting married and put in an application for leave of absence to go home in the country for the wedding. Such was the detailed attention the Generalissimo gave to the running of the office that this application had to be approved by him personally. Unfortunately, the application somehow got mixed up with another lot of order papers concerning serious offenders who were to be sentenced to death. The Generalissimo, having no time to read the papers before him, treated the application in the same way as he did the others and prescribed 'death by the firing squad' for the young man, and sealed the order with his chop. When General Chang got the application back he was horrified. While quite sure the Generalissimo had made a mistake, he dared not tell him so; for that matter who ever dared do that in those days except indeed the foolhardy? He could only send the young man to jail and waited patiently until one day when he found the Generalissimo in an exceptionally jovial mood, started to tell him about this remarkably promising young secretary in his office who wished to go home to get married, omitting of course the rest of the story. The Generalissimo, who had hardly noticed the young man's name, said to Chang, 'Very good. Why not give the lad a month's leave and an extra month's salary with my good wishes.' It was then that Chang, after getting something in writing from his boss, dared take the young man out of jail and send him home to his waiting bride. The young man was fortunate to have GeneralChang to intercede for him. I wonder if there were others who were less fortunate.

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A Lifetime in Academia

Chungking was one ofthe most uncomfortable cities one could find to live in. The summers are very hot and humid, and the winters freezing. The terrain on which the city stands is very hilly, and moving around town has to be going up or downhill, on muddy roads most of the time. On rainy days, the roads became slushy and slippery and littered with puddles. Yet this unattractive terrain was convenient for building air raid shelters and out of necessity there were many. I could discern a number of these as I came into town and was told that one of these collapsed during a severe air raid by the Japanese and buried a few hundred people alive. Decades later, in 1991, when my wife and I paid a visit to the place, we could still see some of these shelters standing. Chungking was severely overcrowded. However, exceeding the human population by many times was that of rodents, and worse, rodents of such a size that their traditional enemy, the cat, would rather leave them alone than catch them as was considered their duty according to Chinese tradition. On occasions it was the cat that got bitten! The war had been on for a good many years when I arrived. The bombing had stopped, but the effect of the blockade of China was more keenly felt than ever. All imported things were prohibitively expensive, and these included woollen clothing, leather goods, cigarettes, cosmetics, to name but a few. Food was not plentiful either, although there was fortunately no shortage as Sichuan Province, in contrast to its neighbour Kweizhou, was one of the most fertile areas in China. The government had introduced some measures to regulate the distribution of some of the essential commodities, but these regulations tended to be treated in a rather cavalier fashion by the population. This was, and possibly still is, not atypical of us Chinese people having at the time hardly emerged, or yet to emerge, from a feudalistic society in which the average man or woman tended to feel that he or she is much more a part ofhis or her family than ofsociety as a whole. The governing dictum has been: 'Let each man clear only the snow in front of his own house, and not worry about the frost that has gathered on the roof of others.' For instance, one regulation designed to combat disproportionate luxury was introduced to restrict the amount of food served in restaurants to their customers. For dinners, the amount of food ordered for two customers could not exceed one soup and one dish ofmeat or fish; for three customers, one soup and two dishes, and so on. The restaurants got around this ruling

