I took Ambrose King’s “Chinese Society” course when I was a freshman at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1971. His course is so interesting and stimulating that it unlocked my intellectual curiosity, making me determined not only to major in sociology, but also to specialize in the fields of modernization and development when I took my PhD qualifying exams at UCLA in 1978.
Therefore, I felt deeply honored that Ambrose King asked me to write an introduction for the present volume. This is because King is not only my former teacher, but he also is an esteem sociologist, a cherished public intellectual, and a superb university administrator. King was one of the founding fathers of the sociology discipline in Hong Kong, a Fellow of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and the Vice-Chan- cellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Like many intellectuals of his generation, King is concerned about the new developments in Chinese nation as it sloughed off the old society and the subsequent course that Chinese culture might take.