JUST days before the Chinese University announced the appointment of the controversial Professor Arthur Li Kwok-cheung as its vice-chancellor, it is said, a disturbed man barged into Li's empty office at the Prince of Wales Hospital, creating momentary havoc.
Li laughed off the episode. Friends and foes alike, when told the story, were likely to have shrugged their shoulders: if it was going to happen to anyone, it would be Arthur.
Since returning to Hong Kong in 1982 to take the university's foundation chair of surgery, Li has certainly made his mark on the territory's medical scene. His enemies like to think it is Arthur Li who is outrageous, if not mad. He, and his allies, think otherwise.
The dean of the medical faculty has been investigated twice - and cleared twice - by the Medical Council for alleged professional misconduct. The first time was over remarks that he allegedly made to a Chinese magazine over the ox-valve controversy (six of 12 patients had died after receiving controversial ox-tissue valve transplants although investigations found only one death could be linked to the valves). The second involved alleged irregularities in the election of the Hong Kong branch of the British Medical Association.
The most recent controversry surrounding the 50-year-old surgeon came when he resigned as faculty dean after a heated row with a university boss, at a time when he was tipped as the hot favourite for the vice chancellor's job.
His critics are quick to claim his resignation was testimony to his love of political power-play. They say that by storming out of a university meeting, bashing out a resignation letter to vice-chancellor Charles Kao Kuen, and subsequently announcing that he would respect Kao's decision not to accept his resignation, he was throwing down the gauntlet to anyone who had not realised he was a force to be reckoned with. Others believe he was doing this as a matter of principle to defend the interests of his faculty.