To Chungking

41

easily, of course, by removing one dish, as it was finished and serving up another. The regulation forbidding the sale ofwine was similarly overcome easily by serving the beverage in teapots, and using teacups instead ofwine bowls, in fact in larger quantities. The favourite Shaoxing wine in any case looks like some species of red tea. Public transportation in the capital, for that matter everywhere in China, was difficult to get and almost always overcrowded. For short distances, standing in a bus was acceptable, but for longer trips lasting an hour or more, the ride became unpleasant especially on those bumpy roads. The concept of travelling for pleasure, so popular in the West, was quite unknown. One did not travel unless one had to, and as to the discomfort one had to endure, 'grin and bear it' was the advice. With all the time at my disposal I used to take occasional trips out of Chungking, visiting places ofspecial interest to me, especially the universities nearby, including the National Central University, the Chungking University, and the Shanghai Medical College. They were all situated within ten to twenty kilometres of town. For one of the longer journeys I decided to go out of my way to try and get myself a seat on the bus, instead of having to stand all the way. As the bus station was close to where I lived, I went there early in the morning - a couple of hours before the departure time - to book a seat. I was given a token marked No. 1. Close to the time of departure, I went back to the station, and when tickets began to be sold I was the first to be called. And so I got my ticket and with good cheer boarded the bus. To my surprise and disappointment, I found all the seats already occupied - I was only the first to be accorded standing-room. The seated passengers were, no doubt, relatives and friends of members of the establishment or perhaps passengers who had paid extra. During my stay in Chungking, I was fortunate to come to know Dr ]oseph Needham who had come to China to set up and head the SinoBritish Science Co-operation Office. He travelled widely visiting many universities and bringing them much-needed books, journals and even equipment. He also arranged exchange visits for Chinese and British academics. He knew the written Chinese language well and greatly impressed me when he insisted on addressing all the parcels he was sending to the universities in his own hand. I was later to meet him time and again, in London, in Hong Kong when he came to receive an honorary degree from my university, and in Cambridge when I went over for my Croucher

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A Lifetime in Academia

Foundation meetings. He was then director ofthe Institute ofAsian History of Science named after him. At Koloshan, I also had an opportunity to visit Professor Cordon King who had by then gone back to his teaching of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Shanghai Medical College, and a group of medical students from Hong Kong. One person whom I was very eager to look up was Miss Leung Manwah, a fellow graduate from the University of Hong Kong who was the other recipient of a scholarship from the Rhodes Trust. We got together a few times, and later met up again in Bombay and travelled on the same ship to England the following April. We have been close friends since. On a misty morning in early March 1944, I took leave of Chungking. Seeing me off was John Blofeld, this wonderful teacher and friend who it was my good fortune to come to know. At the time I could hardly imagine when and where we were going to meet again, but we were destined to see each other many a time after the war in various parts of the world - in London, Hong Kong, Malaya, and finally in Bangkok where he spent the last thirty odd years of his life. It was a DC 3 plane, a military transport, which took me across the Himalayas to Calcutta. We flew at considerable height to avoid meeting enemy planes, and the flight was anything but smooth.

Institutions

The University of Malaya (formerly Raffles College), Singapore, 1951

The Chemistry Department at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, circa 1964

To England via India: Postgraduate Studies at Oxford

A

fter calling at Kunming and Assam to refuel, we flew into Calcutta in the evening. I stayed there for only a few days and can recall but little of the city, but what I cannot forget is the heat and the humidity and the aroma of cheese and goat milk which assailed my nostrils as we drove in the semi-darkness into town. It was all a very different world and I could not help feeling a strong sense of liberation to be out of blockaded China: on this side ofthe Himalayas I was in touch with the rest of the world again! The great divide between rich and poor was depressingly apparent here in Calcutta. Walking in the streets I was pestered by beggars aplenty, by peddlers pestering me to buy their wares, and on one occasion by a rickshaw man who followed me offering me a ride. Despite repeated protestation on my part that I was on a short trip only and did not need his services, he kept up his pursuit until finally I had to pay him to get rid of him. I also tasted some of the splendours of Calcutta when I was taken to the Great Eastern Hotel for dinner. On this occasion, we walked into a grand dining-room through two rows of smartly dressed waiters who were standing at attention and bowed to us as we paraded past. The menu presented some twenty items, from which I was entitled to take any number. Mter four courses I decided to call it a day and asked for coffee. It was the grandest circumstances under which I had ever dined - I felt almost as good as a maharajah!

