Ricci Hall: A Jesuit Foundation from 1929 and HKU's Only Catholic Hall

A group of Jesuits made it one of their educational priorities to build a hall of residence for Catholic male students at the University of Hong Kong — and they named it after the Italian missionary who, in the late Ming dynasty, carried Euclid and the world map into the Forbidden City. Ricci Hall was officially inaugurated on 16 December 1929^※. In the century since, it has remained HKU's only Catholic hall and one of just two halls on campus that are not directly administered by the University. This article belongs to reference zone 00–12 (factual); it records names as they are publicly known and carries no credibility badges. For the overall structure of the hall system, see welcome.md.

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# 1. At a Glance

Ricci Hall's self-description, according to the official CEDARS accommodation page^※, is to offer residents an environment for "living in brotherhood, growing in balance and fullness in maturity, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, socially, culturally and physically." This official wording writes the Jesuit ideal of "formation of the whole person" directly into the hall's stated purpose — and it also explains why, nearly a century on, the hall still carries a distinctly Catholic institutional character.

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# 2. Naming: Matteo Ricci, Symbol of East–West Learning

Ricci Hall is named after Matteo Ricci (1552–1610). According to Wikipedia^※, Ricci was a Jesuit missionary "known for his efforts to bring the West to China and China to the West." For the Jesuits to give his name to a university hall of residence in Hong Kong — a meeting point of Chinese and Western worlds — serving Chinese Catholic students is a fitting choice: the hall itself is, in miniature, a space where scholarship builds bridges between East and West.

To appreciate the weight of the name, one has to go back to the man. According to his biography^※, Ricci was born in 1552 in Macerata, in the Papal States, and arrived in Macau in 1582, where he began studying Chinese and the Confucian classics. From 1583, while based in Zhaoqing, he produced the first European-style world map annotated in Chinese — the map later published in 1602 as the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (Complete Map of the Myriad Countries of the World). In 1601 he was summoned to Beijing by the Wanli Emperor, becoming the first Westerner admitted to the Forbidden City; he died in Beijing in 1610 and was granted permission to be buried there — an exception under Ming law for a foreigner. With Xu Guangqi he translated the first six books of Euclid's Elements (published 1607), and he wrote the Tianzhu Shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), arguing that Catholicism and Confucianism were compatible.

What later missionary history remembers most about Ricci is his strategy of "accommodation" — rather than transplanting Christianity as something wholly foreign, he stressed the common ground between the Christian faith and Confucian values, missionising through cultural adaptation rather than cultural confrontation. This approach of "bridging East and West through learning and culture"^※ is the spiritual source of the Jesuit tradition of education in China; and the HKU hall that bears his name therefore carries the ideal of "scholarship bridging East and West" in its very identity. It echoes, in turn, the University's own self-image as captured in its coat of arms, with its dragon and lion standing side by side — East and West in one emblem (see ../00-overview/symbols.md).

Ricci's concrete achievements spanned geography, mathematics and religion. According to his biography^※, the Kunyu Wanguo Quantu was the first world map annotated in Chinese to bring the "new continents" — including the Americas — into Chinese view, and it circulated widely among educated men of the Ming dynasty. The translation of Euclid's Elements he produced with Xu Guangqi (first six books, published 1607) introduced Euclid's axiomatic geometry to the Chinese world for the first time, systematically; the Chinese terms for "point," "line," "plane," "parallel" and "right angle" are still in use today. And the Tianzhu Shiyi, written as a dialogue, argued that Catholicism and Confucianism were not irreconcilable. Taken together, Ricci was a missionary who used mathematics and geography as his calling card and cultural compatibility as his method. That the Jesuits gave the name of such a man to a university hall emphasising the balanced development of faith, learning and physique needs little further explanation.

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# 3. Founding and History: From 1929 to Today

In the 1920s, the Jesuits in Hong Kong served Catholic education through institutions such as Wah Yan College and decided to establish a hall of residence for their male students at the University of Hong Kong. Ricci Hall was accordingly founded in 1929 and officially inaugurated on 16 December that year^※, initially serving mainly students from Jesuit schools. The residents' self-governing body, the Ricci Hall Students' Association, was set up soon after in 1930^※ — a body that continues to represent residents to this day.

