Growing with Hong Kong: Celebrating HKSAR 25th Anniversary

He Yanhui: Anti-Occupy Central was a life-changing event for me

I have been in Guangzhou since I was a child. I used to take the train from Guangzhou East to Shenzhen, and transfer to Hong Kong from the Luohu Pass in Luohu District of Shenzhen. I remember the dense flow of people at Luohu Pass, and the potential hazard to safety and security. Normally it would take about three to four and a half hours to pass. In 2018, the Hong Kong-Shenzhen high-speed rail was opened. It was the first time for me to take the high-speed rail from Guangzhou South directly to Hong Kong’s Kowloon Station. It was really a convenient and high speed for me, I was literally shocked to see all these. It was so convenient that you can go directly from Guangzhou South Railway Station to Hong Kong and its city center.

I remember the first time I took the high-speed rail, my father picked me up in Hong Kong, after getting off the train, I gave my father may be the first very happy hug in life, and it was a great memory.

Anti-Occupy Central movement in 2014 was a life-changing event for me. My father took me all the way from Admiralty to Causeway Bay and Central just so I could witness these historical events. I remembered seeing lots of people sitting outside after checking out the Admiralty subway station. Very few of them were agitated, most young people just sat there quietly. But the biggest shock to me was not the scenes I saw on site, but the different news reports I saw later from media outlets of the mainland, Hong Kong, and the west. I found that the reports on this matter followed different approaches, and chose different angles. I was curious about this, why was the same story told differently? The study at the School of Journalism at the Communication University of China helped answer many of my questions about this matter and the mechanisms of news coverage. Now, I’ve become a doctoral student, and I’m still researching in similar problems.

I’m thinking of teaching in the mainland, or working here as a scholar in a university. The growth of the Greater Bay Area over the past few years has brought about tremendous opportunities for me. I think the whole mainland is expanding its admission of doctoral students and scholars from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. In Xiamen, there are many universities that welcome scholars or doctors from Taiwan to work as teachers there. So for me, the possibility of securing a teaching job in the Greater Bay Area has become more appealing over the years.