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A Lifetime in Academia

I paid a visit to the British Council representative in town who told me he had been expecting me for some time. The Rhodes Trust had placed me under the care of the students department of the Council and I found myself very well taken care of They booked me a second-class train ticket and a berth on the train to Bombay, where I was to leave for England by sea. The journey to Bombay took almost forty-eight hours. It was during this trip that I discovered that there were no less than five classes on the Indian train. When our train pulled up for a brief stop at one of the main stations, I got off to take a little walk up and down the platform. Going towards the rear I discovered that there were two classes, the 'inter class' and third class. The accommodation in the latter, as my reader can well imagine, was so congested and uncouth that I felt guilty about occupying a berth all to myself a few carriages ahead. Walking towards the front of the train I passed a first-class carriage and then still another obviously an even higher class, by far. As evidenced by the large, closed, misty window at the centre of the carriage, it was air-conditioned. I took courage to have a peep through the window and saw only one seat in the whole cabin, a large easy chair on which was seated a big, well-dressed man who I concluded must be someone of substance, someone so wickedly rich as to be able to afford and enjoy, in the midst of war, such an ostentatious luxury. I looked up Man-wah on arriving in Bombay and after a few weeks we got on the P&0 liner The Strathedon for England. The rather long wait was due to the ship having to sail with a convoy, which would have to be protected all the way by the Royal Navy and at times by the Air Force also, as the route to England by this time went through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean and was liable to attack by enemy submarines. MS Strathedon was a ship of about twenty thousand tons and was in peacetime nothing short ofa luxury liner. She could cruise around 20 knots, but moving with the convoy of some 34 ships could go only at the speed of the slowest among them. There were a large number ofwomen and children travelling with us, nearly all families of servicemen of all ranks. We were given a lengthy lecture by the captain soon after sailing, about blackouts at night and about possibilities of attacks by U-boats, and the mothers were told to be particularly careful with their children as the ship would not stop under any circumstances and anybody falling overboard would have to be rescued by one of the frigates which travelled with us. At all times these

To England via India

45

frigates, one on each side of the convoy, steamed up and down like cowboys on horseback tending to their herd. It was a grand sight watching the convoy steaming forward and battling the waves, with planes flying overhead. Never had I travelled like this, before or after. We were, I understand, approached a couple of times by U-boats, but at the time none of us passengers were told about these attacks. After Gibraltar the convoy sailed straight west into the Atlantic, then north, and then east and finally south to Liverpool, arriving on 24 April. The Strathedon was still a relatively new ship, although some alterations had been made to increase her passenger capacity. I was in a single cabin with one berth added. My cabin-mate was one Mr Liu Sheng-pin, an editor of a well-known periodical in Chungking called Time and Tide. He proved to be good company, as he was very well-informed about the war, and about politics in Chungking. Food on board was reasonably good and plentiful when we started out, but the quality and quantity gradually diminished as we approached Britain. I suppose this was to get the passengers used to the rationing in Britain. Shortly after we arrived in Liverpool, Mr Liu and I travelled to London by train together, Man-wah having gone ahead of us. At the station we found there were only two classes, first and third. We took first, since Mr Liu was of the opinion that as visitors we must travel first, while I was persuaded to do so by the memory of the third class on the Indian train. On boarding the first-class carriage, however, we found all the seats had already been taken and we had no choice but to sit on our luggage in the corridor. During the five-hour journey to London, I had occasion to peer into the third-class carriage next to ours and discovered that it was not only nice and clean, but there were a few empty seats which I could have taken. On getting to London we got into a taxi and asked to be taken to 'a hotel in the centre of town'. The driver did just that and brought us to the Regent Palace Hotel at Piccadilly Circus. After a couple ofdays, I phoned Miss Marjorie Rackstraw, John Blofeld's aunt, and she invited me to move over to her house at Hampstead Heath. Marjorie was to become much of a guardian to me. All through my student days in Oxford she showered kindness on me, offering me the hospitality of her house whenever I went to London, and treating me to concerts, operas and the like on many an occasion. I was glad I was able to keep in touch with her faithfully all those years after Oxford and never failed to see