Expansion and renovation. In the early 1960s, the hall judged its original space inadequate and decided on renovation and expansion^※: the old wing was renovated in 1966, and the new wing was officially inaugurated on 8 December 1967^※, establishing the present five-block configuration. Two further full-scale renovations followed, in 1990 and 2015, steadily upgrading facilities, yet the main structure and corridor layout still largely follow the post-1967 form. This physical line — founded 1929, expanded 1966/67, renovated 1990/2015 — makes Ricci Hall the oldest surviving male hall of residence at HKU.

The beginnings of resident self-government. The Ricci Hall Students' Association was founded in 1930^※, barely a year after the hall itself — a sign of how early resident self-organisation took root here. The association would go on to organise the annual round of activities — the Gong Fight, dragon boat racing, the high-table dinner, the Anniversary Ball — and to act as the channel of communication between residents, the Warden, and the Jesuit body that runs the hall. The physical form of the hall has been renovated several times over nearly a century, but the two-part governance structure of "Students' Association + Jesuit Warden" has remained essentially stable — the institutional core of Ricci Hall's continuity.

One point of intersection with the wider history of the University is worth noting. When Stanley Ho enrolled in the HKU Faculty of Science in 1939, the Pacific War had not yet broken out; with the fall of Hong Kong in 1941, the University suspended operations, and that rupture affected all halls, Ricci Hall included. This article merely mentions the fact in passing and does not develop the wartime narrative; for the broader context, see welcome.md and university-hall.md.

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# 4. Architecture and Facilities: Five Blocks, Sixteen Corridors

Ricci Hall comprises five interconnected blocks providing around 120 single rooms, each with a balcony^※. The "five interlocking blocks" structure is no accident — as compiled on Wikipedia^※, the blocks were designed to connect so as to encourage interaction among residents. The whole hall is divided into sixteen corridors (known to residents as "dors"), each with six to ten rooms. The corridor is thus the basic unit of community life at Ricci Hall: residents of the same corridor live side by side, share the pantry at the corridor end, and develop corridor-based identities and friendly rivalries in inter-hall competitions, orientation activities and daily life. This "corridor culture" is the analogue of the "ten-floor culture" at st-johns-college.md — in both cases, a traditional HKU hall uses the living unit as the building block of community.

As for ancillary facilities, the hall provides^※:

• A dining hall
• A chapel (Our Lady Seat of Wisdom)
• Two libraries
• A billiard room and a music room
• A tennis court and parking
• A laundry, plus a pantry (with refrigerator) at the end of each of the sixteen corridors

According to the official CEDARS accommodation information^※, the hall also has common rooms, a multi-function room, outdoor activity space and sports facilities, with 24-hour security and daily cleaning of common areas. Single rooms are about 7 square metres and come with a bed, wardrobe, writing desk with reading lamp, bookshelf, chair, and wired/wireless internet; air-conditioning is charged per use. Overall fees start at about HK$17,000 per semester, covering accommodation and the meal plan; high-table dinners, in-room air-conditioning and laundry service are billed separately.

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# 5. Hall Character: Known for Sports

Ricci Hall is known for being sports-oriented among HKU halls and is traditionally one of the strong teams in inter-hall athletics. Residents are predominantly male undergraduates, and the hall culture values physical development and brotherhood — consistent with the CEDARS official aim, quoted earlier, of "balanced growth in brotherhood."

The hall motto, "Quantum potes tantum aude" — meaning "do all you can, and dare"^※ — is Latin for "as much as you can, so much dare"; the hall pairs it with the Analects phrase 「汝为君子儒，无为小人儒」 ("Be a scholar of the gentleman, not a scholar of the petty man"). The motto is of a piece with the Jesuit educational ideal of magis — the "more," the constant striving to do one's utmost and never rest on what has been achieved. That spirit runs through Ricci Hall's long tradition of competitive sport and its internal culture alike.

