One hundred years after the visit of the preeminent British philosopher Bertrand Russell to China, studies in modern Chinese intellectual history are still directly or indirectly concerned with the consequences this trip had for the Chinese scientific, philosophical and socio-political discourse in the Republican era and thereafter. With his personal and scholarly integrity, his polymathic erudition, progressive social ideas, and unbending fervour in his endeavours for freedom of thought and personal choice, Russell left an enduring imprint on numerous aspects of Chinese modern thought and society.