History
Hoh Fuk Tong Centre was built by General Cai Tingjie (1892–1968), who led the Nineteenth Corps against the Japanese invasion between 1936 and the early 1940s.
The Centre was the villa of General Cai from 1936 to 1946. It was used for tertiary education by the Dade Institute, founded under the directive of Chinese leaders Zhou Enlai and Dong Biwu, from 1946 to 1949. After the closure of Dade Institute, the London Missionary Society, now the Council for World Mission, bought the campus and lent it to the Church of Christ in China since 1950.
The London Missionary Society formally transferred the ownership of the compound to the Church at a token fee of one dollar in 1961.
In early 2000s, the owner of Ho Fuk Tong Centre submitted an application of a redevelopment scheme for the centre, proposing a demolition of all the historical buildings on the site, to the Buildings Department. The two adjoining schools, namely, But San School and Hoh Fuk Tong College, were also proposed to be demolished in the redevelopment scheme.
To protect the historic building from demolition, Morrison House was declared as proposed Monument on 11 April 2003; it was later declared as monument on 26 March 2004.
Read more about this topic: Hoh Fuk Tong Centre
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun’s rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)