Tong King Sum

'Sculpture should stir the emotions in the same way as the resonance of drumbeats.'

Weakened and stunted by bone tuberculosis as a child, Tong King Sum has refused to be thwarted by his disability. He learnt to carve in his spare time while employed by Government Information Services. Thirty years later and now retired, he is an award-winning sculptor whose work can be seen in the permanent collections of museums in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Tong's favourite material is wood ('more sympathetic, more vital'). Despite his physical limitations, he characteristically expresses himself in large blocks of wood - the bigger the better - for he likes shapes that are bold and resolute. His displayed works, whether abstract or representational, undeniably evince a compelling power.

The impact of art, according to Tong, should be direct; like resonances set off by the beating of a drum, sculptures can evoke emotions and ideas without the need for interpretation or words.

Chu Hing Wah

‘How can one hope to touch others unless one is first deeply touched oneself?’

Chu Hing Wah’s artistic sensibility was first aroused in London in the 1960s, while he was training to be a psychiatric nurse. He lingered in the many museums there, and once back in Hong Kong he enrolled in adult education art and design classes.

The themes of his paintings derived from observation of mental patients and the contrast between what he judged to be their interior life and what he saw of their outward behaviour. All this was familiar from 24 years of psychiatric work and could be expressed accurately. After he retired, though, his interest diverged towards the scenes and actions of his surroundings — Yuen Long in the New Territories. He strived to communicate his own deeply-felt responses, and his palette became brighter and his style more abstract. Over the years Chu has garnered several painting awards and his work is collected by galleries and connoisseurs.

Eugene Pao

‘I want to urge local people to recognise jazz as a performance art.’

In 1994, Eugene Pao invited some of the world’s finest jazz players to participate in recording his debut disc of compilations. Jazz draws on traditions remote from Asian cultures; for a Chinese, playing his guitar alongside those luminaries was a milestone.

It was the culmination of years of wholehearted immersion in jazz, from absorbing its language and the styles of its most acclaimed figures to joining jam sessions at venues abroad to gain experience. In Hong Kong jazz used to feature as Muzak in restaurants. Pao never conceded any cultural barriers to enjoying jazz: he felt that slowly but inevitably its language would emerge. For 12 years he was its faithful promoter through performing at Hong Kong’s only Jazz Club. Thanks to such efforts, local aficionados are now increasing. From attracting an exclusively expatriate clientele in the early days, the Club was later patronised by mostly local patrons.

Helen Lai Hoi Ling

I don’t set great store by achievement and so, not minding failure, I am bold enough to blaze new trails.’

Refreshingly innovative, the City Contemporary Dance Company (CCDC) provides a lively foil to classical ballet and contributes to Hong Kong’s increasingly multifaceted staged dance scene. This is due, in no small part, to Helen Lai Hoi Ling.

Previously a dance director in television, Lai joined CCDC in 1979. In the last decade, she has directed and choreographed productions which mixed movement with drama and other forms of artistic expression. Many of them present themes that are both eclectic and relevant, being taken from the realities of urban living, whether they relate to social interaction or the impact of a changing city and its quickening rhythms.

Lai is a prizewinner several times over, having gained awards from Hong Kong Artists Guild and Hong Kong Dance Alliance, to name but two. She has no intention of sitting back, however; her watchword is ‘creativity, not complacency.’

Cheng Ka Lung

‘I am like a bird with outspread wings, soaring high in cyberspace.’

Helpless in a wheelchair, Cheng Ka Lung is a spastic who can no more control his limbs than speak. He can only move his head. Yet he does not feel confined; like a bird in flight, his mind roams freely, turning frequently to his favourite subjects — logic, physics and computing.

Internet technology is sometimes blamed for the isolation of modern life. Cheng’s situation has given this a new twist, for it is only through computers that he communicates at all. A therapist made him a helmet fitted with a long aluminium rod. With this, he types on a keyboard by nodding his head. This enables him to transcend his handicap, and he has gone on to design web pages for the Spastics Association of Hong Kong and to make friends online. Like his role model, Stephen Hawking, he can work and he does not lose hope.

Leung Mei Lan

'People used to look upon my son as a freak. But no matter what, Ah Wai is my own flesh and blood.'