# High Table Dinner

The High Table Dinner, a tradition inherited from the English college system, is a formal occasion held regularly by the hall; out of respect, residents attend in suits, associate members also join, and guests share their life experience with residents over dinner — regarded as an important part of hall education^※. HKU CEDARS, in its hall introduction, also lists the High Table Dinner as one of Ricci Hall's signature events^※, alongside the Gong Fight and Champion Day. A meal, in other words, is never just a meal here: it is the idea of "residence as education" made literal at the dinner table. This high-table tradition shares a common origin with those of st-johns-college.md and university-hall.md, and together they form the English underlay of the HKU hall system — the conviction that residential life is whole-person education.

# The Gong Fight: An Annual Contest with Lady Ho Tung Hall

Against Lady Ho Tung Hall — the University's only female hall — Ricci Hall has developed a tradition that has run for decades: the "Gong Fight." (See lady-ho-tung-hall.md for the other side of the story.) The origins of the tradition have the flavour of a good anecdote: according to Wikipedia^※, Lady Ho Tung Hall once possessed a brass gong, used in the old days to summon residents to meals. In the 1950s, some Ricci Hall residents played a prank and stole the gong from Lady Ho Tung Hall. "Gong-stealing" has been an annual tradition between the two halls ever since: squadrons of Ricci freshmen come to seize the gong while Lady Ho Tung residents fight back with water bombs, usually every September.

According to the HKU Alumni Affairs Office^※, the tradition was also captured on film in the 1998 movie City of Glass (《玻璃之城》) — a love story across generations between a male protagonist from Ricci Hall and a female protagonist from Lady Ho Tung Hall. The director, Mabel Cheung, had herself been a resident of Lady Ho Tung Hall; filming happened to coincide with the demolition and rebuilding of the original Lady Ho Tung Hall building, so the crew invited genuine hall residents to appear in the film, leaving a visual record of the two halls' shared history; the Gong Fight scene in the film was subsequently continued on the open ground in front of the rebuilt Lady Ho Tung Hall. This cross-gender hall tradition is, alongside competitive sport, another important thread of community bonding in Ricci Hall culture.

# Dragon Boat Racing and the "Dragon Boat Swim"

Beyond sport, another signature seasonal tradition at Ricci Hall is dragon boat racing. According to Wikipedia^※, every year at the Dragon Boat Festival, residents take part in dragon boat races, giving themselves a release after the end-of-year examinations; after the races, residents often jump into the water for a "dragon boat swim," a rite of the season passed down through the generations of the hall. The dragon boat, together with the Gong Fight and the high-table dinner, makes up the annual cycle of Ricci Hall's seasonal, ritual-based events — and it is also a natural extension of the hall's sporting character into its internal culture.

# Orientation Socials and the Anniversary Ball

Beyond outward-facing events like the Gong Fight and dragon boat racing, Ricci Hall has its own traditions of self-organised social life. According to Wikipedia^※, each year the newer students organise social gatherings on different themes — an entry point for newcomers into the hall, and an occasion for senior and junior residents to connect informally. The hall also holds an Anniversary Ball among its celebrations. These resident-run events run in parallel with the Warden-hosted high-table dinner — the one formal and ceremonial, the other peer-driven and informal — and together they sustain the cohesion of this small male hall. They also mesh with the corridor-based structure of the hall: many events are entered, competed in or organised by corridor, which gives the "corridor culture" concrete expression in specific activities.

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# 6. Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Chapel: The Spiritual Core of a Catholic Hall

As HKU's only Catholic hall, Ricci Hall's religious life has a physical heart: the Our Lady Seat of Wisdom Chapel. According to Wikipedia^※, the chapel was established in the same year as the hall itself, 1929, and is run by the Jesuits; it is the everyday venue for the hall's religious activities. The hall badge itself carries the Jesuit imprint — the design derives from the armour of St. Ignatius of Loyola^※, the founder of the Society of Jesus, directly linking the hall to its founding order.

