Award-winning novelist, literary critic Dung Kai Cheung enjoys going to the former New Asia College Library on Farm Road in Kowloon. Not only are there many rare books belonging to the New Asia Institute of Advanced Chinese Studies, which grants research degrees, but its very shelves evoke the institution’s prominent place in history. Thanks to the high ceiling and wall of windows, the reading room is bathed in natural light. The windows look out onto a beautiful old tree and a round pavilion, which houses a lecture hall. Built by one of the earliest American-trained Chinese architects, Su Gin Djih, the modernist New Asia campus was designed to human scale with users’ needs in mind, a testament to the spirit of postwar Hong Kong. “I have nothing in my hands. There is no end in sight with this quest. Despite the difficulties, I press on” go the lyrics of the New Asia school anthem, commemorating the scholars and students working here to keep the Chinese humanist tradition alive in uncertain times.
Born in Hong Kong in 1967, Dung Kai-cheung is a Chinese-language fiction writer. He received his B.A. and M. Phil. in comparative literature from the University of Hong Kong. An author, journalist, playwright and essayist, Dung has written short stories and novels, and articles for more than 20 publications.