Ah Wai is mentally handicapped. But although only moderately subnormal, as a hyperactive child he was such a handful that special schools, unable to cope with his unruly behaviour, expelled him time and again. Since Leung Mei Lan's overriding wish was to give her son whatever training he was capable of, she left no stone unturned to find him a suitable school.

In the social climate of the 1970s and '80s, a handicapped child, regarded as a disgrace, would sometimes be abandoned by the family concerned. Leung never for a moment considered this course, even though Ah Wai was rejected by her other children. Her tenacity has won Ah Wai the chance to lead a near-normal life. Ten years ago he was accepted into a voluntary agency's rehabilitation programme. Now 30 years old, he lives in a hostel and is employed in a sheltered workshop.

Dennis Lo Yuk Ming

‘I should like to do what no-one has done before; and I should like to go where no-one has gone before.’

Professor Dennis Lo Yuk Ming, still only 39 years old, is Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Medicine at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His meteoric career owes as much to his academic credentials — he studied at both Oxford and Cambridge — as to his groundbreaking research findings since returning to Hong Kong in 1997.

Until Lo ascertained that a foetus’s DNA could be found in the blood plasma of the pregnant mother, definitive prenatal tests to determine an unborn child’s genetic characteristics relied on the invasive extraction and analysis of foetal materials such as amniotic fluid, an approach which might increase the risk of miscarriage. Following Lo’s discovery, a new generation of non-invasive tests has become possible. Further accomplishments applying his DNA research to the field of oncology and transplantation have enhanced his already impressive worldwide reputation. All this, he claims, arises from an innate curiosity and scepticism: a researcher is an explorer, constantly venturing into the unknown.

Lo Wai Luen

‘Enter their lives, then lead them to the life in literature.’

A book by the philosopher Tang Junyi first convinced Lo Wai Luen that her métier lay in education.

Luo has been thoroughly true and unsparingly dedicated to her calling. After teaching in a secondary school, she lectured at the Chinese University until retiring in 2002. She has also been engaged in research on Hong Kong’s indigenous literature and, on her retirement, generously donated her 30 years’ collection of material to the university library.

She was always an advocate of teaching students according to their aptitude but without neglecting their emotional development. In her view, education is not just about instilling ideas; rather, it is a mental, social, and moral preparation for life. Her influence is such that a great number of her students have followed in her footsteps to become educators.

Ringo Lam Wing Kwan

'It is due to Hong Kong’s advantage that the database can include the press of China as well as Taiwan.’

Computers facilitate fast, selective access to huge volumes of information, including newspaper archives. But until 1990 Hong Kong’s Chinese media had no electronic repository of news items and features, offering only a crude system of records to journalists and researchers. In 1998 Ringo Lam Wing Kwan, experienced in Chinese language information technology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, teamed up with seven other engineers to set up a Web-based newspaper cuttings service for mainly corporate clients and libraries.

Without their strong sense of purpose, they could not have prevailed on all the newspapers to collaborate. It was no easy task, either, to collect and organise the data, some based on the Cantonese dialect, for computer search and retrieval. The leading position of Lam’s portal is shown by the technology prizes it has won and its having secured the participation of 350 news media throughout Greater China.

Edward Chan Yu Fat

'Culture is culture, whether the audience can hear or not.'

Although Edward Chan is hearing-impaired, he remains undeterred from being involved in dramatics. His inspiration was an encounter with an American Theatre for the Deaf in 1986. Three years later, he was acting with a similar company in Hong Kong.

More than anything, Chan wanted professional credentials for himself and his group. One way forward, he felt, would be to undergo proper training. But Hong Kong's Academy of Performing Arts could provide no facilities for those dependent on sign language. Eventually Chan and three of his colleagues set up the 'Theatre of Silence', undertaking every aspect of staging a play from scripting to performing. In the summer of 2000 they were invited to take a Chinese play, 'Fifteen Strings of Cash', on tour to San Francisco and Washington. Now Chan's most ardent wish is to win a scholarship to study drama at an American university

Simon Wong Tim Keung

'Through participation in theatre, children learn about right and wrong.’

Formed in 1996, Ming Ri Theatre Company is Hong Kong’s first professional drama troupe aimed at a young audience. Its artistic director, Simon Wong, initially trained and practised as a designer but has been involved in drama for 18 years. He is inspired by faith in the importance of the performing arts in children’s lives. Through enjoyable participation in production, role-playing and interactive drama, young minds absorb values that equip them for becoming members of a civil society.

