Ms Daisy HO's video message to QC160 – The QC Character

2022.05.13

Following is the video message by the Chairman and Executive Director of SJM Holdings Limited, Ms Daisy HO Chiu-fung, to Queen's College 160th Anniversary (QC160) today (May 13):

The QC Character

Principals, teachers, parents, Old Boys, students, ladies and gentlemen,

As the daughter of an outstanding Old Boy (Honorary Permanent President of Queen's College Old Boys' Association, Dr Stanley HO Hung-sun) of the first public school in Hong Kong, it gives me privilege as you count me in the QC family. After all the hardship of COVID-19, you can now come together, with social distancing, to honour another milestone of QC. Rescheduling celebrations must be a toiling job, but that is exactly the QC motto and indeed my father's passion for QC throughout his entire life, which tied in with the theme of your anniversary – "serving the community".

I was excited to take a look at your school's records to know more about my father's life as a QC boy. I can easily identify him in a dozen of chapters, in which he was once described as "lively, handsome and younger than most of his classmates". From scraping through the exams to working with a will, from seeing patients queuing for a dentist to looking at Belilios girls in a new haircut, from getting a government scholarship to pursuing science in the University of Hong Kong (HKU), from his career in Macau to tremendous contributions to the country, Hong Kong and Macau, I shall stop short here to let you see for yourselves how life almost one century ago was as interesting as my father's words of wisdom and humour.

These stories are never ending, so as your predecessors' sense of service to QC and the community in the past 160 years. When we flip through "The Yellow Dragon", the first Chinese school magazine in Hong Kong first published in 1899, you will find lots of outstanding figures across generations of Hong Kong. Your Honorary Advisers come from diverse professions. As products of this grassroots school for everyone, they ascend the social ladder and become your role models in giving of ourselves for the greater good, especially in this epidemic. This is the QC character Hong Kong should embrace.

The schooling here is therefore key to "moulding your manhood, your mind and your bodies" as laid down in the full version of your School Song. I am immensely delighted to be joined by your former Principals today. Their visionary leadership alloyed with illustrious hard work of so many teachers brought QC to where she is today as the cradle of leaders of tomorrow. Coupled with staunch support from Old Boys and parents, I have every confidence that you will continue to chant the QC melody in the face of uncertainties and challenges.

It brings me warmth in particular when I read what my father said about the time when he switched from arts to the new Faculty of Science at the HKU, and I quote. "I am very grateful for my years in Class 2 and Class 1 at Queen's and for my time at the University. I learned to be independent. I learned the meaning of life. I had a very good Headmaster and teachers at Queen's. I was happy there." QC boys, I hope you are too.

My family is honoured that our father played a part in the many QC stories. "A lucky person's lifetime is cured by childhood, while an unlucky person's lifetime is spent curing childhood." QC boys are all fortunate for you have the best brotherhood of the city. I look forward to more people of Hong Kong to be touched by the QC stories and healed by the QC therapy in both the best and worst of times. Thank you very much.

Queen's College Old Boys' Association
May 13, 2022