S.H. Ho College: \"To Learn and to Practise with Utmost Sincerity,\" Ho Sin-hang, and the Fully Residential, Communal-Dining Model

At five o’clock in the afternoon on 8 April 1965, Ho Sin-hang convened an emergency meeting of the Hang Seng Ngan Ho board of directors — a run on the bank had brought it to the brink of exhausting its cash reserves. He decided on the spot to cede a 51% controlling stake in return for a capital injection from The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, allowing the bank to weather the crisis. More than three decades later, this banker — who had built his career on a philosophy of "serving the public and putting the customer first" — channelled a donation from the S.H. Ho Foundation into creating a medium-sized college of around 600 students on CUHK’s hillside campus. S.H. Ho College is one of the five new colleges established by CUHK from 2006 onwards. It stands adjacent to Morningside College, follows the same fully residential, communal-dining model, and takes as its motto 「文行忠信」 ("To learn and to practise with utmost sincerity"), a phrase drawn from the Analects of Confucius, "Shu Er."

This is a detailed, in-depth profile of S.H. Ho College, far more comprehensive than the entry found in the overview of this volume. It focuses on the college’s origins, benefactor, positioning, landmarks, and traditions. The history of this new college is still relatively brief; where publicly available material is limited, this account prefers omission over speculation.

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# I. Basic Facts

S.H. Ho College is one of the five new colleges established by The Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2006 onwards. It stands next to Morningside College, which was founded in the same year, and follows the same fully residential, communal-dining model. The two are often mentioned in the same breath. However, with a scale of about 600 students, S.H. Ho falls between Morningside (approx. 300) and the larger Wu Yee Sun and Lee Woo Sing Colleges (approx. 1,200), making it the "medium-sized" option among the new colleges.

According to the official CUHK website^※, S.H. Ho, Morningside, and C.W. Chu Colleges are the three fully residential, communal-dining colleges — all students reside in college and regularly share meals together. S.H. Ho positions itself around "whole-person development" and "value education." The college's official site^※ emphasises staff-student care and the full residential and dining experience within a small community. The college is situated on University Avenue. According to CUHK Info^※, it is a seven-to-ten-minute walk uphill from the University MTR station — moderately convenient by the standards of the new colleges.

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# II. Naming and Benefactor: Ho Sin-hang

# The Man: From Humble Apprentice to Financial Magnate

According to Wikipedia: Ho Sin-hang^※, Ho Sin-hang (1900–1997) was born in Macau, with his ancestral home in Shixi Village, Jiaotang Si, Panyu, Guangdong. His family struggled financially in his early years, and he had not yet started school by the age of ten. His parents sent him back to Shixi Village to attend a low-cost old-style private school (sishu). In 1926, he and a friend, Ho Yin, opened the Hui Long Ngan Ho on Shangxiajiu Road in Guangzhou, making him a boss for the first time.

On 25 February 1933, Ho Sin-hang and his friends Lam Bing-yim, Leung Chik-wai, and Shing Chun-lam co-founded Hang Seng Ngan Ho in Central, Hong Kong — the direct predecessor of what is now Hang Seng Bank. In 1960, Hang Seng formally became a public limited company under the name "Hang Seng Bank," increasing its registered capital to HK$30 million. Guided by a spirit of "serving the public and putting the customer first," Ho focused on small and medium-sized Hong Kong enterprises and the city’s general public.

During the Hong Kong-wide bank run of 1965, Hang Seng Bank saw its cash reserves nearly depleted. At five o’clock in the afternoon on 8 April of that year, Ho called an emergency board meeting and resolutely agreed to cede a 51% controlling stake as a condition for securing a capital injection from The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, allowing Hang Seng to ride out the storm. Under his subsequent leadership, Hang Seng Bank achieved double-digit annual business growth from the late 1960s onwards, becoming Hong Kong’s first listed bank in 1972. The "Hang Seng Index," which he spearheaded the compilation of, gained international recognition as a scientific and authoritative benchmark for Hong Kong stocks — the name "Hang Seng Index" would become one of the most frequently cited terms in Hong Kong’s financial markets. Its creator is the very banker whom S.H. Ho College commemorates.

