TANG CHI NGONG BUILDING

Shortly after the University’s opening in 1912, the Faculty of Arts was established. With generous support from both local and overseas Chinese communities, the School of Chinese was founded in 1927. However, it lacked proper facilities until receiving a generous gift from Mr Tang Chi-Ngong (鄧志昂), which enabled the construction of a new building dedicated for the school teaching and learning. After two years of construction, the building officially opened by Sir William Peel, the then Governor of Hong Kong, on September 28, 1931.

In the early days, the building served as the primary venue for Chinese studies. It was only in the 1950s that Chinese classes were relocated to the Main Building, allowing for better integration with other courses offered by the Faculty of Arts. From 1982 to 2012, the building housed the Centre of Asian Studies, and today it is the home to the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole (饒宗頤學術館).

One distinctive feature of this historic building is its unique use of the letter "v" instead of "u" in words like "vniversity." This unconventional spelling appears on the stone arch, the facade, and the foundation stone, reflecting a common practice in the 1920s and 1930s where the letters "v" and "u" were often interchangeable in Latin script.