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her whenever I visited Britain. When I saw her for the last time in September 1978, we had known each other for 34 years. Mter India, England was another world again. I strolled in the streets of London and found them attractive and spotlessly clean. There were, however, surprisingly very few menfolk around but a good many 'Gls' (American soldiers). Little did I realize that it was only some six weeks from D-Day, the day the allied troops were to land in Europe. The British menfolk were, of course, largely drawn into the forces while the large number of Gls came from the contingents of US troops stationed around London who were, like me, looking around this wonderful city. I was happy to be in this friendly country, and felt proud of the fact that I was a national ofa country which was one of the five powers fighting the war against the Nazis and the Japanese. The people I met tended to give me a second look. It was not surprising as there were so few of us Chinese around. I found most of the people I came across likeable - friendly, softlyspoken and polite. Their good manners, respect for the law, consideration for the aged and kindness to animals were all to me hallmarks of a civilized people. They used such terms as 'thank you', 'thank you very much', and . 'excuse me' right and left, and in doing so any less than pleasant personal feelings arising from unintended encounters were immediately reduced in intensity, or obliterated. And towards foreigners like me, they clearly took pleasure in going out of their way to be helpful. I was probably overcautious to start with, but one experience soon after arrival made me shed most of my timidity. Before coming to England I had been warned that the English were a very formal people, and that I should never address any stranger until I had been properly introduced. If I needed to ask my way about, I was told I should enquire only of a policeman. This made moving about difficult, especially as there were hardly any policemen around. On this occasion having looked in vain for a policeman to ask my way, and having refrained from speaking to any passerby for some time, I at last plucked up enough courage to stop an English gentleman, who was immaculately dressed in a dark suit complete with hat and umbrella, for assistance. To my great surprise, he took off his hat to greet me and very carefully described the way I should take and then, despite my protests, took me some distance until we reached a point where he could point out my destination to me. Thereafter, the ice was broken as far as my communication with the English people was concerned.

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I found the English people at home natural and genuine, unlike the 'colonials'quite a number of whom I came across in Hong Kong. Many a man and woman back here in England, I was told, who did not make the grade tended to take to the colonies where jobs were easy to come by for them and where the system afforded them many advantages. It is not surprising that they soon developed a superior racial complex to overcome the inferiority they used to feel at home, adopting an accentuated Oxford accent to cover up their strong local accent, and lapping up the special privileges made available to them. These included priority for promotion especially in government employment, access to 'Europeans only' clubs and 'Europeans only' residential areas such as the Peak area in Hong Kong, and priority for services in government offices including the post office. All these fostered in them a sense of superiority over the local people. Not all the 'expatriates', however, accepted such privileges. I knew at least two people in Hong Kong who would insist on lining up with everyone else for services. They were Bishop and Mrs R. o. Hall, Anglican bishop of Hong Kong, who in fact made themselves unpopular with some oftheir fellow expatriates trying to fight such discriminatory practices. The correction of my previous impression of the English was made complete when I called on the director of the students department in the British Council, Miss Priscilla Boys-Smith, who treated me with such courtesy and kindness that I was long to remember that first interview. Throughout my stay in England, in fact, the British Council looked after me well, especially when I had to go to hospital for an operation for appendicitis. It was said that to really appreciate British hospitality one must get sick once and go to hospital, which I did. The Council organized very interesting summer courses for its scholars, usually in historical places such as Bath, St Andrews, and so on. At such courses I enjoyed meeting fellow scholars from all over the Commonwealth, as well as local students who served as hosts and hostesses. London was a great centre for cultural activities, despite a war going on. Only a few days after my arrival, I was thrilled to be able to attend a concert at the Royal Albert Hall given by Yehudi Menuhin and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. It was my first ever exposure to a world-class violinist and orchestra and I could hardly contain my excitement, although all seats had already been sold and I could manage to get only standing-room in the gallery, at two shillings and

