【China Daily】A crossing worth its value

A group of people born between 1940s and 1970s who built their careers in Hong Kong say they owe their achievement to Huaqiao University in Fujian province. They look back fondly on their time spent at the school, which has traditionally welcomed overseas Chinese students, many from Hong Kong.

 “I realized that only education could change my as well as my family’s fortune. But at that time only elites went to university. I thank Huaqiao University for giving me access to higher education,” said Frank Ko who runs Earth Products China Limited, a supplier of construction instruments based in Hong Kong.

Before the 1980s, Hong Kong had just two universities: the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Studying overseas was unaffordable by many. Huaqiao University was one of the two schools on the mainland welcoming applicants from Hong Kong, Macao and overseas. The other was Jinan University in Guangzhou.

Ko and his father immigrated to Hong Kong in 1982, hoping to escape poverty. His mother was denied visa due to the quota imposed on immigrants. He scraped by with a meager income, doing odd jobs that local residents shunned. At night he slept on his friend’s sofa. Fed up with hovering at the bottom of society, Ko realized only knowledge could turn his life around.

Ko enrolled in Huaqiao University in 1983, majoring in industrial and civil architecture. Back in Hong Kong, he was assigned by a decoration company to supervise the embellishment project for a five-star hotel in Fuzhou, Fujian province. At the time, in the mid-1980s, only a few people had professional knowledge integrating construction and interior decoration.

Ko had an edge as he had exposure to the mainland. “Even in the late 1990s Hong Kong people thought of the mainland as poor and backward,” remembered Ko. “So the company was looking for a candidate like me who was not afraid of living there.”

Soon afterwards he had a better offer. He was appointed foreman of a construction project in Stanley.

For the first several years he drew a modest salary from the company he now owns. “It’s the four-year study that gave me a specialty and a ticket to success. At that time when university graduates were few, my university qualification made me stand out,” said Ko.

He has fond memories of fraternizing with classmates. “I brought a lot of snacks and milk formula from Hong Kong. My roommates were excited as they never saw them before. We tucked in the food happily and finished everything within a week,” Ko giggles.

They still get together at a “secret base” at regular intervals. Huaqiao University’s Hong Kong Alumni Association was founded by Winnie Lee Pik-tsong and other alumni in 1998.

Lee was a student of medicine at Huaqiao University from 1964 to 1970. Now she is the president of Konew Financial Express, a leading property financing company in Hong Kong.

“Many Hong Kong graduates of the school asked us to help them find their classmates whom they missed for so long,” says Lee. “The alumni association acts as a contact book that connects us and as a meeting place where we can bond with one another.”

Two years after graduation, Lee followed her husband to Hong Kong. She worked as a nurse with a public hospital for a year before opening a private clinic specializing in acupuncture and Western medicine.

Lee says many of her classmates who also immigrated to Hong Kong after graduation managed to become Hong Kong-registered doctors. Some are working as physicians or orthopedists in public hospitals including Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Kwong Wah Hospital.

Lee has donated millions of Hong Kong dollars to build a dormitory building in Huaqiao University, and an academic building under construction for students of arts.

Easy passage

In the late 1980s, Huaqiao University took a more active step to attract Hong Kong youth by organizing enrollment lectures in Hong Kong and recruiting students on the spot.

Ng Sze-wai, who attended the enrollment lecture, took to the university immediately. Now he is an assistant general manager with a Hong Kong bank.

Ng was born into a business-owning family and was expected to study business administration. When he got to know Huaqiao University was offering a major in the subject, he decided to go for it.

As it was a new major, the curriculum was still evolving and teachers were inexperienced. Ng remembers the textbooks they used were those followed at HKU and CUHK and universities in Taiwan. “That was not a bad thing,” said Ng, “Because of that we developed a comprehensive outlook on the subject, which proved to be instrumental for my career.”

Nowadays the university works closely with Hong Kong secondary schools, looking for promising students.

More and more Hong Kong youths are looking to the mainland to complete their tertiary education. Huaqiao University, with its long history in welcoming and taking special care of Hong Kong students, is a popular destination for many of them.

The number of Hong Kong freshmen enrolled in the school jumped from 219 in 2011 to 312 in 2015, said Hong Xuehui, director of the Admissions at Huaqiao University. The number of Hong Kong students going for the preparatory course is more than 80 this year, up from 40 in 2011, said Kang Zhenhui, associate director of Hong Kong office of the university’s board of directors.

“More Hong Kong youth are moving northward as they see the potential of the huge chunk of market and stronger economy. If they spend the four-year stay in a mainland university networking with people from all walks of life, the experience would have a far-reaching influence and pave the way for their career,” remarked Kang.

《China Daily》Tuesday, January 12, 2016