CUHK's Chung Chi College: Founded 1951, the Legacy of Thirteen Universities, and Lake Ad Excellentiam

On a public university campus in China, the earliest and largest free-standing church has thirteen carved wooden university emblems flanking its altar — the insignia of thirteen Christian universities that were scattered across mainland China before 1951 and closed one after another. Chung Chi carried this "living flame" (香火), extinguished on the mainland, to a valley in Ma Liu Shui, Hong Kong. This article surveys Chung Chi College's origins, religious tradition, landmarks, customs, and people: it is one of CUHK's three founding colleges, established in 1951 by representatives of Protestant churches in Hong Kong, with the college motto 「止于至善」 ("Supreme Excellence", Latin Ad Excellentiam), and it is the only college in the University with its own chapel, divinity school, and chaplaincy.

This is the consolidated feature on Chung Chi College, far more detailed than the Chung Chi section in this volume's overview. University-wide issues relating to Chung Chi (CUHK's founding, restructuring, the religion-versus-secularism debate, and so on) are covered in separate articles in this site's governance section; this piece only summarises them and points to those articles.

---

# 1. Basic Facts

According to Chung Chi College's official brief history^※, Chung Chi College was founded in October 1951 by representatives of Protestant Churches in Hong Kong, making it the first local institution of higher learning to combine both "Chinese" and "Christian" character. Among CUHK's nine colleges, Chung Chi stands out for its distinct Christian higher-education tradition — inheriting the "living flame" of thirteen Christian universities that existed in mainland China before 1951 — as well as being the only college in the University with its own chapel, divinity school, and chaplaincy, giving it a unique spiritual weight.

The name "Chung Chi": according to the college's own explanation, the name embodies the spirit of 「崇奉基督」 ("revering Christ") while also carrying the sense of 「崇高基础」 ("a lofty foundation") — it both declares the Christian faith as the college's founding principle and expresses the hope that this will serve as a high and enduring foundation for nurturing talent. Notably, Chung Chi is the only one of CUHK's nine colleges whose official name uses "College" (學院) rather than "College" (書院) — this usage dates from its days as a post-secondary college (when it operated independently from 1951 to 1963 it was already called "Chung Chi College"), and the name was not changed after it joined CUHK, making it a unique case among the nine.

---

# 2. Founding History: From the Legacy of Thirteen Universities to Ma Liu Shui

# Before 1951: The Background of Thirteen Mainland Christian Universities

Chung Chi's founding must be understood within the context of twentieth-century Chinese Christian higher education. From the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, various Western missionary societies established a number of church universities across mainland China. According to CUHK professor Ying Fuk-tsang's 〈The Inheritance of Post-War Christian Higher Education in Hong Kong: A Case Study of Chung Chi College^※〉, after the 1950 restructuring of higher education in mainland China, these Christian universities were taken over, reorganised, or merged into public institutions, and their existence as church universities came to an end.

Chung Chi officially positions itself as inheriting the tradition and mission of the thirteen Christian universities in pre-1951 China. According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, these thirteen institutions are usually listed as: Hangchow University, Huachung University, West China Union University, St. John's University, Lingnan University, University of Nanking, Soochow University, Cheeloo University, University of Shanghai, Hwa Nan College, Ginling College, Fukien Christian University, and Yenching University. Hanging on either side of the altar in Chung Chi Chapel are the carved wooden emblems of precisely these thirteen universities — architecturally connecting this "living flame", extinguished on the mainland, to Hong Kong (see Section 4).

It should be noted: Chung Chi's "inheritance of the thirteen" is a spiritual and missional inheritance and symbol, not a legal continuation or asset succession of any specific university; it is a newly founded institution that has consciously claimed this faith tradition as its own.