For Ricci Hall, "Catholic hall" is not merely a historical label but a lived identity written into daily space and governance alike: the chapel, the Jesuit warden, a hall motto paired with a quotation from the Analects, and a badge taken from St. Ignatius's armour all layer upon one another to give this hall a religious texture unmatched anywhere else in HKU's residential system. That sets it in illuminating contrast with st-johns-college.md, the other church-backed "non-directly-administered" hall, which is Anglican. One Catholic, one Anglican — together they are the two representatives of "church-affiliated, non-directly-administered" halls at HKU.

It is worth noting that, as HKU's only Catholic hall, Ricci Hall's religious identity is open rather than exclusive: according to CEDARS^※, the hall's stated purpose stresses residents' balanced growth in "spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, socially, culturally and physically" — listing the spiritual as one dimension among several, not as a condition of entry. In other words, the chapel and the Jesuit tradition constitute an atmosphere and a set of values, not a religious test for admission. That, in spirit, is precisely Matteo Ricci's own strategy of accommodation — cultural compatibility rather than forceful transplant.

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# 7. The Wardens: An Unbroken Line of Jesuits

For nearly a century Ricci Hall has been directly managed by the Jesuits, and every Warden has been a Jesuit — a tradition of "Jesuit governance" unbroken since the founding in 1929. As compiled from public records^※, the succession of Wardens runs roughly as follows:

This list is, in miniature, a history of the Jesuits' service in Hong Kong: the first Warden, Fr. Daniel McDonald, presided over the hall's founding and early years, while the gap in tenure between 1936 and 1947 — with Fr. Brian Kelly serving two separate terms — coincides exactly with the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and the suspension of the University. The long-standing practice of appointing Jesuits as Wardens means that Ricci Hall's governance has always been tied to the Society of Jesus as its founding body, rather than being assigned by the University administration as with most HKU halls — the staffing-level expression of its "non-directly-administered" independent status.

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# 8. Notable Alumni

According to Wikipedia^※, Ricci Hall's alumni include a number of prominent Hong Kong figures spanning business, entertainment, politics and culture:

As compiled from public sources^※, Stanley Ho entered the HKU Faculty of Science in 1939, funding his studies with a scholarship and graduating as one of the faculty's top students of his cohort. Because the Pacific War broke out and the University suspended operations, his studies could not be completed along the normal track, and he left for Macau instead; his early years are therefore often recounted in later popular biographies as a classic "turbulent times make a business talent" story. That framing, however, comes mainly from popular biographies and character sketches, with only limited cross-corroboration in official University archives; this article mentions it merely as background, and readers may verify the details against the original biographical sources themselves.

The list spans four fields: business, entertainment, politics and culture. That the two great founding figures of Cantopop, Sam Hui and James Wong, came from the same hall is a particular favourite of Hong Kong popular-culture history. Short as the list is, it confirms Ricci Hall's self-narrative of being built on sport and brotherhood — its alumni are not a concentrated pipeline into any one industry, but a set of public figures who each excelled in their own domains.

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# 9. Administrative Status

Unlike most HKU halls, which are directly administered by CEDARS (the Centre of Development and Resources for Students), Ricci Hall is directly managed by the Society of Jesus and is one of two HKU halls not directly administered by the University (the other being St. John's College)^※. This tradition of independent management dates back to the hall's founding in 1929. This "non-directly-administered" status means that, in matters of accommodation applications, hall rules and day-to-day management, Ricci Hall enjoys a wider margin of autonomy than HKU's directly run halls. As the managing body, the Jesuits can maintain their own religious and educational traditions while remaining within the overall framework of the University's residential system — the institutional basis for the hall's distinctly "church hall" identity even after nearly a century.

That said, the "non-directly-administered" status of Ricci Hall and St. John's College rests on different institutional mechanisms: St. John's College owes its autonomy to a dedicated ordinance (the St. John's College Ordinance, Cap. 1089 of the Laws of Hong Kong), which makes it a statutory body^※, whereas Ricci Hall maintains its independence through the church background and direct management of its Jesuit founders, with no dedicated legislation (see st-johns-college.md). Different routes, same destination: together they form the rare "autonomous pole" within HKU's residential system.

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# 10. Ricci Hall and the Jesuit Education Network

Ricci Hall does not exist in isolation; it is one link in the Jesuits' whole system of Catholic education in Hong Kong.

