EDUCATION IS PRIZED in Hong Kong for the practical reason that it helps people get good jobs, and entry to the top schools can lead to getting the very best ones.
St Paul's Co-Educational College is the alma mater of Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, Secretary for Education and Manpower. Charles Kao, a pioneer in fibre optics and former vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, attended St Joseph's College. Wah Yan College Hong Kong is where the Chief Executive, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, studied.
As for Queen's College, now located in Causeway Bay, it has educated the largest number of academically brilliant students, accounting for a quarter of all students gaining 10 straight As in the HKCEE examination in the past 15 years. Alumni include Chief Secretary Rafael Hui Si-yan and Secretary for Justice Wong Yan-lung. Philanthropist Sir Robert Hotung (1862-1956) supported Queen's for decades and today, another alumnus, Henry Fok Ying-tung, supports it by way of donations and through personal contact with students and staff.
So greatly did Sir Robert respect Queen's and its first headmaster, Dr Frederick Stewart, that he maintained and visited Stewart's grave in Happy Valley to the end of his life. The Hotung family continues to do so.
Alumni became clerks and compradors, merchants and magistrates, legislators and philanthropists, revolutionaries and reformers, including Dr Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese Republic, Tang Shaoyi, its premier, and Sir Kai Ho Kai, first Chinese general practitioner in Hong Kong.
There is controversy, though, surrounding what should be done with the original Queen's site between Hollywood Road, Aberdeen, Staunton and Shing Wong streets.