# 1951: Starting from Borrowed Premises on Caine Road and at St. John's Cathedral

According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, preparations for Chung Chi began in February 1951 — Bishop Ronald Owen Hall of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong, together with former Lingnan University (Guangzhou) president Li Ying-lam and former St. John's University (Shanghai) board chairman Au Wai-kwok, proposed establishing a Christian institution of higher learning in Hong Kong; in May of the same year they applied to the Hong Kong government, recruiting scholars who had come south to teach while negotiations continued, admitted students in September, held the founding thanksgiving service at St. John's Cathedral on 2 October, and formally began classes on 3 October; according to Wikipedia, 63 students attended on the first day. In its earliest days it had no campus of its own, borrowing the Cathedral Hall at St. John's Cathedral, St. Paul's Co-educational College, and premises on Caine Road for classes. The fact that founding Head Li Ying-lam had been president of Lingnan University in Guangzhou gave Chung Chi a particularly close relationship with the Lingnan lineage (one source of the later naming of the Lingnan Sports Field/Gymnasium). Among the three founders, Bishop Ronald Owen Hall was himself a figure of enormous significance in the history of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong — according to Wikipedia · Ronald Owen Hall (Bishop)^※, he ordained Li Tim-oi as the first female priest in Anglican history in 1944 in Macau, a move that sparked enormous controversy within the Anglican Communion, with two successive Archbishops of Canterbury speaking out against it and Hall himself facing pressure to have his holy orders revoked; this bishop, who dared to break convention within the Church, threw himself into founding Chung Chi two years later, leaving an undeniable personal imprint on Chung Chi's founding spirit of "Christianity × modern education".

# Chung Chi and New Asia: Two Contrasting Models of Exile Education at Caine Road and Kwun Chung Street

If one places Chung Chi's borrowed premises on Caine Road alongside New Asia's borrowed premises on Kwun Chung Street (see New Asia College), it becomes clear that although both were exile institutions born of the dramatic changes in mainland China between 1949 and 1951, their paths differed considerably: New Asia was built from scratch by Ch'ien Mu and other scholars who had come south, with almost no external funding; Chung Chi, by contrast, was backed by the financial and human resources of transnational church networks such as the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia and the Association of Christian Universities and Colleges in Asia (UK), giving it relatively comfortable resources in its early years. This difference, to some extent, foreshadowed the two colleges' divergent trajectories in campus scale and building investment.

# 1955–1962: Statutory Registration, the Move to Ma Liu Shui, Land Acquisition, and Ma Liu Shui New Village

According to the official brief history, in 1955 Chung Chi was formally registered as a recognised post-secondary college under a Hong Kong government ordinance; in September of the same year it purchased additional land at Ham Tin, Wong Pa, and rice fields in the Ma Liu Shui area for a sports field. In 1956 it moved to its permanent campus in the Ma Liu Shui valley in Sha Tin, New Territories — according to Wikipedia, the government granted seven parcels of land at Ma Liu Shui totalling approximately ten acres, and built an additional railway station there (opened in September 1956, later renamed "University Station"); in November of the same year, two teaching buildings, a library, an assembly hall cum dining hall, and temporary student hostels were completed, and Chung Chi formally moved in.

As the campus proved too small for expansion, according to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, in 1957 the second Head, Ling Dao-yang, negotiated with the Wen clan of Ma Liu Shui village to purchase the village land for campus expansion, and also bought land between Lung Yeuk Tau and Kwun Ti in Fanling — double the area of the original farmland — to build "Ma Liu Shui New Village" to resettle the original inhabitants; the new village was completed in 1962. Grateful for his efforts, the villagers named a road in the village "To Yeung Road" in memory of the then Head Ling Dao-yang — a well-documented village relocation in Chung Chi's expansion history in which both sides benefited, and direct evidence of the evolution of place names in the Ma Liu Shui area.

Incidentally: the government also proposed granting approximately three hundred acres of land at Ma Liu Shui to Chung Chi as a forestry plantation area — land that later became part of the main CUHK campus. Chung Chi's early land holdings objectively laid the foundation for the scale of CUHK's campus as a whole.

# 1963: Forming CUHK

According to Chung Chi College's official brief history^※, in 1963 Chung Chi, together with New Asia College and United College, became one of the three foundation colleges of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. After joining CUHK, Chung Chi's academic structures were gradually incorporated into the University's unified framework, but the college retained its distinctive functions in general education, religious life, and community culture.

---

# 3. Motto, Emblem, and Christian Tradition

# The Motto: 止于至善

Chung Chi College's motto is 「止于至善」, taken from the Great Learning: 「大学之道，在明明德，在亲民，在止于至善」 ("The way of the great learning lies in illuminating the bright virtue, in renewing the people, in resting in supreme excellence"); the Latin is Ad Excellentiam, rendered in English as "In Pursuit of Excellence". According to English Wikipedia, 「止于至善」 sets out the college's educational goal of reaching supreme excellence in studies, physique, character (with an emphasis on integrity), and spirit (understanding the true meaning of life). This motto resonates with Chung Chi's Christian spirit: grounded in the Christian faith, pursuing the perfection of character and learning.

