Macau MAK Ka-fai (2016/BSSc in Journalism and Communication) MPhil student at School of Journalism and Communication, CUHK
On an ordinary Sunday in early May, I received an unexpected call from Vivian Tam, our School’s lecturer. “Yuen is leaving the School,” she told me. I was shocked. I never thought Yuen would resign.
“We have to organise a farewell event for Yuen,” said Vivian.
Vivian wanted to prepare a big surprise – a live show featuring the sharing by Yuen’s colleagues and Varsity’s alumni. The biggest surprise was that Yuen would be a host of this show which would be recorded as a gift for her.
But Yuen was, of course, kept in the dark, as Vivian lied a lot to hook her. She asked Yuen to help her film some teaching materials on anchoring on the big day.
During mid-July, key organisers of the event including the School’s teaching assistant Dennis Hui and another Varsity alumnus Rachel Cheung conducted interviews, edited clips, and prepared the scripts. I felt like doing MM all over again.
Of course, we did not fail on the screening day. Yuen was glad to see her old students, colleagues, and friends at the studio. She then hosted the show with Vivian, Rachel, and me, watching videos that showed various familiar faces she got to know in her teaching life.
In the clips, some of Yuen’s colleagues recounted how sensitive she had been to any possible crises which would threaten the core values of Hong Kong. They said Yuen always reacted promptly and spoke out.
Her old students also took the opportunity to say things that they did not dare to tell her in the past. A number of them mentioned Yuen had been “harsh” to them with her high expectations on students’ works. However, they said such difficult training eventually helped them realise their full potential. They also appreciated the high-quality works in the publication.
“I’d just work as hard as they do,” Yuen said in the show. This is so true. Varsity alumni would definitely remember how exhausted Yuen looked during edit weeks. She edited our stories meticulously. Yuen revealed that she had eaten a lot of potato chips in order to survive this “man-made disaster”.
Yuen said she would not reminisce about the edit weeks, but stressed she would miss the people at the School as well as the privileges of meeting young people, watching them grow, and walking with them in part of the journey.
Varsity has brought us a lot of memories: our university classmates, story budgets, pieces of reporting work, MM, layouts, special ops, Varsity dinners, junk food news awards, and many others.
But we could never have such a fruitful journey without Yuen.
You will be missed, Yuen.
P.S. I would also like to take the opportunity to thank all the people who took part in the farewell event or provided technical support: Vivian, Dennis, Rachel, Tony, Wing, Samuel, Amelia, Elizabeth, Piano, Zoe, Doris, Rammie, Benny, Yi, and John. Thank you so much!
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