Professor Robert S. H. Liu received both his college education (in Texas) and graduate training (California Institute of Technology) in US. However, he was able to incorporate his Chinese educational background into his conduct as an academician in US. In this article, he first described his respect for and detailed his close interactions with his Ph. D. mentor, the well-known physical organic chemist George S. Hammond, whose insight led to the Hammond postulate that has been quoted in every organic chemistry textbook. Their friendship of more than forty years is almost akin to the master-apprentice relationship in the old Chinese days. Then he proceeded to describe his way of interacting with the young students in his classrooms and in his research group. Sprinkled throughout the discussion were Chinese proverbs or simple phrases that became applicable in situation in US as well as in China.
Initially, the article was written for the benefit of Prof. Liu’s students, but later a few close friends of his also received copies of the paper. I was one of the early ones who received such a copy. I thought the paper contains useful instructional values to the Chinese students in general and encouraged Prof. Liu to modify the paper for its publication in a Chinese journal. The current article you see here is the final product. We are grateful to the editors for their willingness to consider simultaneous usage of both English and Chinese, which is an important part of this paper. I hope the readers will enjoy reading the article just as much as I did.