# The University's Only Christian College

According to Chung Chi College (English Wikipedia)^※, among CUHK's nine colleges, Chung Chi is the only one with a religious background; the college has a Chaplain's Office and a Divinity School that support Christian activities on campus. This religious identity is the fundamental characteristic distinguishing Chung Chi from the other eight colleges, and it has also made "the secularisation and modernisation of religious education" a topic long discussed in academia in relation to the Chung Chi case (in the research of Peter Tze Ming Ng, Ying Fuk-tsang, and others). Chung Chi is also the only college in the University offering both theology and music as fields of study — faith and arts education go hand in hand here.

# The Emblem: Design Taken from the Tang Dynasty Nestorian Stele

According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, the central design of Chung Chi's emblem is taken from the Tang dynasty 「大秦景教流行中国碑」 ("Stele on the Propagation of the Luminous Religion of Daqin in China") — a stele that records the arrival of Christianity (Nestorianism) in China in 635 AD. By borrowing its design, Chung Chi signifies "remembering the beginning of the Christian missionary enterprise in China". The outer frame of the emblem underwent one change: from 1954 to 1960 it was rectangular, and from 1961 it became shield-shaped, as it remains today. This emblem and the thirteen wooden university emblems on the chapel altar, one ancient and one modern, together mark Chung Chi's self-positioning in relation to the thread of "Christian inheritance in China".

---

# 4. Landmark Buildings and Landscape

Chung Chi occupies a large stretch of low-lying land in the southern part of the CUHK campus, near University Station (the railway station), making it the lowest-lying and earliest-developed college area among the nine. Its landmarks are almost all intertwined with Christian tradition or the imagery of "supreme excellence".

# Chung Chi Chapel

According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, Chung Chi Chapel is the earliest and largest free-standing church on any public university campus in China. According to the Chung Chi Chapel official page^※, the chapel's foundation stone was laid on the occasion of Chung Chi's tenth anniversary, and it was completed the following year; carved on the altar wall are the wooden emblems of the aforementioned thirteen Chinese Christian universities, permanently inscribing the history of "continuing the thirteen universities' legacy" in the campus's most sacred space — a model of architecture as a vehicle of memory: the thirteen universities may no longer exist, but their spirit endures above the altar. The chapel, together with the college's Christian background and the weekly College Assembly held once a week, forms Chung Chi's most distinctive college character.

# Divinity School of Chung Chi College

According to the Divinity School of Chung Chi College official site^※ and Wikipedia, Chung Chi's theological education has deep roots: in 1962 (before Chung Chi joined CUHK), theological education was provided by what was then the independently constituted "Chung Chi Theological Seminary", centred on the Hong Kong Theological Seminary of the Church of Christ in China. After joining CUHK, theological education continued as the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, an important centre for Christian theological research and pastoral training in CUHK and in Hong Kong more broadly; the Divinity School's new chapel is located on the top floor of the Yung Chi-tung President Memorial Building completed in November 2011, with an area of approximately 1,450 square metres and a capacity of about 350, used for worship by Divinity School staff and students.

The roots of Chung Chi's theological education go back further than Chung Chi itself. According to the Divinity School's official history^※ and the English Wikipedia^※, its origins can be traced to the Training School of the Canton Presbyterian Mission, founded in 1864; in 1914 that school merged with Anglican, Methodist, and other missions to form the Canton Union Theological College; this theological education tradition was subsequently preserved and developed at Chung Chi, forming today's Divinity School of Chung Chi College. From 1864 to the present, this lineage spans more than a century and a half, making it one of the oldest traditions of higher theological education in Hong Kong — it carries the thread of "Christian higher education in China" from the late Qing right through to the contemporary CUHK campus, and together with the visible side of the thirteen emblems on the chapel altar, it forms the depth and the prominence of Chung Chi's Christian tradition.

It is worth noting that, according to Wikipedia, the Divinity School of Chung Chi College is currently the only divinity school in the Chinese-speaking world and among Hong Kong's public universities that is not affiliated with any single Christian denomination, jointly supported by four denominational bodies: the Church of Christ in China Hong Kong Council, the Tsung Tsin Mission of Hong Kong, the Methodist Church, Hong Kong, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church — a "cross-denominational joint venture" that is entirely consistent with Chung Chi's own cross-denominational, cross-background founding history of "inheriting the thirteen".

