Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Address at the Commencement of Liverpool
University
It is a rare honour to speak on behalf of the Graduates and Honorary Graduates to
express our gratitude to the University of Liverpool for all we have received from
her in training of our minds and increasing our awarenesses.
The young graduates among us will be discovering more and more of this debt
as the years pass by.
Others of us must reminisce.
My membership of the University should have begun in 1940 or 1941. In 1939
Yenching University (a private university in Beijing now absorbed into the National
Peking University) awarded me the Blue Funnel Scholarship, established by the
Alfred Holt Shipping Company. All told the scholarship has been held by six persons
working in Physics, Statistics, Economics and Geography.
I remember clearly how one morning in the spring of 1939, my professor, the
distinguished Chinese historian, William Hung, summoned me to his offi ce and
said, “Choosing a teacher is more important than choosing a school. The happiest
thing is when the good teacher you need is to be found in a good school.” While I
was wondering what he was talking about, he continued, “We have nominated you
for a scholarship for advanced study in the School of Geography of Liverpool
University. There you will fi nd a world-renowned teacher of geography in a university
of world-wide connections. He is Professor Percy Maude Roxby.”
It was not to be. Because the Second World War broke out. In 1941, instead of
sitting in a Liverpool University lecture hall, I found myself in a Japanese army
prison, along with Professor Hung and other colleagues (including Dr. Lin Chia- Tung,
an earlier Blue Funneller who studied Statistics here).
The link between Liverpool University and Yenching University survived the
war, and in 1946 my dream of coming to Liverpool University was realized, but
7 years late. By this time Professor Roxby had retired after 40 years of service.
