Car Sky Car Earth

June 27,1998
S.S. Lau

I was visiting the "Old Red and Blue" subpage on our site and was surprised to see an article uploaded from Ming Pao Daily News in that Mrs. Jiang, wife of the president of China, is to grace the Pui Ching Primary School and will attend the graduation ceremony on July 2, 1998. Now that is interesting news since for all the years we attended "Old Red and Blue", no one higher than the HK vice administrator of Education had ever come to Pui-Ching to look at us. On the other hand, we were doing quite well as a school as if we really didn't care if the HK Department of Education paid any attention to us. Of course, Only very few of us could get into HKU, but no one seemed to think it was a big deal. There were plenty of schools in the world that were happy to admit PC grads.

Now that Mrs. Jiang wanted, or someone suggested to her, to visit the PC Primary School, what do "we" have that others schools don't have? What do "we" have to offer that others do not? In other words, what value or propaganda value that Pui-Ching Primary School has over the others? (I assume all acts of high government officials are politically motivated). Is it because PC is labelled as a "Chinese School", therefore, it is a "favored" school. Those who went to PC know that we did not really received a "Chinese" education at PC. All science and math text books were in English. We even had "English Conversation" as an elective in senior high. PC was relatively well-known because of the successful stories, primarily in Science and Technology on an international level, of the PC grads, not because PC was a " Chinese" school which it was, only in a manner of speaking. I cannot figure out the motive or motivation of Mrs. Jiang's visit. Having said all these, the PC school officials may be pissed that I would question such a noble visit, especially questions from a guy who graduated some 39 years ago. Sorry old boys, this is just the way I see it. But can anyone tell me the reason behind the visit?

The Ming Pao article also cited the outstanding facilities at PC, including the library. Now that is also interesting since we only went to the library in our days to read Ming Pao, and in particular, read only one serial by Mr. kim yung. We all know what that serial was. Other than that I don't remember going into the library for anything else. At least the library was useful in that sense in our days. I wonder why the kids go to the library nowadays.

The article cited a few successful PC grads. These PC alums are all our contemporary, and many of us actually know them. They are all impressive and accomplished people.

The real strength of PC and the true joy for all PC grads are not because of Mrs. Jiang's visit, or how many successful stories our alums have, and least of all the PC library, it is the fact that we stand together, bonded by the "old red and blue " spirit. We have this loyalty and friendship and it is quite a friendship, not quite understandable to Ming Pao or anyone else.