Nice to Have Benevolent Neighbors: Chinese Traditional Virtues in Hong Kong
- 2019
- News Updates
- Department of Literature and Cultural Studies
“Nice to Have Benevolent Neighbors: Chinese Traditional Virtues in Hong Kong” is a project supported by the Tin Ka Ping Foundation. The project is led by Professor Eric Yu Kwan Wai and assisted by Dr Aaron Shang Haifeng and Dr Egret Zhou Lulu, and executed by Mr Taylor Wong Hoi Tung from the Department of Literature and Cultural Studies (LCS). The project aims to promote traditional virtues to secondary school students by organising a wide range of activities, including a writing competition, a cultural camp, academic talks, a micro movie workshop and a competition. The purposes of holding these activities are to encourage teenagers to discover Chinese traditional virtues within their daily life, and to manifest these virtues creatively and critically through literature and drama. Hopefully, they could have a better understanding of Chinese traditional virtues in the current era.
The project received enormous support from both the teachers and students in local secondary schools. The first activity, Writing Competition for Secondary School Students, was popular among secondary schools. 86 secondary schools participated in the activity and 1,307 writing essays were received in total. The essay title was in a semi-open form to allow students to write someone a letter to express their perception of one specific Chinese traditional virtue, personality or philosophy. Three local famous writers, Dr Wong Leung Wo, Mr Mak Shu Kin and Mr Tsang Kam Yin, were invited to be the judges of this writing competition. The second activity was a cultural camp held in the 2018 summer. A total of 15 secondary schools and 45 students took part in this camp. An academic talk was delivered by columnist Mr Ngan Ka Hing, who is also on the Chinese subject panel from St. Paul’s College. Furthermore, a micro movie workshop was arranged for students by veteran multimedia producer Mr Benny Lau. The purpose of holding these activities in the cultural camp was to encourage our teenagers to discover traditional virtues and present them in a creative and visible way. The last activity was a micro movie competition. We were glad to have Mr Benny Lau, journalism, communication scholar Dr Kaman Lee, and Dr Egret Zhou Lulu of LCS who specializes in media and pop culture participating as judges of the competition. Better still, Dr Poon Po Chiu, a famous local writer and also the principal of Ju Ching Chu Secondary School (Yuen Long), was invited to deliver an academic talk during the ceremony of micro movie competition.
To run the activities smoothly, nearly 10 undergraduate and postgraduate students were recruited from the Faculty of Humanities. These student helpers participated in the project deeply through the whole process of activity planning, promotion and implementation. Through their participation, the students could broaden their horizons and accumulate useful experiences. Thus, the benefits of this project were also expanded to our students.
Micro movie workshop group photo
Writing competition ceremony group photo
Cultural camp group photo