The company has staged over 50 plays to date, including Cinderella and Journey to the West. Its activities have since widened to encompass puppetry, aesthetic education, and teachers’ training. Cultural exchange, actively sought, has culminated in collaborations with puppet theatres in China, the Czech Republic, and the USA. New York’s Lincoln Center became a partner in an arts education programme for Hong Kong schools launched in 2001.

Poon Tin chi

‘Happy teachers make for happy children.’

GCEPSA Whampoa Primary School is fortunate to have Poon Tin chi as its headmaster. A great hurdle in learning Chinese is the complexity of its non-alphabetic written form. To overcome this difficulty, Pun has long advocated innovative teaching methods and deployed proven textbooks, some of them developed by Hong Kong University professors, to help speed up word or character recognition.

For his primary one or primary two pupils, Poon exploits the educational potentialities of storybooks, preferring them to traditional texts. For English he brought in materials from Australia and New Zealand. He never forgets that learners assimilate at different rates, especially new immigrants’ children who have joined the school in increasing numbers in recent years, and who need a greater share of motivation and confidence-building than local pupils. Parents and teachers, too, are canvassed for their views; he knows that a happy learning climate benefits everyone.

Lu She

'When they were striving to their utmost, how could I give up?'

Lu She, from Jilin in northeast China, was a national-level ice-skater when an accident put paid to his competition prospects. In 1997 he was invited to coach in Hong Kong, where facilities and funding for the sport were extremely inadequate. Only commercially-run recreational indoor rinks existed.

The Hong Kong Skating Union had discovered two promising ice-skaters, Cordia Tsoi and Christy Ren. Lu trained them at odd hours, when the rinks were free of the teeming public, and even took them to practise in China during their school holidays. Many would have been crushed by such impediments, but, seeing their effort and the encouragement it gave to other aspiring skaters, he felt he could not succumb. In 2001 his two trainees attained selection for the Winter Olympics and, in a notable breakthrough for Hong Kong, were ranked 22nd in the short track speed skating event in 2002.

Luk Sai Kuen

‘My son has a doctorate from the University of Chicago,’

Born in rural southern China, Luk Sai Kuen lost his father when young and herded cattle until 1947, when he went to Hong Kong. He and his wife ended up in a 100-square-foot flat of a public housing estate. There they raised four children on a modest income from his cottage-style rubber factory.

Luk never regarded his children as extra hands for his factory. At a time when higher education for girls could not be taken for granted, he sent his eldest daughter to Hong Kong Polytechnic. His other three children graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Luk’s proud boast is that his eldest son is a landscape architect while his second is a university professor. Thanks to him, they have grown into independent individuals, empowered by education and effort to control their own destinies.

Chui Fu Lung

‘I live for the few who appreciate my craft.’

With infinite care, Chui Fu Lung wields his burin over the copperplate to incise an exquisitely detailed five-millimetre square picture of Tiananmen Gate. Engraving is deployed in the printing of paper money, stamps and security documents requiring safeguards against counterfeiting. ‘It calls for great precision,’ Chui explains. ‘When cutting, one cannot afford to make a mistake.’

There is no finer engraver in Hong Kong, or indeed south-east Asia, than Chui. Name cards and official invitations for former Governors as well as the incumbent Chief Executive have been printed from his plates. But with advances in printing, demand for engravings has waned, jeopardising the craft’s survival and commercial viability. Chui’s plea for the return of paper money printing to Hong Kong from overseas went unanswered. Engraving is a life-long passion for Chui, though, and he will not quit as long as there are people, however few, who value his craft.

Ocha

‘Dr Dog is really clever — one can be friends with her!’

‘A man’s best friend’ would be an apt description of Ocha, a canine which has won the hearts of the many she has helped. A 12 year-old, Ocha lost her sight in an accident but this has not marred her even-tempered and inquisitive disposition. She is also full of initiative, being ever ready to approach new places and strangers, particularly children.