# Lake Ad Excellentiam (formerly the Lotus Pond)

According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, the lake on the Chung Chi campus originally occupied farmland and a stream; in the late 1960s it became the "Lotus Pond"; in the 1990s improvement works transformed and renamed it "Lake Ad Excellentiam" (未圓湖). The lake area actually comprises two bodies of water — the Lotus Pond and the Yeung Tak Pond — along with two bridges. The characters 「未圓」 ("not yet complete") convey the idea that "learning and life are never complete; one should rest in supreme excellence and keep striving", echoing the college motto. The Lions Pavilion by the lake (the red pavilion in the middle of the water, where graduates often take photographs), the Philosophy Path winding around the lake, and other features are places for staff and students to stroll and reflect, and Chung Chi's most poetic corner. Thirteen crape myrtles were also planted by the lake (in 2001), their number echoing the inheritance of the thirteen Christian universities — mirroring the thirteen wooden emblems on the chapel altar, another example of Chung Chi repeatedly inscribing the number "thirteen" into its campus landscape.

# Hostels and the Chung Chi Tang

Chung Chi is one of the nine colleges with the largest residential capacity. According to CUHK Info · College Tour: Chung Chi College^※, Chung Chi's student hostels include Ying Lin Hall (commemorating founding Head Li Ying-lam), Wah Lin Hall, Ming Wah Hall, Theology Building, Wen Lin Hall, Madam Ho Sin-hang Hostel, Wen Chih Hall, Lee Shu Pui Hall (new hostel), and Pentecostal Mission Hall (High Block and Low Block), providing approximately 1,452 places in total; day students also have a dedicated hostel, Liu Yi Hall. Chung Chi operates a "one year of residence in four" mechanism which, unlike the compulsory full residence and communal dining of newer colleges such as Morningside, S.H. Ho, and C.W. Chu, is one of the few arrangements in the traditional large colleges that guarantees a residential place during a student's career (for comparison, see College General Education and the High Table System).

The Chung Chi campus also includes the Chung Chi Tang — a roughly triangular student canteen and one of Chung Chi's most recognisable buildings — as well as the Mou Lu Si Yi Library, the Lingnan Sports Field/Gymnasium (commemorating the Lingnan University connection), Li Wong Yiu Pik Building, and the closely grouped Wong Fuk Yuen Building, Chan Kwok Pun Building, and Sino Building, known to staff and students as the "Three Brothers" — three teaching buildings standing side by side, sharing basement classrooms and audiovisual equipment, forming one of the most concentrated teaching areas for Chung Chi's arts and social science classes. The college gate archway bears a couplet inscribed by the scholar Ling Dao-yang and others. Many building names and inscriptions across the campus draw their meaning from the Christian faith and from the classics Great Learning and Doctrine of the Mean, showing a consistent care for "carrying culture through architecture".

---

# 5. College Traditions

Chung Chi's college traditions revolve around two main threads: "life of faith" and "whole-person education":

• College Assembly: a weekly gathering of the whole college and one of Chung Chi's longest-standing traditions, covering sermons, lectures, music, and cultural activities, embodying the whole-person ideal of "spirit, virtue, physique, community, and intellect"; according to the Office of University General Education · College GE^※, the non-graded course GECC1000 "College Assembly" requires students to attend 4 assemblies per term (2 in Part A plus 2 in Part B, or alternatively 3 assemblies plus 1 substitute activity), and those who fail to meet the requirement receive an FF for the course — one of the stricter arrangements among the nine colleges.
• College GE: Chung Chi's college general education comprises 6 credits, designed around the college's Christian and Chinese cultural background and emphasising values education and life reflection — first-year students must take GECC1130 "Idea of a University" (2 credits) and GECC1132 "Learning through Serving" (1 credit), while senior students choose one course from offerings such as "Exploration and Discovery" and "Servant Leadership"; Chung Chi's service-learning courses place particular emphasis on the spirit of "servant leadership". For a comparison of assessment methods across the nine colleges' general education, see College General Education and the High Table System: How the Nine Colleges Each Nurture Their Students.
• Class society system: Chung Chi undergraduates form "class societies" by year of entry, each with its own name, colour, and traditions, an important source of college cohesion.
• Orientation camp, thousand-person banquet, graduation worship: the orientation camp helps new students integrate into the college community; the college anniversary features events such as a thousand-person banquet; and graduation worship sends graduates off with Christian liturgy, a graduation ceremony unique to Chung Chi.
• Scholarships and bursaries: according to the CUHK Info college tour, Chung Chi awards approximately 700 scholarships each year, most of them rewarding students who actively participate in college activities (rather than being based solely on academic results), reflecting its "whole-person education" orientation of valuing activity participation over a single academic metric.
• Seventy-fifth anniversary (2026): Chung Chi, founded in 1951, marks its 75th anniversary in 2026. According to a CUHK press release^※, the anniversary organising committee unveiled an ink painting exhibition, "Ink Echoes: A Shared Path with Kan Tai-keung and Students", on 7 September 2026, featuring over one hundred works by ink artist and designer Kan Tai-keung and his students, running until 9 October, with Head Kwan Mei-po and others officiating.

