Profile | Why Hong Kong’s leading education reformer is thinking of turning to TikTok
- Kai-ming Cheng talks about a life dedicated to preparing students for an ever-changing future
- He wants to consolidate what he’s been thinking and teaching into something tangible
Heading south: I was born in 1944 in Kunming (Yunnan province), in the area unoccupied by Japanese. I got the “ming” in my name from Kunming. With victory in 1945, our family moved to Shanghai, my mother’s home city. My mother’s sister was married to a rich businessman and I think he helped arrange for us to fly to Shanghai in a United States aeroplane. My father’s bosses at the bank decided to start an import-export company and my dad’s job was to manage the Hong Kong branch. In March 1949, we took a boat from Shanghai to Hong Kong.
We were in quite a good financial situation and after a brief stay at the Luk Kwok Hotel moved into a large flat on Shelter Street, in Causeway Bay. The flat overlooked the harbour and there were lots of boats in front of us. At night we could hear music drifting up from the boats and occasionally a gong was sounded to alert people to water thieves. The hillside behind us was covered in squatter huts.
I was impressed by the newspaper boy who, while riding his bike, could toss rolled-up papers onto the balconies of the flats above. My brother, Gary Cheng Kai-nam, was born in Hong Kong. He’s six years younger than me. My parents gave him the name Kai-nam – “nam” means “south”, because we went south to Hong Kong.
Second place: During the Korean war, my father’s company went into debt and he lost his job. He was unemployed and it was a tough time for us. We moved four or five times, each time to a smaller flat, until we moved into a room shared with three other families. It meant I moved from school to school, from St Mary’s Church Kindergarten, in Causeway Bay, to a Confucian school in Tsim Sha Tsui to a Christian school in North Point. I went to seven schools before I attended university.
When I was five, I won a picture book for my part in the school play. I showed my dad and he said, “It’s a very nice book, but your classmate is the champion, he got the golden key.” It was a formative moment for me and I always strove to be top of the class.
