The True Names of Two Landmarks: Ju Ming's "Gate of Wisdom" (Beacon Terrace / Chung Gate) and New Asia's "Pavilion of Harmony

⚠️ This article belongs to the wild-history module (15 Campus Wild History · Anecdotes · Remarks). The official names, artists, donors, dates and intended meanings of the sculptures and buildings cited here have been verified against official and secondary sources; the graduation legends surrounding the "Beacon Terrace" are flagged as folk sources, verified under §6.6, and should be treated as campus lore rather than fact. Living individuals are not named beyond what is publicly relevant; artists, architects, donors and deceased scholars are named per public records. This article complements campus-legends-and-landmarks.md — the latter focuses on the legends themselves, while this one focuses on the naming history and donation provenance.

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A sculpture originally named simply "Gate" grew, on the tongues of CUHK students, an entire urban legend about whether you would graduate; a waterside pavilion had no fixed name at all, until its homage to a deceased New Confucian philosopher's treatise earned it the sitting Vice-Chancellor's praise as "Hong Kong's second-best view." "Gate of Wisdom" and "Pavilion of Harmony": two campus landmarks whose relationship between name and reality repays the closest attention.

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# I. The true name of the "Beacon Terrace": from "Gate" to "Chung Gate" to "Gate of Wisdom"

What CUHK students call the "Beacon Terrace" (烽火台; also known as "Chung Gate" / 仲门) in fact has an official name, a precise date of creation, and a documented donation story.

# 1.1 Creative background: the last strain of the Taichi series, the "Arch series"

According to the English Wikipedia entry on Ju Ming^※, Ju Ming (朱銘; born Ju Chuan-tai, 20 January 1938 – 22 April 2023) was a Taiwanese sculptor from Tongxiao, Miaoli County. In the mid-1970s he trained under the senior sculptor Yang Yuyu (楊英風), who also advised him to practise tai chi — an experience that later became the defining theme of his sculptural career: the Taichi series, built around the bodily movements of tai chi and expressing the flow of martial-arts postures and inner energy (qi). He is regarded as one of the most important representatives of modern Chinese sculpture.

According to the Chung Gate Wikipedia entry^※, the bronze sculpture in CUHK's collection was made in 1986. It is the first formal work of the "Arch series", the terminal phase of Ju Ming's Taichi series, and was originally titled simply "Gate". The Arch series represents Ju Ming's concluding effort to interpret the circulation of tai chi energy through abstract form — biographical sources note that he brought the series to a close in 2000 with Taichi Arch, making CUHK's "Gate" (1986) the opening work of this line.

# 1.2 The donor: Szeto Wai, CUHK's "architect-in-chief"

That the sculpture found its home at CUHK owes much to one of the most significant figures in the building of the campus. According to the Szeto Wai Wikipedia entry^※, Szeto Wai (司徒惠; 10 April 1913 – 24 July 1991) was a Hong Kong engineer and architect who served as architect to The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1963 to 1978, then as honorary architect until 1987 — he "single-handedly planned the layout and design of the University's new campus," levelling the hillside of Ma Liu Shui into a three-tiered terrace. Many of CUHK's early landmark buildings are his work, including the Institute of Chinese Studies, the University Administration Building, the University Science Centre and its extension, the University Library, the entire United College campus, and New Asia College's Humanities Building — even the two water towers of New Asia and United Colleges (the "Gentleman's Tower" and the "Lady's Tower"; see more-landmarks-towers-mall-and-lakes.md) are his designs. One could say the overall hillside skeleton of CUHK is, to a great degree, the planning achievement of Szeto Wai alone.

According to the sources, it was Szeto Wai who donated Ju Ming's bronze "Gate" to CUHK. The work was ultimately placed at the centre of the plaza directly facing the University Library, at the eastern end of University Mall — a location students would later nickname the "Beacon Terrace".

# 1.3 1987 unveiling: debut alongside the "Hui Garden"

According to the sources, the sculpture was officially unveiled in December 1987. According to the official CUHK in Focus feature^※, the work has stood in the plaza before the Library for nearly four decades. Szeto Wai, by then retired in the United States, returned to Hong Kong specially for the ceremony. Notably, that same day saw the unveiling of a second project: a small Roman-style fountain plaza named "Hui Garden", adjacent to the north end of the Beacon Terrace plaza, also designed and donated by Szeto Wai. According to the sources, a lift tower had originally been planned for the Hui Garden site but could not be funded; Szeto Wai instead gave his alma mater this small fountain plaza. "Gate" and Hui Garden — one sculpture, one garden — unveiled on the same day, together forming Szeto Wai's final gift to CUHK in his later years.

A note on naming: the students' nickname "Beacon Terrace/Chung Gate" coexists with the work's original title "Gate" and its later rename "Chung Gate" (English: Gate of Wisdom) — a dual track of folk usage and the artist's official naming. This museum records both: "Beacon Terrace" in discussions of the legends, "Chung Gate / Gate of Wisdom" in discussions of the artwork.

