Prof. CHING May Bo (程美寶)

B. Soc. Sc. (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, with First Class Honors)
M.St., D.Phil. (The University of Oxford).

CHING May Bo is currently a Professor of History at the Department of Chinese and History, the City University of Hong Kong, and the “Distinguished Professor of the Pearl River Scholars” of Guangdong Province (Sun Yat-sen University). For the past eighteen years, she has been working at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou. She has published extensively on a variety of subjects relating to social and cultural history of modern China. Her book Regional Culture and National Identity: the shaping of “Guangdong Culture” since the late Qing discusses changes in the articulation of regional identity against the rise of nationalism at the turn of 19th and 20th centuries. In recent years, she has been examining how the regional culture of South China took shape in a trans-regional context in terms of sound, colour and tastes from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

• Lingnan’s Cultural Traditions and Heritage
• Searching for Cultural Identity
• History and Heritage of China
• History of Hong Kong

• Social and Cultural History of Modern China
• History of South China
• Historical Anthropology

Awards (since 2000)

• Outstanding teacher of South China, awarded by Guangdong Provincial Education Department, 2000
• K.C. Wong Fellowship, British Academy, affiliated to Oxford University, 2002
• Fulbright Scholar, affiliated to Yale University, 2003
• Swire Fellow, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, U.K., January-March 2008.
• Guangdong Provincial Book Award (1st rank, Philosophy and Social Sciences), for books published in the years 2006-07, issued 2009.
• Distinguished Professor of the Pearl River Scholars of Guangdong Province (Sun Yat-sen University), 2011-

• Hong Kong Palace Museum Board Member (March 2024- )
• Intangible Cultural Heritage Advisory Committee, member (2018- ); Chair of the Sub-Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage Items, (2021- );
• History Sub-committee Member, Museum Advisory Committee (Hong Kong, 2016-2018)
• Member, Advisory Committee on Built Heritage Conservation,
  Secretary for Development (2023- )
• Antiquities Advisory Board Member, Secretary for Development (Hong Kong, 2017-2022)
• Urban Renewal Fund Director, Secretary for Development (Hong Kong, 2017-2023)
• Cantonese Opera Advisory Committee Member, Secretary for Home Affairs (Hong Kong, 2016-2022)

• Editorial Board Member, Journal for Maritime Research (UK, 2010-)
• Editorial Board Member, Frontiers of History in China (China, 2009-)
• Editorial Board Member, Journal of History and Anthropology (Hong Kong, 2001-)