Winter Issue, 2010

60 Woon Tsui Yuen-fong 徐婉芳 (BA 1966; MA 1969) Estella Chan Cheung Wai-yee 張慧怡 (BA 1966; CertEd 1972) Lily Ho Shiu-hing 何韶興 (BA 1966) Violet Tang Wai-chu 鄧惠珠 (BA 1966) Esther Yeung Shuk-wah 楊淑華 (BA 1966) “This highly readable collection of memoirs captures the voices of six former classmates of diverse family backgrounds, who spent five formative years (1956-61) studying in a government-run secondary school for girls in Hong Kong. The poignant details fill the gap in the existing literature on the cohort of women growing up in immediate post-War Hong Kong, with its initially low living standards, over-crowdedness, severe water rationing, poor sanitation and epidemic of infectious diseases. Scattered like seeds of the banyan tree to different parts of the world (Hong Kong, Australia, United States, Canada) since secondary school graduation in 1961, these university-educated women gather together in cyberspace half a century later to share their life stories. Each takes centre stage to describe how she, armed with the resilience and work ethics learnt in childhood and early adulthood, struggled to overcome obstacles including racism and sexism, and carve out a niche for herself in Hong Kong or abroad amidst drastic social, economic, and technological changes in the late 20th and early 21st century.” Abstract from The Spreading Banyan: Memoirs of Hong Kong Women At the 40th Anniversary of the HKU Alumni Association, British Columbia, Dr Woon, Professor Emeritus, Department of Pacific and Asian Studies, University of Victoria, Canada, shared with us a recent publication The Spreading Banyan: Memoirs of Hong Kong Women . The book was written by five alumnae and Ms Suen Lee Yun-ling, all former classmates at Belilios Public School.