---

# 6. Heads and Notable Alumni

# Heads (Fairly Complete List)

According to Wikipedia · Chung Chi College^※, the headship evolved from "President" during the post-secondary college period to "Head/Master of College" after joining CUHK. The list of successive Heads is as follows (some years in the middle lack authoritative public sources and are omitted):

# Notable Alumni (Selected)

• Yau Shing-tung: according to Chung Chi College (English Wikipedia)^※, mathematician and Fields Medallist, graduated from Chung Chi's Department of Mathematics in 1969. One of the founders of twentieth-century geometric analysis, he later taught at Harvard and established several mathematics research centres.
• Chung Chi has also produced a large number of alumni active in theology, education, music, social service, and politics and business; given its Christian and humanistic background, its legacy is particularly deep in the fields of theology, music, and social service — for example, Chan Kwok-fong, an MA alumnus of the Divinity School of Chung Chi College and a former business professional turned convenor of the "Business as Mission Forum", is a representative case at the intersection of "faith and business".

Heads and alumni lists are based on official and authoritative sources; for living persons, only neutral facts are recorded. Recent administrative developments at college level (such as the registration and operation of student self-governance bodies) are presented side by side in this site's article College Expansion and the 3-3-4 Reform based on public reporting, and are not repeated here.

---

# 7. Cultural Positioning: The Christian Wing of CUHK's "Dual-Source Humanistic Tradition"

Chung Chi's "inheritance of the thirteen" is not the legal continuation or asset succession of any specific university, but a spiritual and missional inheritance and symbol: it is a newly founded institution that has consciously claimed this faith tradition as its own. Placed within CUHK as a whole, Chung Chi's Christian humanistic tradition and New Asia's Chinese cultural humanistic tradition form the two wings of CUHK's "dual-source humanistic tradition":

Chung Chi (Christian humanism): continuing the tradition of Christian universities in China, grounded in the Christian spirit, East-West exchange, and social concern; the chapel and divinity school are its institutional carriers.

New Asia (Chinese cultural humanism): continuing the Chinese cultural mission of scholars who came south, grounded in New Confucianism and Chinese academic tradition; the Pavilion of Harmony and the New Asia Institute of Advanced Chinese Studies are its institutional carriers (see New Asia College).

United (pragmatic, southern migrant): formed from the merger of five private Guangdong institutions, with the character of diaspora education and business pragmatism (see United College).

Each of the three founding colleges has its own spiritual character, and the "Christianity × Chinese culture" dual source of Chung Chi and New Asia in particular shaped CUHK's overall character of "a gathering of humanities, an exchange of East and West". This also echoes the formulation in CUHK's founding mission of "bringing together Chinese and Western cultures" — Chung Chi and New Asia are precisely the two sources of that convergence at college level. It is also precisely because of this distinct religious identity that "the secularisation and modernisation of religious education" has long been a topic discussed in academia in relation to the Chung Chi case (in the research of Ng Tze-ming, Ying Fuk-tsang, and others).

---

# 8. Legends and Rumours (Low Credibility)

Credibility notice: the contents of this section are mostly folk rumours, campus word of mouth, or anecdotes from online forums, unverified by authoritative historical sources and of low credibility, offered only for cultural interest and not to be cited as historical fact. Subjective judgments involving living persons are not included on this site; the following rumours do not correspond to any real individual.

The Lotus Pond / Lake Ad Excellentiam "waiting to drown" urban legend

Chung Chi's Lotus Pond (now Lake Ad Excellentiam), with its quiet waters and hazy night atmosphere, has long generated various campus urban legends, such as "an extra figure appears by the lake late at night", "recitation heard on rainy nights", and "couples who walk around the lake once will break up". Such stories are a common urban legend motif shared by lakes and water features at universities (similar versions exist for the Pavilion of Harmony at New Asia and hostels at various institutions); they are purely fictional imaginings, corresponding to no real person or event, of extremely low credibility, and are included only as campus folklore.

Fanciful interpretations of the name "Lake Ad Excellentiam"

There is also a folk romanticised narrative interpreting the characters 「未圓」 ("not yet complete") as "(some past episode) that could not be brought to a happy conclusion". In fact, the name "Lake Ad Excellentiam" genuinely means "learning and life are never complete; one should rest in supreme excellence" (echoing the college motto), and was settled after the improvement works of the 1990s; interpretations such as "未圓 = a love unfulfilled" are mostly later embellishments, more rhetoric than historical fact, and are of low credibility.

---