# 1.4 The 2008 preservation dispute: yielding to the library extension?

According to the sources, in 2008, to accommodate the library extension required by Hong Kong's shift from a three-year to a four-year university curriculum (the "3-3-4" system), the then Vice-Chancellor (referred to here under the BLP convention as "the then Vice-Chancellor") proposed temporarily removing the sculpture. The announcement drew fierce opposition from students. Following that opposition, the sculpture was retained — making this one of the representative cases of "landmark preservation / heritage conservation" on the CUHK campus. According to compilations by The CUHK Student Press, the Beacon Terrace plaza has itself historically served as one of the campus's platforms for student activism — perhaps part of why students were especially sensitive to its fate: it is not merely a sculpture but the physical carrier of the campus's public space for expression.

# 1.5 Ju Ming renames it "Chung Gate": turning a taboo into approachable wisdom

According to the Chung Gate Wikipedia entry^※, Ju Ming returned to CUHK in 2006 to carry out renovation and maintenance on the sculpture, and during that visit heard the urban legend circulating among students: passing through the gate would mean failing to graduate. To make the sculpture feel approachable and passable to students, he renamed it "Chung Gate" (仲门) and gave it the English title "Gate of Wisdom" — the artist's own positive reply to a folk taboo: rather than let the legend run unchecked, he would personally "set the name right", redirecting the work's meaning toward something affirmative.

On 14 December 2011, Ju Ming delivered a lecture at CUHK titled "Art as Spiritual Practice", sharing the story behind the creation of Chung Gate and his personal artistic philosophy. The next day (15 December), he was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by CUHK in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the promotion of art and cultural heritage.

A correction: some folk versions loosely record Ju Ming's response to the legend as having occurred at the 2011 lecture. According to this research, the renaming actually took place during the renovation period around 2006, while 2011 was the occasion of Ju Ming receiving the honorary doctorate and delivering his art lecture — two different moments, best kept distinct rather than conflated.

On 22 April 2023, Ju Ming died at his home in Taiwan at the age of 85. Hong Kong media reported that he had taken his own life after prolonged illness; the initial cause of death was recorded as asphyxiation. CUHK later said that Chung Gate (Gate of Wisdom) holds deep significance for the University community — the sculpture that has stood at the centre of campus for nearly four decades has thus also become a physical locus for CUHK members to mourn the Taiwanese master.

# 1.6 The "can't graduate" legend (⚠ folk tradition)

Around this sculpture circulates CUHK's most famous campus legend. As compiled by an HK01 campus-culture report^※ (see also campus-legends-and-landmarks.md), several versions exist, all centred on the claim that "passing through this gate affects whether you graduate"; some versions hold that walking from the Library toward the Science Centre brings first-class honours, while the reverse direction means failing to graduate. The irony is pointed: the work's original meaning was simply "Gate", its re-titled formal name is "Gate of Wisdom", and its intended symbolism is "approaching wisdom and success through a doorway" — the exact opposite of the "can't graduate" taboo. The artist meant an auspicious sign; student legend turned it into a portent of doom. Ju Ming himself tried to dissolve the contradiction by renaming the work. This "tension between official naming and popular reinterpretation" is precisely what makes campus wild history so fascinating: one object, endowed with one meaning by the authorities, re-coded by the collective imagination of students — and even the artist's personal clarification cannot stop the legend from circulating on its own logic.

The prevalence of the legend is well documented (recorded multiple times by Hong Kong media), but its truth cannot be verified. It is typical campus folklore and should not be cited as fact.

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# II. New Asia's "Pavilion of Harmony": built for Ch'ien Mu's "Unity of Heaven and Man"

At the other end of campus, New Asia College's "Pavilion of Harmony" (合一亭) likewise pairs name with meaning, with an even more precisely documented construction history than the "Beacon Terrace".

# 2.1 Completion date, donor and architect

According to the Pavilion of Harmony Wikipedia entry^※ and the official New Asia College campus tour^※, the Pavilion of Harmony stands between the two student residence blocks of Learning and Wisdom (學思樓) and Knowledge and Action (知行樓) in New Asia College, facing Tolo Harbour and the Pat Sin Leng ridge beyond. New Asia College held the pavilion's opening ceremony on 12 December 2003, officiated jointly by the donor, Ms. Ng Chung-lam (伍宗琳), the then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ambrose King (金耀基; named here as a matter of neutral historical record per the sources), the then College Head, Professor Henry Wong Nai-cheng, the former Head, Professor Leung Ping-chung, and the pavilion's architect, Professor Chen Hui-chi (陳惠基). From conception, design, donation and construction to completion, the Pavilion of Harmony thus possesses a clearer, more verifiable "archival-grade" timeline than many campus landmarks.

