實際上,近年來館藏中陸續加入一批相當珍貴的早期漢學作品,包括16至19世紀歐洲印刷有關中國的書籍。其中不少由利瑪竇(Matteo Ricci, 1552–1610)和湯若望(Johann Adam Schall von Bell, 1591–1666)等知名耶穌會傳教士撰寫,雖然人數不多,但他們在傳教的過程中深入接觸中國近代早期的社會和文化,幾乎以一己之力創立了近代漢學。隨着傳教士漢學家的著作傳回歐洲,關於中國的歐洲書籍愈見詳盡博學,對中國的知識也迅速增長。這得益於日漸增多、愈加先進的印刷廠,製作的版畫也愈來愈精確複雜,成為新書的插圖。西方對中國的興趣長久而深遠,而這段充滿活力的早期歷史正是此次展覽的主題。
由於原有的學院建築並不適合現代大學,於是在沙田附近靠近崇基學院處,開始沿山修建新的校園。這所俯瞰吐露港的新大學,以中國語言和文化作為教學和研究的重點,最終亦將與英美及其他地區具有國際聲譽的大學一樣,增設諸類科學和社會科學課程。正如大學第一任監督、蘇格蘭籍港督柏立基爵士(Sir Robert Brown Black, 1906–1999)所言,這所新大學的名字反映出其特殊的使命:
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: University Press, 2014), p. 87; Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).
Timothy Brook, “Europaeology? On the Difficulty of Assembling a Knowledge of Europe in China,” in Christianity and Cultures: Japan & China in Comparison, ed. M. Antoni J. Üçerler (Rome: Institutum historicum Societatis Iesu, 2009), pp. 261–285.
Jonathan M. Hall, Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Mu-chou Poo, Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes toward Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).
Luke S. K. Kwong, “What’s in a Name: Zhongguo (or ‘Middle Kingdom’) Reconsidered,” The Historical Journal, 58, no. 3 (2015), pp. 781–804; Timothy Brook, Great State: China and the World (London: Profile Books, 2019).
Grace Ai-Ling Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War: Chinese Cultural Education at Hong Kong’s New Asia College, 1949–63 (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
Luke S. K. Kwong, “Chinese Politics at the Crossroads: Reflections on the Hundred Days Reform of 1898,” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2000), pp. 663–695.
《新亞書院概況》(香港:新亞書院,1955),頁7。
Alice N. H. Ng Lun, Interactions of East and West: Development of Public Education in Early Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984).
The Quest for Excellence: A History of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1963 to 1993 (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1994), p. 59.
《崇基學院概覽:1961–1962》(香港:崇基學院,1961),頁19。
“Report of the Fulton Commission, 1963: Commission to Advise on the Creation of a Federal- Type Chinese University in Hong Kong,” Minerva (London), 1, no. 4 (1963), pp. 493–507.
引自Chou, Confucianism, Colonialism, and the Cold War: Chinese Cultural Education at Hong Kong’s New Asia College, 1949–63, p.185.