Leung Kau Kui Hall

Leung Kau Kui Hall

Leung Kau Kui Hall is located on the campus of Sun Yat-sen University. Situated to the southwest of Huai Shi Hall, this modest, square-shaped building features a yellow brick exterior. At No. 487 in the Southwest Area, you’ll find Leung Kau Kui Hall. Above the main entrance of the building is a greyish-white stone plaque inscribed with four Chinese characters—“Leung Kau Kui Hall”—calligraphed by Shang Chengzuo in the winter of 1983. The characters are written in Shang’s uniquely created Qin-style clerical script, featuring bold, simple strokes that are rich and full yet still graceful. On the lower right side of the building, there is also a cornerstone plaque from the autumn of 1982, with “Leung Kau Kui Hall” inscribed in neat regular script.

Leung Kau Kui Hall was built with a donation of over 6 million Hong Kong dollars from Mr. Leung Kau Kui, a titan in Hong Kong’s finance and trade sectors and one of Hong Kong’s top ten philanthropists. Its completion ceremony was held on October 27, 1984. It was the first building funded by compatriots from Hong Kong, Macau, and overseas Chinese in the history of mainland higher education institutions since the reform and opening-up, as well as the first building named after its donor. One can only imagine the courage required by the university’s leadership at the time to accept such a donation and name the building after the donor. Upon its completion, Leung Kau Kui Hall was the largest auditorium in Guangzhou after the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, and its interior facilities were also among the most advanced in China. The hall was designed by the Architecture Design Institute of South China Institute of Technology (later renamed South China University of Technology), under the direction of renowned architectural design expert Professor Lam Hak-ming, and was ranked as one of Guangzhou’s Top Ten Quality Projects in 1984. In 1998, Ms. Leung Kit-wah, daughter of Leung Kau Kui, funded renovations of the hall amounting to over 850,000 yuan.

Today, both the freshman orientation ceremonies and the graduation commencement ceremonies where degrees are conferred are held in Leung Kau Kui Hall. Though the building does not speak, it silently witnesses the growth of generations of students through the changing years.