People
Shue Yan's helmsman
Barrister Henry Hu Hung-lick is steadfast in steering the city's first private university that he and his wife founded into a new era, Dawn Law writes
SShue Yan's elevation to the status of the first private university in Hong Kong does not mean an end of the education mission of its founder Henry Hu Hung-lick, but the beginning of a new journey for him to build the strength of the institution. Despite the legendary accomplishment of the former college
after a struggle of more than 35 years, the 87-year-old president said it was not the time for him to retire yet. "Running Shue Yan is the greatest pleasure in my life. Wealth, status is just fleeting cloud. I, of course, wish to retire, but it is not the right moment. I can't leave on this occasion,” Dr Hu
said in an interview.
He said Shue Yan still had its inadequacies, such as not being as competitive as other publicly funded universities. He sees the need to build the strength of Shue Yan through closer cooperation with local, mainland and overseas universities. It was not the first time for Dr Hu, one of the top 10
barristers in the 1950s, to miss the chance of retirement. In 1971, when he was 51 and could have enjoyed a comfortable retirement with the savings from his prestigious legal job, he and his wife, Chung Chi-yung, who was a leading Chinese intellectual at the time, decided to establish Shue Yan College.
Since then, he has worked for another 36 years as a barrister in order to fund the self-financed institution.
"There was acute shortage of college places for the local form six students who aspired to go to university,” Dr Hu said.
"My wife and I both felt that young Chinese people needed high-level education. Meanwhile, we felt that Hong Kong's young people knew little about Chinese culture.”
From a small bungalow with only eight classrooms in Happy Valley in the 1970s to the present campus with four welldeveloped buildings in Braemar Hill, North Point, Dr Hu said they had crossed many hurdles over the past three decades. "This is a tough road, a thorny path. However, with our
unswerving determination, we overcome all the obstacles,” he said.
One of the biggest challenges was to insist on a four-year curriculum in 1978 when the government decided to offer subsidies for post-secondary colleges that adopted a three-year system. Baptist University and Lingnan University, which only had a college status at the time, accepted the offer, but Shue
Yan refused.
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Henry Hu Hung-lick holds his photo taken in junior school.