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sixpence. The programme consisted of an overture, Lalo's Symphonie Espagnola and Beethoven's violin concerto. My first experience of the ballet was equally auspicious as it was no less than Margot Fonteyn who introduced the art to me, and it was no wonder that I kept up this interest in the ballet thereafter. My initiation to the opera, later in Oxford, was less gratifying as the Madame Butterfly who performed was a large, middle-aged, imposing lady. She was about the same size as the lieutenant, and I found that I enjoyed her singing, good enough though it was, better with my eyes closed. I nevertheless kept up with the opera and occasionally even took in some of the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. I moved into Oxford soon after my arrival in England, as Trinity term was about to begin. Mter being interviewed and admitted by Sir Henry Tizzard, the president ofMagdalen College, I moved into the spacious suite of rooms assigned to me in the New Building, adjoining the deer park. This consisted of a bedroom and a spacious sitting-room-cum-study, complete with a fireplace, a writing-desk, a set of sofas, a dining-table with four chairs, and a sideboard containing a tea-set, a coffee-set and sherry glasses. The two large windows overlooked the deer park, and I used to enjoy sitting at one ofthem, looking out at the park and the loveable animals below. Serving me was my scout Mobie who used to come early in the morning with a jug of hot water for shaving, draw the curtains, and greet me with a cheerful 'good morning, sir', and 'it's a fine day' or 'it's freezing cold this morning', as appropriate. He would tidy up the rooms and take away my laundry, and return in the evening to clean up again. This was the pre-war Oxford style of living for the undergraduates which was soon to disappear. Our food ration by this time, years after the war had started, dwindled down to near the lowest ebb. We each had two ounces of butter and two of margarine, two ounces of sugar, one egg and one orange per week. Meat was strictly rationed although fish and vegetables were not. Clothing was also rationed, as well as footwear, and I was grateful to have brought out a good supply which I bought in India. Those were exciting days for me as I got to know my new surroundings, made new friends, and tuned myself into the English way of life. Some of my new acquaintances thought that I had gone overboard doing this, and this came about as a result of a misconception of what I did on my first Valentine's Day. It happened this way. Just before the day was upon us, my

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friend Arthur Bentley, who was engaged to Man-wah and had now returned to London, wrote and asked me to do him the favour of buying twelve daffodils for him and have these brought over to his fiance at St Hilda's College. I dutifully complied and on the said morning I walked to the High Street and crossed the Magdalen Bridge, daffodils in hand, and headed for St Hilda's. As I left college the porter in the lodge gave me an encouraging smile, as did the many pedestrians and cyclists whom I passed on the bridge. Finally at the entrance ofSt Hilda's, the maid who answered the door seemed extraordinarily helpful and understanding; she told me that she would deliver the flowers to Miss Leung at once. Those who knew me well said I would do anything for a friend, but those who knew me less well must have thought that I was just a little overeager about adopting English customs. There was in the whole of Oxford just one other Chinese student, Loo Ti-li, who with Man-wah and me made a threesome. He came from Tsinghua University and was, .like me, a student under Sir Robert Robinson. Ti-li was extremely helpful to me in my early days at college and at the laboratory. He even introduced his girlfriends to me so that I could have company going to concerts, plays and operas. He lent me his overcoat when the weather suddenly turned cold a little later in the year, as he found that the one I had ordered from the tailor would take three months to be made. Talk about a real friend in need! In the decades after Oxford I was fortunate to be able to see him again, many a time, in Maryland, in Washington DC, and Texas in the US, in Hong Kong, and during recent years almost annually in Oxford when the former group of Chinese students at Oxford, together with some of our English friends, meet for a reunion. He has made a great success of his scientific career, having spent some ten years at the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, twenty years as professor of pharmacology at the University ofTexas and thereafter over ten years at George Washington University leading a team doing research on AIDS. Another lifelong friend I was fortunate to make was Morrin Acheson, a fellow member ofMagdalen, who invited me to his home in Birmingham for my first Christmas. During the half century since Oxford, we have been meeting regularly all over the place, across the continents, and of course in Oxford where he was a fellow of Queen's for the greater part of his working life. In his profession, he has achieved a prominent position as one of the world's foremost authorities in heterocyclic chemistry. Towards the end of my first year in Oxford, myoId friend HT turned

