Professor Jao Tsung-I is an iconic figure, whose life has spanned two centuries and three political epochs (Republican China, colonial Hong Kong, and the modern People’s Republic of China). His own travels and reputation have spread across the continents of Asia, Europe, the Americas and Australia. In the first half of his life, he suffered the tragedies of his father’s death, the Japanese occupation, and exile from his own home. Since the age of forty, he has lived the relatively stable life of an academic, yet his career has still been enormously rich and multi-faceted. His close friends include the most prominent scholars, artists, and writers of his age. At the International Conference in Celebration of the 100th birthday of Professor Jao Tsung-I, the attendees presented a multigenerational panoply of international scholarship hard to match anywhere. He is a model for all of us.