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"Universities are a bit like hospitals": An Appendix From Oxbridge via Hong Kong (Note from Danyll Wills: I read Chinese at university in England, after spending a few years doing odd jobs, mainly for architects, in Germany and France. When I finally left in 1976, I went to Japan~I couldn't at that time go to China~and stayed there for 17 years. I came to Hong Kong in 1993 and have been here or in China ever since. I have an interest in most of what you and Chris have been talking about, but I know absolutely nothing about music! I have worked as a writer and editor but I also go very deep into computing while I was in Japan. I learnt to program computers using Japanese books~that was a pain but great fun. I now help technology companies with their communication needs.) 
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Chris, Andrew, I have had the unusual privilege of having studied officially or semi-officially at a host of universities in several countries. I have been to the University of Hawaii, sat in on lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, done the same at the Sorbonne, Stuttgart, Freiburg, Bonn, Kyoto and Kobe. When I finally did "settle down," it was at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where I wanted to be near Joseph Needham (but that is a very long story for another time). One of the most interesting aspects of all this to me was the way in which most of the American universities treated their undergraduates. I was quite appalled at the way undergraduates were treated by the teaching staff. Friends of mine who went to Harvard were never taught by any of that institution's great scholars. If they were lucky they  |
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