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up. He had been assisting Dr Joseph Needham, as his personal secretary, in setting up the Science Co-operation Office in Chungking and had delayed taking up his scholarship until this task was accomplished. It was great seeing him at last in Oxford, after all our days together in Hong Kong and China, in peace and in war. After Oxford we have managed to keep in close touch. He did full justice to his study in Oxford: after some 25 years of industrial research, he joined the National Science Foundation in Washington DC where he spent 17 years and was repeatedly commended for outstanding service. After retirement he took up an honorary appointment as deputy director of the Needham Institute in Cambridge, where he has been contributing to the great work on the history of Chinese Science pioneered by the late Joseph Needham. On 6 June 1944, a little more than a month after I had got to Oxford, allied troops landed in Normandy. None of us worked that day. Instead, we crowded around the radio in Ti-li's room to listen to the hourly report on the invading armies, and in particular to Churchill's address to the nation. By this time I realized why London was so quiet and tense when I arrived, as the whole country was keyed up in anticipation ofthe invasion ofEurope. The war, which had seemed interminably long to me and had stretched in fact right back to my school days, at long last thankfully showed signs of coming to an end. In the event, VE Day did materialize rather sooner than I dared expect. There was great rejoicing when it did come. The College opened its cellar to serve us drinks at dinner that night, and it was the first time I ever tasted Madeira, and loved it. V] Day followed soon afterwards, and on this occasion HT and I decided to go out to London to join in the celebrations. We waited for some time in front of Buckingham Palace that night but the royal family did not appear. We returned by the midnight train and I climbed into the college. It was my first such adventure. I had hoped that for a very special day like this the college might have relaxed its rule about locking up at midnight, but when I asked the porter at the lodge before leaving for London the reply was: 'There are other ways into College, · f' Slr. During the years in Oxford, my violin playing benefited greatly from the lessons I took with Mrs Mary Gotch, leader of the orchestra of the Oxford Orchestral Society. For the earlier lessons we met in the practice room of one of the music stores, but later I was invited to her house on Cumnor Hill. She was an excellent pianist also and we usually finished my

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lesson playing a sonata together, followed by tea. Those were altogether most enjoyable sessions. On her suggestion I gladly joined the first violin section in her orchestra. The conductor was Sir Thomas Armstrong and we were rehearsing for a concert - a Mozart overture, Beethoven's violin concerto and Brahms' Variations on a Theme of Haydn. I found playing in this orchestra quite thrilling, but unfortunately just a week before the concert was to take place, I found myself in hospital having my appendix removed. It was in Oxford that I came to realize, the hard way, the inadequacy of my academic training. When I started working side by side with British graduates, especially Oxford graduates, I found that I was no less than a couple of years behind them. Fair enough, it was a general degree course which I had taken in Hong Kong, but even making allowance for this I could not help feeling that my alma mater had let me down. Fortunately for me, my supervisor Professor Sir Robert Robinson (Nobellaureate) was very kind and understanding; despite his many commitments as president of the Royal Society and as consultant to numerous projects contributing to the war effort, he went out of his way to give me special attention and assistance. To this day, I still treasure a letter from him in which among other things he gave me instructions on how to run a Grignard reaction! For my part I worked very hard throughout the three years at my disposal. Even my reading material in bed was not a novel, but chemistry, including for a while Hickenbottom's Reactions of Organic Compounds! I used to work late in the laboratory, six days a week, and I remember one Saturday evening when HT came over to remind me that it was no less than my birthday that day and that we should go out somewhere to celebrate. We went out for some dinner followed by a movie. I managed to complete sufficient research to write a satisfactory thesis, and passed my oral examination just before the summer of 1947. I investigated the synthesis of substances analogous to Stilboestrol, which at the time was a relatively new chemical agent found to be useful in combating prostate cancer. In the course ofthis work, I managed to synthesize a number ofsuch compounds, most ofwhich exhibited oestrogenic activity. This work was later published by Sir Robert, with whom I had the great honour to be co-author, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. During my earlier years at Oxford, I set my sights on the completion of my degree work as the ultimate objective. As time went on, however, I became increasingly aware of the need to further broaden my experience