Two years ago, Ocha was through her paces by Animals Asia Foundation and easily qualified for the 2002 ‘Dr Dog Devotion Award’. As Dr Dog, she visits children, the sick and the elderly, bringing them cheer and diversion. Ocha’s own handicap sends out a heartening message to disabled people. Ruby Li, a girl helped by Hong Kong Blind Union, adores playing with Ocha. She says, ‘Dr Dog is so lively and clever. I miss her and will have something for her to eat when she next visits.’

Fruit Chan

‘When I’m shooting I think: I will be a failure unless I finish this film.’

A film about juvenile delinquents adrift in a concrete landscape of public housing blocks, Made in
Hong Kong shot director Fruit Chan to fame overnight.

In the film industry since the early 1980s, Chan worked his way up from gofer to assistant
director. When he eventually directed two films, the studio nearly shelved them out of low
commercial expectations. Only his passion for filmmaking kept him from the easier option of
television work. Meanwhile he began accumulating the short-ends of unused film stock. By 1996,
having saved 80,000 feet, Chan shot Made in Hong Kong with a five-man crew, none taking any
pay. All those tortuous years of struggle and frustration burst out and made their mark on the
film, investing it with a gritty power.

Chan went on to win 14 international and local film prizes. His latest productions are Public Toilet
and Hollywood Hong Kong.

Law Yiu Kuen (Law Kar)

Culture is necessarily rooted in its native place.'

At university Law Yiu Kuen sometimes escaped the tedium of lectures by sneaking off to the cinema. Thus began his life-long interest in films.

In 40 years, he has run the gamut of a movie buff's preoccupations: reviewing for students' magazines, organising film societies, and blazing a trail for the screening of international films, particularly avant-garde features, in Hong Kong; he went on to espouse production research, training and the establishment of the Hong Kong Film Archive. In the 1970s he was involved in television drama, and in the early '80s he helped set the trend of a 'New Wave' genre of Hong Kong-made films. During the 1990s he contributed to the planning of Hong Kong's annual film festival. Through this he has rediscovered a new significance in early Cantonese films, finding in their social realism a key to understanding the roots of Hong Kong's culture.

Eric Fung King Hei

‘I have tried not to be constrained by circumstances but to live a rich and varied life. Only then can my music be rich and varied.’

Born in Hong Kong, Eric Fung King Hei grew up on a public housing estate in Sha Tin. His straitened circumstances cast a dark shadow over his musical studies in the USA from 1993, and he considered changing to computer science.

Through thriftiness and sacrifice, he stayed the course, to be dazzlingly vindicated when he won second prize for the piano and the title ‘Bach Prize Winner’ in the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition at Leipzig in 2002, the first Chinese to be so honoured.

Fung is now at the renowned Juilliard School in New York, with a career in music education in prospect. He emphasises that, competitions and performance apart, playing the piano is also about sharing the joy of music with an audience and hopefully with future students. His example shows that Hong Kong’s relative lack of opportunities for aspiring musicians need not be an insuperable obstacle.

Ravi Gidumal

‘What stumped me was that I should actually be discriminated against in Hong Kong, my home.’

Racism was always present in colonies, says Ravi Gidumal. In Hong Kong, the Chinese were its first casualties, but the habits of prejudice had a way of spreading and were to find other victims, such as Indians.

Born in Hong Kong and educated at an international school as well as an American university, Gidumal was destined for the family business. One day, he was refused admission to a bar on account of being Indian. Protest to the police and letters to the press failed to evoke any effective action. It was then that he and others formed Indian Resources Group, to lobby for the right of abode in Britain for ethnic minorities threatened with statelessness after the Handover. In 1997 Parliament finally allowed these minorities to apply for British citizenship.

Zunzi

'I hope my fervor for social issues remains forever.'

Zunzi became interested in cartoons at school. Later, it was a short step from graduating in art from the Chinese University to publishing his drawings in the local press. He made his name in 1983, when he took over as Ming Pao daily's political cartoonist.

A good cartoon incorporates elements of the rational as well as the emotional, Zunzi claims. Taking his subjects from current affairs, especially those pertinent to Hong Kong and China, his work in a mass circulation newspaper is highly influential in sharpening the public view of contemporary events and trends. Over a long period, as a running commentary on society, the cartoons can be read as a historical record.

Lately his artistic impulse has channelled him towards experimenting in other media such as paper and clay. He hopes nevertheless that his fervent desire to engage with social issues will remain undimmed.