According to search compilations and Wikipedia^※, in the 1920s the Jesuits made it one of their educational priorities to establish a hall for Catholic male students at HKU, and Ricci Hall mainly takes in Catholic students from church-run secondary schools such as Wah Yan College (Hong Kong and Kowloon) and La Salle College — in effect, it is the "bridge hall" for graduates of these church schools entering the University.

Background note: This pipeline — "church secondary school → Ricci Hall → HKU" — gives Ricci Hall a distinctly religious and alumni-network character among HKU halls. With St. John's College (Anglican; see st-johns-college.md), it makes up the two representatives of "church-affiliated, non-directly-administered" halls at HKU.

The existence of this pipeline partly explains the relative stability of Ricci Hall's sporting rivalries and ritual traditions: students arriving from the same circle of church schools — especially the Wah Yan College system — already share school networks and a common school culture from their secondary years. That gives the hall an extra layer of "pre-existing familiarity" on which to build internal cohesion, unlike halls that must build their identities from scratch among students randomly assigned at the university level.

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# 11. Ricci Hall in the Genealogy of HKU's Traditional Halls

Placing Ricci Hall back into the genealogy of the four traditional HKU halls makes its character — "the only Catholic hall, known for sport" — clearer still:

In this table, Ricci Hall and St. John's College belong to the same class — "church-affiliated, not directly administered by CEDARS" — but their foundations differ: Ricci relies on the direct management of the Jesuit founding body, St. John's on a dedicated ordinance (see Section 9). By gender and hall character, meanwhile, Ricci Hall sits with University Hall as a male hall defined by a distinctive internal tradition: University Hall has its castle and "Three Treasures," Ricci its sport and the Gong Fight. For the evolution, expansion and quick reference of the whole HKU residential system, see the hall-system overview welcome.md and the residential-life feature ../21-residence-college-life/residence-and-hall-life.md.

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# 12. Frequently Asked Questions

Is Ricci Hall the oldest hall at HKU? Among male halls, it is the oldest surviving male hall of residence at the University, founded in 1929 and inaugurated on 16 December 1929^※. In terms of the longest continuous history of operating as an HKU hall, the laurel goes to St. John's College, founded in 1912 (see st-johns-college.md); in terms of the oldest building, it is the castle of University Hall, whose main structure dates from 1861 (see university-hall.md). There is, in other words, a "longest" in more than one dimension.

Why is it called a "宿舍" (hall of residence) rather than a "college" or "hall" in Chinese? Ricci Hall's English name is "Ricci Hall," which places it in the "Hall" category; "宿舍" (hostel) is simply its conventional Chinese name. Unlike St. John's College, which is a statutory "college" under its own dedicated ordinance, Ricci Hall has no dedicated legislation; its autonomy derives from the direct management of its Jesuit founding body.

What exactly is being fought over in the Gong Fight? A brass gong belonging to Lady Ho Tung Hall^※. The tradition began in the 1950s when Ricci residents stole the gong that Lady Ho Tung Hall used to announce meals, and it has since evolved into an annual contest between the two halls every September, with Lady Ho Tung residents fighting back with water bombs (see lady-ho-tung-hall.md).

Does Ricci Hall admit women? No. It is a male undergraduate hall^※, and this has not changed since its founding in 1929 — in direct counterpart to Lady Ho Tung Hall, the University's only female hall.

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# Further Reading

• HKU Hall System Overview — a full map of the University's residential system and quick reference to each hall
• St. John's College: HKU's Oldest Residential Unit — the other church-affiliated "non-directly-administered" hall, a contrasting case founded on a dedicated ordinance
• University Hall: Castle, Brass Staircase and a Century of Brotherhood — fellow traditional male hall, known for its castle and the "Three Treasures"
• Lady Ho Tung Hall: HKU's Only Female Hall — the other side of the Gong Fight, and the female pole in the genealogy of HKU's traditional halls
• HKU Residence and Hall Life — the dedicated thread on the hall system, resident culture and the residential framework
• Coat of Arms and Motto: Dragon and Lion, East and West — how Ricci's "scholarship bridging East and West" naming echoes HKU's self-image

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