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after obtaining the doctorate, before returning to the Far East, where as in the days I spent in Kweilin, I expected to be working on my own again. This feeling of inadequacy on my part was strengthened by contact with my seniors at the Dyson Perrins Laboratory, who were all holders of doctorates of some years' standing. We used to meet regularly for afternoon tea at one corner of the main research laboratory where we chatted over topical subjects and discussed organic chemistry. Tea was brewed over a Bunsen, and served in beakers, and food consisted ofa slice or two of bread, served with peanut butter which was not rationed. It was during these semisocial sessions that I came to know these post-doctoral workers, and my fellow DPhil students well. Among the seniors I was fortunate to become good friends with John Cornforth and Arthur Birch, both ofwhom were to attain great heights in their careers as scientists. Some months before I finished my work at Oxford, I began to look for another school where I could further my training. The one I ultimately chose was the school of organic chemistry at the University of Chicago under Professor M. S. Kharasch, whose contribution to free radical chemistry I had always admired. I contacted him, with Sir Robert's support, and was offered a post-doctoral fellowship. By early August, I was on my way to the USA.

Post-Doctoral Training in Chicago

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fterOxford, Chicago was another world again. Even the language, admittedly English, sounded unfamiliar. Here I met quite a number . of Irish descendants who said I spoke English with a British accent. But they meant no offence; in fact they were quite informal and hospitable, and made friends easily. What struck me in this country was the attitude towards achievements in life. Success seemed to be measured mainly by how much money one managed to make. The dollar was almighty here. I could not help feeling a little put off by this attitude. For instance, whenever someone admired a new tie I happened to wear he would almost invariably ask me how much it cost. With a job the main query seemed to be what salary it fetched, little else. I was impressed by the feeling of freedom and equality of the people I met, especially the freedom of speech and expression, even though occasionally too free. I was impressed by our laboratory cleaner who, once he shed his work clothes and donned his suit and tie at the end of the day, became a different person. He would pass my laboratory to say 'good-night' and was obviously feeling he was as good as the president of the United States. But equality did not appear to apply to all. The impression I got from general observation and from personal experience was that the noble concept of an men being born equal would take quite some time yet to be