# Donations and Philanthropic Footprint

According to public records, the S.H. Ho Foundation was established in 1970 and has donated to multiple higher education institutions; one campus of Hong Kong Baptist University is named the "S.H. Ho Campus." In 1973, Mr. and Mrs. Ho donated to the Hong Kong Buddhist Association to build a secondary school in Kwai Chung, New Territories, combining the "Sin" (善) from Ho Sin-hang's name and the "Tak" (德) from his wife, Li Koon-tak, to name the school "Buddhist Sin Tak Secondary School." In 1980, Ho and several Hang Seng Bank directors funded the establishment of "Hang Seng School of Commerce" to train business talent. In 1994, Ho, together with Leung Kau-kui, Ho Tim, and Lee Quo-wei, each donated HK$100 million to form the "Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation," which annually awards prizes to scholars with outstanding achievements in mainland China — a practice that continues today as one of the mainland’s significant academic awards.

According to Wikipedia: S.H. Ho College^※, in May 2006, CUHK accepted a donation of HK$170 million from the S.H. Ho Foundation to found S.H. Ho College. From its inception, the college adopted a model of "full residence and dining together," with plans to admit roughly 600 students. It is noteworthy that the college’s first Master, Professor Samuel Sun Sai-ming, though an academic leader, is himself an alumnus of New Asia College. A New Asia graduate presiding over this new fully residential college ensured that, from its earliest days, S.H. Ho was plugged directly into the historical lineage of CUHK’s collegiate culture (see Section VI for details).

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# III. The Motto: "To Learn and to Practise with Utmost Sincerity"

According to Wikipedia, the college motto is 「文行忠信」, from the Analects, "Shu Er": 「子以四教:文、行、忠、信。」 ("The Master taught under four heads: culture, conduct, conscientiousness, and trustworthiness.") "Culture" (wen) signifies classical learning; "conduct" (xing) means moral practice; "conscientiousness" (zhong) denotes wholehearted sincerity; "trustworthiness" (xin) means keeping faith with others. These are the four pillars of Confucian instruction. The college embraces this as its motto, hoping students will develop a balanced character across learning, conduct, conscientiousness, and trustworthiness, a vision that echoes the college’s emphasis on whole-person education and pastoral care within the communal dining system. A closer look at Ho Sin-hang’s life gives particular weight to the word "trustworthiness": during the 1965 bank run, he was willing to forfeit a majority stake to preserve the trust of depositors — this event serves as the most concrete historical footnote to the motto.

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# IV. Positioning and Landmarks

# A Medium-Sized Fully Residential, Communal-Dining College

S.H. Ho was among the first batch of CUHK’s new colleges to lock in the fully residential, communal-dining model. At about 600 students, it is small enough to maintain the intimacy of a community where "everyone knows everyone," yet slightly larger in scale than Morningside and C.W. Chu (roughly 300 each). All students live in the college and regularly share meals together on a weekly basis, with the Master and tutors also deeply involved in college life. According to CUHK Info^※, the college has two hostel blocks, Ho Tim Hall and Lee Quo Wei Hall, providing a total of about 600 residential places. The naming of these two hostels draws on other bankers from the same generation within the Hang Seng Bank ecosystem (Ho Tim and Lee Quo-wei were both important figures in the bank’s history; Lee Quo-wei was also a donor to the "Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation"), making the architecture of S.H. Ho College a microcosm of the Hang Seng Bank network’s personal connections.

# College Architecture

According to Wikipedia: S.H. Ho College^※, the college campus was occupied in 2012 and designed by architect Rocco Yim — like Morningside, Lee Woo Sing, and several other new colleges, it is the work of this same renowned local architect, giving this batch of new colleges a familial resemblance in architectural language. The college sits on University Avenue, located between the University Sports Centre and the high- and low-rise blocks of Chung Chi College’s Pentecostal Mission Hall Complex, adjacent to Morningside College.

