HKU Bulletin October 2004 (Vol. 6 No. 1)

15 14 PEOPLE T he new Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Wong Yue Chim, sees his new role as one of focus and articulation. ‘Focus’, in terms of guiding the University in the quality of its research and teaching closer to an international standard, and art iculat ing our goals and achievements to the Universi ty community and beyond. “The focus for the University is to reach out not just to the local community but beyond, to set our case towards becoming a more internationally recognized university. This will involve the fleshing out of the concrete steps that need to be taken for us to attain a more international profile,” he said. Wong expects the task to take some time, particularly in terms of the academic goal which will have implications for admissions, human resources and its possible impact on the curriculum. “I think the University already is quite international in terms of its faculty. The issue therefore is one of reaching out,” he said. To do that the University needs to develop its own curriculum and expand its student facilities and concentrate on providing more residential hall space and a curriculum that fits in with most of the rest of the world. “We need an architecture that allows different power plugs to plug in. So there are sockets that are adaptable to different types of systems – scheduling, time-tabling, whether examinations can New Deputy Vice-Chancellor Plugs in be completed sooner, particularly for exchange students if they are not here for the entire three years.” But internationalization is not restricted to the recruitment of students and teachers. “Hong Kong as a city is beginning to become much more plugged in to the rest of the world and to the region. With that the academic content of the curriculum that we deliver has to be rich both in terms of regional content and be internationally recognized on the teaching and research side, ” he explained. I t is impor tant that this content can articulate with work conducted at the frontiers of knowledge in the international academic community. “So moving the entire academic research and teaching curr iculum in that direction and keeping it there is critical. To become recognizably internationally relevant as well as having our unique features is our major goal W .” ong, an economist, joined the University in 1992 and later served as Director of the School of Business and went on to become Founding Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics from 2001 to this year. Educated at the University of Chicago where he gained his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees he previously taught at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a leading f igure in advancing economic research on policy issues in Hong Kong through his work as founding Director of the Hong Kong Centre for Economic Research, Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Study Centre and the Hong Kong Institute of Economics and Business Strategy. He believes that getting the message of attaining international standards into the University is as important as getting it out into the community. “It’s like the old story, if you ask a bricklayer to build a wall and tell him that it’s the wall of a cathedral suddenly the work takes on a whole new meaning. Articulating that brings a new sense of purpose and with that purpose people re-dedicate themselves. “If we are all building a cathedral then, yes, people feel that there is a higher purpose and it fosters communication. From there onwards perhaps not only do they dedicate themselves with renewed vigour but they also find better ways of building the cathedral.” W hen Frank Dikötter abandoned the stage in favour of academia he hardly expected to find himself on a sojourn as Visiting Professor at the University. The former classical guitarist gave up music to become Professor of Modern History of China at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. His love affair with modern Chinese history and culture has brought him to Asia at least once a year. But now, as Visiting Professor in the Department of History he has the freedom to study his subject at close quarters. The author of six books he is currently working on a project on material culture entitled The Experience of Modernity: Material Culture and Everyday Life in Modern China , in which he attempts to understand the transformation of everyday life from around 1870 to the communist takeover by de-crypting the changing cultural meanings and social uses of a whole variety of ‘modern’ objects, like gramophones, leather shoes and running water. Sources for the project are scattered over widely different genres; from travel accounts to folk tales but Dikötter is keen to see objects in the flesh. “All too often, everyday things considered to be ‘modern’ have been chucked out after 1949, either for political reasons or because only ‘traditional’ objects are considered valuable collectables,” he said. “Any help to get closer to the washbasins, clocks, lamps and toys and other things of republican China would be greatly appreciated.” Dikötter clearly draws little distinction between work and pleasure as his work frequently is his pleasure. Not even public holidays deter him from beavering away in his office. “I really like my work. I don’t see what I do as work,” he said T . hat work involves an essay he will begin early next year for the Hong Kong University Press, which will challenge the textbook history of China between 1895 and 1949. Accepted wisdom suggests ‘pretty much nothing happened’ during the period. But Dikötter has set out to turn that wisdom on its head by re-defining the period as a ‘golden age’ of openness, and he is likely to ruffle a few feathers in the process. “Yes, it’s a controversial way of looking at it,” he conceded. “The shear diversity of religion and culture, the amount of movement and openness, in terms of ideas, goods and people in China before 1949 is unprecedented.” Washbasins, Clocks, Lamps and Toys Art, science, law, politics, the economy and religion all thrived during the period thanks to the catalyst of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. This opened the door to new concepts like the Rule of Law, a civil code and modern examinations all of which were introduced during the first five decades of the 20th century. Universities, some built by missionaries from Europe and America, were cosmopolitan centres of knowledge. When he is not rooting around in archives and libraries Dikötter can be found indulging his other passion – scuba diving. “You can say I’m a keen and experienced scuba diver,” he said. But for now the gui tar remains firmly tucked away.