According to the sources, the pavilion was built as a tribute to New Asia College's founder, Mr. Ch'ien Mu, and to his philosophical treatise on "the Unity of Heaven and Man" (天人合一). The then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ambrose King, once praised the pavilion as "Hong Kong's second-best view" — a remark that has itself become a frequently quoted "official endorsement" in later introductions to the pavilion.

# 2.2 Design details: glass, the crescent pool and "water and sky as one"

According to the sources, the pavilion consists of "two long rows of glass" — one row cantilevered over the void, the other standing upright — with a transparent roof, allowing ventilation and light. In front of the pavilion lies a crescent-shaped pool of very shallow water, in which a large tree is planted; bamboo grows beside the pavilion, and stone benches beneath it offer rest. The architect deliberately infused the pavilion with the spiritual core of "the Unity of Heaven and Man", using architecture to reflect the harmony between "Life" and "the Mandate of Heaven".

The pavilion's most celebrated feature is the visual effect of its water merging with distant Tolo Harbour and the sky into a single line — according to the sources, the pool water and the harbour landscape "almost form a thin line", creating the effect of "water and sky as one". The water's surface acts as a mirror; sky, sea and pavilion seem to fuse into a single whole, translating the abstract philosophy of "unity of heaven and man" into an experience one can physically inhabit. This is the most direct physical rendering of the term "unity" (合一).

# 2.3 The calligraphy inside: a collaboration of two art-department professors

According to the sources, the pavilion bears an inscription of Ch'ien Mu's text "On the Unity of Heaven and Man" (〈天人合一论〉) and a seal reading "Unity of Heaven and Man" — the former in the calligraphy of Professor Lee Yun-wan (李润桓), formerly of the Department of Fine Arts, the latter a seal carved by Professor Tong Kam-tang (唐锦腾) of the same department. Both are neutral/positive facts, recorded by name per public sources. The Pavilion of Harmony is thus not a mere construction project but a composite landmark fusing three artistic endeavours — architecture (Chen Hui-chi), calligraphy (Lee) and seal-carving (Tong) — and its beauty draws a steady stream of visitors and photographers.

Name and reality in correspondence: the "harmony" (合一) of the Pavilion of Harmony corresponds directly to Ch'ien Mu's theory of the unity of heaven and man; its design, through the visual of "water and sky as one", grounds a philosophical proposition in sensory experience — and it has a clearly documented donor, architect and completion date. This forms an intriguing contrast with the Gate of Wisdom, whose name and popular interpretation are at odds and which has undergone several renamings: the one (Pavilion of Harmony) with name and reality in full correspondence and complete archival records; the other (Gate of Wisdom / Beacon Terrace legend) with folklore and formal naming in outright conflict.

For Ch'ien Mu and the New Asia College spirit of "starting a school from nothing", see 10-colleges/new-asia-college.md; the museum's essay on the founding era's foreign patronage network also touches on New Asia's cultural mission.

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# III. Two landmarks, two materialisations of "the CUHK spirit"

Set side by side, the Gate of Wisdom and the Pavilion of Harmony materialise two facets of the CUHK spirit, and exemplify two typical modes of campus-landmark research:

"Gate of Wisdom" (before the University Library) — a modern abstract sculpture at the heart of the academic zone, its meaning "the path to wisdom"; it belongs to the whole University, a symbol of CUHK's "pursuit of excellence and embrace of modernity" — yet students have re-encoded it through the folk imagination of a "graduation taboo", making it a vessel of collective campus memory. Its archival trail is the more tortuous: originally "Gate" (1986) → donated and unveiled by Szeto Wai (1987) → threatened with removal for the library extension (2008) → renamed "Chung Gate / Gate of Wisdom" by the artist himself to dissolve the taboo (2006) → becoming a site of mourning after the artist's death (2023) — one sculpture, nearly four decades of CUHK's "history of naming" in miniature.

"Pavilion of Harmony" (New Asia College) — architecture and water interpreting "the unity of heaven and man", in tribute to the cultural ideals of scholars who came south; it belongs to New Asia, a symbol of CUHK's "continuation of Chinese culture and the settling of the humanistic spirit". Its archival trail is far clearer: donor, architect, completion date and the full list of officiating guests are all on record — a rare case of "complete documentation" among CUHK's landmarks.

One modern, one traditional; one for the whole University, one for a single college; one with name and folklore at odds, one with name and reality in accord; one with a tortuous research trail, one with a clear archival record — the two landmarks together form the spatial footnote to CUHK's dual character of "modern academia × Chinese culture", and demonstrate the two typical paths of campus wild-history research: one that must pick through the gaps between legend and official account, the other that can rely directly on a clean paper trail.

Related reading: Campus Wild History: the Beacon Terrace and the Goddess statue, More landmarks: towers, malls and lakes, New Asia College in depth.

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