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# V. College Traditions

• High Table Dinner: As a fully residential, communal-dining college, S.H. Ho regularly holds High Table Dinners, which form the core of its collegiate community culture. According to CUHK Info^※, students must achieve an attendance rate of over eighty percent at High Table Dinners, and must wear formal attire and arrive punctually. S.H. Ho is one of the stricter colleges in terms of High Table attendance requirements.
• Orientation and Capstone Courses: Year 1 students are required to take GESH1010, "S.H. Ho College Orientation Course," which includes a two-day, one-night wilderness camp. Year 3 students must take GESH4010, "S.H. Ho College General Education Capstone Course." Positioned near the beginning and end of university life, these two courses form a bookended design.
• S.H. Ho General Education: According to the Office of University General Education^※, the College’s general education programme is designed around its motto, emphasising value education and whole-person development.
• International Exchange: The college has established exchange programmes with 22 prestigious institutions worldwide, giving it a relatively comprehensive network for a college of its medium scale.
• The Concept of "Home" and the Canteen: The college canteen is operated by the Maxim’s Group, and the college consciously uses the ambience of a "home" as a design principle for its dining and communal spaces.
• Pastoral Care and Mentoring: Within the fully residential, communal-dining model, staff-student relationships are close; the mentorship scheme and pastoral care are a vital part of the S.H. Ho experience.

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# VI. Successive Masters

According to Wikipedia: S.H. Ho College^※, the Founding Master was Professor Samuel Sun Sai-ming (15 August 2006 – 1 August 2018), an authority on plant molecular biology and an alumnus of Lutheran Concordia School and New Asia College. A New Asia graduate presiding over this fully residential new college meant that S.H. Ho was, from its inception, connected to CUHK’s collegiate culture. The second Master was Professor Wong Wing-shing (1 August 2018 – 1 August 2022, a professor in the Department of Information Engineering); the current Master is Professor Vincent Mok Chung-tong (from 1 August 2022). The three Masters come from different disciplinary backgrounds — biology, engineering, and medicine, respectively — reflecting S.H. Ho’s orientation as a liberal arts college that embraces a plurality of academic perspectives.

For living persons, only neutral facts are recorded; the lists of past Masters are based on official and authoritative sources.

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# VII. Notable Alumni and Student Activism Context

According to relevant Wikipedia entries, among the alumni of S.H. Ho College are Chung Yiu-wa (student activist and former President of the CUHK Student Union), Lau Wing-hong (founder of the CUHK Localist Society), and Au Cheuk-hei (social activist and former President of the CUHK Student Union). These figures were active in the CUHK student movements of the 2010s and all originated from S.H. Ho. This observation has no official explanation, and this profile merely lists the alumni identities as a matter of record based on public Wikipedia data, without further extrapolation. As an institution, S.H. Ho College has no formal connection with the later political activities of these individual alumni.

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# VIII. Anecdotes and Apocrypha (Low Credibility)

Credibility Note: The content of this section largely consists of unverified campus folklore, word-of-mouth tales, and online forum gossip. It has not been corroborated by authoritative historical sources and has low credibility. It is provided solely for cultural and entertainment value and should never be cited as historical fact. Subjective judgements involving living persons are excluded entirely from this site; the following rumours do not correspond to any real individuals.

The "S.H. Ho vs. Morningside" friendly rivalry

Founded in the same year (2006), situated next to each other, and both pursuing a fully residential, communal-dining model, students playfully compare the two colleges, asking which is "more elite" or whose High Table is "more refined." Note: The two colleges have different emphases (Morningside is smaller and more internationally oriented; S.H. Ho is slightly larger). Rankings of "which is more elite" are subjective, informal comparisons without official basis; this site does not adopt them.

Confusion between "S.H. Ho College" and "Hang Seng University"

Because Ho Sin-hang was one of the founders of Hang Seng Bank, the public occasionally confuses S.H. Ho College at CUHK with "Hang Seng University of Hong Kong." Note: S.H. Ho College is a constituent college of CUHK; Hang Seng University is an entirely separate, independent private university. There is no affiliation between the two. The association arises simply from the "Ho Sin-hang/Hang Seng" connection. Claims that they are the "same institution" are a confusion and have low credibility.

The legend of "strict enforcement" of High Table attendance

Rumours circulate that the college enforces High Table attendance "extremely strictly, with lateness recorded as an absence," etc. Note: Public college materials do confirm a required attendance rate of over eighty percent and a requirement for formal attire. However, whether specific enforcement measures have been adjusted over the years or if any exceptions exist is not detailed by any authoritative source. The anecdotal accounts are often exaggerated and have low credibility.

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