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realized. But what I found off-putting was the way some individuals I met - and there were quite a number of these - unashamedly sang their own' praises, boasting ofthe superiority oftheir country in equality and democracy over others, and freely dispensed advice. They reminded me ofa story which Mencius used to remonstrate with Prince Huay ofthe State ofLiang during his extensive travels. The story, which I learnt when I was in primary school, runs something like this. Two armies met in battle at the end of which the defeated army retreated. Some of the soldiers retreated fifty paces, others a hundred. Thereupon the 'fifty-pacers' began laughing at the 'hundred-pacers' for their cowardice, not realizing that they themselves did not have much to be proud of either. The University of Chicago had, and still has, an outstanding reputation in the United States. It catered mainly for professional education leading to the master's degree and for postgraduate studies and research leading to the PhD. Attached to it was a relatively small college which took students from the schools two years before they completed their secondary curriculum and awarding them the BA degree after four years of a specially designed course. It also had a distinguished medical school with its own teaching hospital. Above all, it boasted a very distinguished faculty: its Division of Physical Sciences had, for instance, at the time no less than three Nobel laureates, and many other scientists of world renown. Fifty years later, in 1998, when my wife and I visited the university, it was celebrating the occasion when the seventy-second Nobel prize came to a graduate or an exmember of the university's teaching or research staff, exceeding even Cambridge's figure of sixty. I felt very proud to be appointed as a postdoctoral fellow ofsuch an eminent institution, more so as the post-doctoral fellowships were a new kind of appointment instituted just after the war. Professor M. S. Kharasch, on whom I called soon after arrival, was a kind and modest person and talking to him one could hardly realize that this was a man who had achieved a worldwide reputation for his sustained contribution to the chemistry of free radicals. He took me to the room I was to occupy - Room 318 - on the third floor of the Jones Laboratory which, together with the Kent Laboratory next door, housed the Chemistry Department. I spent two years with Dr Kharasch investigating the factors influencing free radical reactions. Much of the time was taken up exploring novel, hitherto untried ideas and as a consequence, the experiments did not yield

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much concrete results that could be published. Arising from these explorations, however, we did discover a novel reaction - the cleavage of diphenyl ethers by a combination of a Grignard reagent and anhydrous cobaltous chloride. Both Dr Kharasch and I were very pleased with this discovery, and we published this work later in the Journal of Organic Chemistry. Chicago had much to offer by way of music and for me, especially violin music. I was a frequent visitor to the Orchestral Hall and the Opera House. Szigeti, Heifetz, Milstein, Menuhin, Stern and Haendel all came regularly. I was destined to hear even Kreisler once. He came shortly after my arrival in Chicago. He was by then 71 years of age and had had that unfortunate car accident a little while before but had refused to retire from the concert stage. I rushed down to the Orchestral Hall when I heard he was giving a recital, but to my disappointment, all the seats had been taken. The management, however, was good enough to put several rows of chairs on the stage and offered me one of these at $2, and I eagerly snatched it up. As a result, I was privileged to sit, unobstructed, some 15 feet from this great genius at what was my first and last chance to hear him play in the flesh. It seemed he was no longer his former self after that accident as, among other things, he forgot to repeat a certain passage and the accompanist had to rush around to catch up with him. At the end of the recital, he nevertheless drew such a warm applause from the audience as I had never witnessed anywhere before. It turned out to be his swansong for Chicago. To this day, I have kept the programme for the evening. It consisted of the second unaccompanied sonata by Bach, Fantasy in C by Schumann, 'Poeme' by Chausson, and a number ofpieces including two ofhis own compositions. It was in Chicago that I came to know Ruth Ray, the great violinist and teacher from whom I was privileged to take lessons, and with whom I became a personal friend. Miss Ray was professor ofviolin in one ofthe conservatories near Chicago, and before that she had been a concert violinist ofconsiderable repute, having performed with many ofthe leading orchestras in the country. She was a student of the celebrated Leopold Auer who in his book Violin Playing as I Teach It had mentioned her, side by side with Elman, Rosen, Zambalist, and Heifetz as outstanding pupils he had taught. It pleases me no end to think that although only an amateur, and a very average one at that, I am able to claim ancestry, however tenuously, to this celebrated line of violinists! I\uth cooked well, and once treated me to a sumptuous dinner .

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at her home across the Midway in the university area, after one of my violin lessons with her during which I struggled to tackle the third movement of the Mendelssohn concerto. Mter I was married, my wife did her best to return the hospitality and had her over for dinner in our apartment at Drexel Avenue. During the evening she picked up my violin, a copy of Guarnerius by Augustus Heberlin, an instrument ofvery average quality, and produced on it such wonderful sounds that I never dreamt it was capable of Ruth