SETTING up a university sounds like it should be a grand affair. And the British and Chinese communities gave a certain gravitas-with-streamers-and-potted-plants to the opening of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) on March 11, 1912.
The university, governor Sir Frederick Lugard said in the opening address, is 'intended to enable the richer among the Chinese to study in the environment of their own country, close to the ancestral shrines of their forefathers, and in touch with their own people . . . while its scholarships will enable the very poor, who have ability, to acquire an equal degree'.
After plenty of long speeches and a fete selling handicrafts organised by Lady Lugard and featuring a scenic railway which threaded its way around the stalls, the university was officially opened.
And yet, despite the noble intentions, the generous private donations and the good teacakes and champagne, the colony's first centre for general tertiary studies was a poor cousin to the new redbrick British universities.
'The beauty of the scenery in Hong Kong [in 1912] was a delightful surprise, but the university was a disappointment,' remembered Professor Middleton-Smith, the first holder of the chair in engineering.
It was no understatement. Middleton-Smith was one of only three professors - in medicine, engineering and the arts, the latter faculty being set up in 1913 - and the staff numbered just eight English and two Chinese teachers.