Professor Leung Yuen-sang is currently a Professor of History. He has also been appointed as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts; Director of the Research Centre for Contemporary Chinese Culture, Institute of Chinese Studies; Director of the Research Centre for Comparative City Cultures, Research Institute for the Humanities; and Head of Chung Chi College. Professor Leung's research interests cover modern Chinese history, Confucianism and Christianity in China, overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia and America, and the urban history and city culture of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Professor Leung Yuen-sang was invited to the first ICS Luncheon, which was held on 28 January 2013. ICS luncheons are planned as monthly informal gatherings that aim to provide a setting for exchanges among Chinese studies scholars at the University. ICS research centres and affiliated centres take turns to deliver a presentation on their recent research interests and future directions. At the luncheon, Professor Leung described his study on Modern Chinese Intellectuals and elaborated on the meaning of "transformative" and "non-transformative". Below is the abstract of his presentation.

My research interest is the history of modern China and was aroused more than 40 years ago in this building—the Institute of Chinese Studies. I studied modern history and the achievements of the American Methodist missionary, Young J. Allen, under the tutelage of Professor Wang Teh-chao. My first book was published after I finished my Master's degree; at that time, I was concerned about how China was moving forward to modernity from tradition, as well as learning from the West to make firm resolutions. Although the path of my academic studies has varied greatly since then—from the history of systems to social history; from intellectual history to cultural history; from the study of intellectuals in China to that of overseas Chinese migration—they have always centred around how modern China has been changing to become stronger, and how it should move forward. The Chinese Community in Early Singapore, Shanghai in Late Qing China, In-between and on the Margin… these are my publications on the afore-mentioned topics. In more recent years, I have put the same questions to different people in case studies: "How does modern China see traditional culture and Western culture? As we are in the twenty-first century and facing the future, how should we think about the way out of Chinese culture?"

Reviewing all of the case studies I have made, they are almost all more or less related to the above-mentioned topics—because my research interest is "in-between and on the margin", and "people on the margin" have mostly been chosen for my cases! Yet what is meant by "people on the margin"? These are people who live between two systems or two cultures, and have a tendency to "transform" 化, regardless of the aspect to which they move closer or change. This so-called "transformation" means to change or to vary, or in Yeh Wenhsin's word, becoming. "Sinicization" is "becoming Chinese"; "Westernization" is "becoming Western". Transformation can be conscious and planned, in order to approach a certain aspect step by step; it can also entail just following the trends without intention and regardless of the reasons. However, in the history of modern China, especially during the "transitional period" (which Chang Hao has referred to as the period from post AD 1864 to early Republican China, or the 30 years after the Chinese economic reform), it has not been easy to choose whether to transform or not, from tradition to modern, from China to the West; moreover, almost all Chinese who are concerned about our society, our country and our culture, ask themselves the question: "How to choose? How to change?"

Below are some examples of my recent research topics, including projects funded by the Research Grants Council (RGC), which are mainly related to the transformation of modern Chinese society and the decisions made by intellectuals.

1. The Uncertain Phoenix: Confucianism in Contemporary China (1997-99)
2. Culture as Destiny?: The Confucian Experiment in Singapore and the Emerging Global Discourse on Confucianism (2000-02)
3. The Walls and Waters: A Comparative Study of City Cultures in Modern Asia-Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore (2004-06)
4. The Christian Dreams-Models of Christian Colleges/Universities in East Asian Countries (2004-06) 
5. A Documentary History of Public Health in Hong Kong (2005-07)
6. Finding Fong Foo Sec (Kuang Fuzhuo,1869-1938): An Investigation of the Man and His Transnational and Translational Experiences (2007-09) 
7. Bridging Confucian China and the Christian West: Bicultural and Bilingual Education of Mission Schools in the Nineteenth Century (2009-11)
8. Race, Culture, and the State: Three Generations the Yings under Political Change

In my recent publications, I have also written about Wu Liande 伍聯德, Liang Desuo 梁得所, Liang Ranqing 梁炎卿 and Cheng Yick-chi 鄭翼之. In a nutshell, my research has focused on a group of Chinese people living in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, who made contributions during the "transitional period" from tradition to modernity and from Chinese to the West. I do not intend to go into details about my research projects today; however, I have the impression that the answers to questions such as "What is the way out for Chinese culture?" and "How should contemporary Chinese intellectuals react in the ever-changing transitional society?" may actually lie between "tradition-modernity" and "Chinese-Western". In other words, instead of separating the two concepts, we should recognize that change is a continuous transformation process. Although conflicts and tension are inevitable in the course of evolution, such tension will eventually create momentum for innovation and advancement in culture and society. Therefore, I argue that my (our) choice is to always stay between "transformative" 化 (innovative/willing to change) and "non-transformative" 唔化  (conservative/unchanged).