"Like the existing hostels, the now one is called after a distinguish-man, On September 8, 1598, Matteo Ricci arrived in an official Junk at Peking. Me was the first European to do so since Marco Polo. At that time, China was a sealed empire to all foreigners. The efforts of Ricci to gain admission have been tok and retold ax a fascinating page in the history of Missionary' endeavour. He is det caribed by a Chinese annalist:—man with a curling beard and hi yer, his voice like a great bell, wax admitted to an Imperial audience: He presented books, images, and other objects from his native country?
"His greatest achievement was the mastery of Chinese literature and the facility which he acquired fof writing works on a wide range of subjects. In one of his letters, he pays a high tribute to the culture of the Chin Ming that they: needed only the acquisition of Western science to be the most erudite people on the globe."
An Oasis for Peace Mr, Southern expressed great satisfaction that the Jesuit Order had undertaken the work of providing a hostel for the undergraduates of Hongkong University. "I wish to endorse what Father Byrne has said of the need of a hostel, of the advantages of higher education and fof the magnificent possibilities for rood which re inherent in the University of Hongkong. We stand in © unique position towards the great nation of China, an oasis for peace where the different creeds can dwell together in unity, and it is to our university, built and endowed largely by Chinese liberality and serving almost exclusively the needs of Chinese students, that we look to spread the high ideals of Western culture. It is indeed appropriate that the name-of the one who did much to introduee'the first. knowledge of Western science to the scholars of China should be perpotuated in this hostel, which is to continue and to extend the work he '80 ably began.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.