The Nine-College Orientation Camp Divide: Four-College Rallies, Three-Hundred-Student Colleges and Mandatory Communal Dining

One university, yet nine orientation camps that look nothing alike: New Asia's freshmen trek to the old campus site on a hillside to play games and learn college history, while C.W. Chu's three hundred new students already know before camp begins that for the next four years they will eat dinner together three nights a week. CUHK's college system is often flattened into "general education courses plus dormitories", but orientation week is precisely the moment when college differences first land on incoming students. This article does not touch on the controversies over game conduct (see The Orientation Camp Complete Archive); it compares the size and format of the nine colleges' orientation camps strictly by founding era and institutional design.

CUHK has nine member colleges, but they were not born at the same time: New Asia College, Chung Chi College and United College^※ each established themselves between 1949 and 1956, and in 1963 the three merged to form CUHK. Shaw College joined in 1986, and together the four are known as the "four old colleges". For nearly two decades after that, no new colleges appeared — until 2006 and 2007, when S.H. Ho, Morningside, Wu Yee Sun, Lee Woo Sing and C.W. Chu colleges were successively endowed by private donors, known collectively as the "five new colleges". This chronological line cuts through more than just university history; it cuts through the organising logic of the orientation camps themselves — student intake, residential arrangements and admissions methods all differ across the nine colleges, and the first week of camp is where those differences first show themselves.

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# Why the old colleges' camps always "look back at history"

# Why New Asia's camp walks to its old campus

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry for New Asia College^※, the New Asia orientation camp is usually held over four days in the final days of August. During the afternoon "city exploration" session on the second day, some groups set out from New Asia Middle School — the very site of New Asia College's campus from 1956 to 1973, still in use as a secondary school building in Kowloon today — and work through a series of games to learn about the college's history: from Kweilin Street, to Farm Road, and then on to Ma Liu Shui in Sha Tin. This "taking freshmen back to the old site" design has no counterpart among the five new colleges, because they have been on the Sha Tin campus since the day they were founded. There is no "pre-relocation history" to trace.

# The "Four-College Rally": a shared ritual of the four old colleges

The same entry records that on the afternoon of the third day, New Asia, Chung Chi, United and Shaw — the four colleges founded before 2000 — hold a "Four-College Rally" (四院会师), after which all participating freshmen gather for a group photo. It is a cross-college orientation ritual that belongs exclusively to these four older colleges; the five new colleges, with their smaller sizes and different admissions channels, have never been folded into this joint tradition.

# Shaw College: scaled-up orientation for 300-plus

Shaw College is the youngest of the four old colleges, founded only in 1986, yet it is among the largest of the nine by student body. According to the official Shaw College orientation camp page^※, the camp is usually held in late August with more than 300 local and non-local freshmen taking part, featuring an opening ceremony, welcome dinner, city-wide treasure hunt, campus treasure hunt and variety show. Two full-time officers (Tina Deng and Alex Yip) coordinate the arrangements — this practice of assigning permanent college staff to anchor the camp reflects how, for a large college like Shaw, orientation has become highly institutionalised and routine, no longer relying on student volunteers building the whole thing from scratch year after year.

# United College: camp as just one of the "four signature traditions"

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry for United College^※, United College was formed in June 1956 from the merger of eight private post-secondary institutions, with Dr. Chiang Fa-hsien serving as its first president; its original campus stood at 147 Caine Road in Hong Kong before moving to Sha Tin along with CUHK. The college's big O (orientation camp) likewise runs in late August for three to four days, but what sets United apart is that the camp is not an isolated annual event — it is one of the college's "four signature traditions", alongside Foundation Day (in October, lasting about two weeks, featuring a campus cross-country run, a Secret Angel game, a carnival fair (大笪地) and a thousand-person banquet), the College Singing Contest (in January), and the Principal's Cup (February to April). The groupmates you meet at camp often reconvene two months later at Foundation Day's thousand-person banquet — this tight "camp-to-foundation-day" linkage is a calendar structure that distinguishes United from the other old colleges.

# Chung Chi College: three days two nights, six groups and the "night talk" tradition

According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry for Chung Chi College^※, Chung Chi was founded in February 1951 on the initiative of Bishop Ronald Owen Hall, together with Li Ying-lam (Ying Lam Lee), former president of Lingnan University. A thanksgiving service was held at St. John's Cathedral on 2 October 1951, and classes formally began on 3 October. It is the only CUHK member college with an explicitly Christian background — its Chinese name means "to exalt Christ". According to the CUTSA "Complete College Handbook" chapter on Chung Chi^※, the Chung Chi big O usually runs in late August to early September for three days and two nights. Freshmen are first divided into six large groups, each subdivided into six smaller groups, with roughly 15 team leaders ("group dads and group mums") assigned to each. Signature sessions include the "main session" (主节), which uses light games to help freshmen understand how university life differs from secondary school and ease the psychological transition; and the "night talk" (夜话), which begins around midnight, when groupmates and team leaders sit around chatting, playing cards and snacking until four or five in the morning — the camp's most emblematic late-night tradition. The handbook makes a point of its inclusive design: even freshmen who do not understand Cantonese need not worry, because "three leaders are assigned to each group, so there will always be someone to translate for you".

Immediately after Chung Chi's camp comes the "thousand-person banquet" (千人宴) — the college's largest annual event, for which the organisers rent Lingnan Sports Ground, erect a large stage, and the whole college gathers to watch performances and "drink alcohol and snatch food" with hallmates. This pairing of camp and banquet, together with the Ying Lam Hall tradition in Chung Chi's residential culture whereby "every hall resident has a personal nickname, and residents address each other by nickname rather than given name", forms a sustained sense of belonging distinct from the other old colleges — one built not in the three days of camp, but reinforced through a full year of nickname culture and an annual feast. Chung Chi is also one of the few old colleges to hold group interviews at the admissions stage, setting it apart from New Asia, United and Shaw, where applicants are assigned purely by preference form with no interview.

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# The new colleges' camps: small classes, full residency and interview admissions, and their knock-on effects

# The "three-hundred-student colleges": the size logic of C.W. Chu and Morningside

Among the five new colleges, C.W. Chu and Morningside present a temperament wholly different from the old colleges' camps, and the root cause lies in their founding size design. According to the official CUHK introduction to C.W. Chu College^※, the college was established in 2007 through private donations, with campus accommodation for up to three hundred students, and formally began operation in 2012. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry for Morningside College^※ and related sources, Morningside was likewise established in 2006 with an HK$100 million donation from the Morningside Foundation and Morningside Education Foundation, and likewise operates on a small scale of around three hundred students.

A body of three hundred means that C.W. Chu and Morningside's camps are naturally small-class affairs — the number of freshmen is nowhere near that of a single Shaw camp, and the ratios of team leaders to freshmen and the degree of familiarity college staff can achieve with each individual are simply not on the same scale as large colleges like New Asia or Shaw with more than three thousand students. According to the official "Introduction" page of C.W. Chu College^※, the college highlights that "staff members know every student by name" as one of its defining features — a closeness that begins with that first contact during orientation camp.

But a "three-hundred-student college" does not mean a homogeneous intake, nor a uniform measure of scale. According to consolidated public sources, Morningside College designed its freshman structure from inception on a ratio of roughly "one-third local, one-third international, one-third mainland Chinese students (about 100 of each)" — the most internationally oriented design of any of the nine colleges. S.H. Ho College (named after Ho Sin Hang, one of the founders of Hang Seng Bank; established in 2006 with an HK$170 million donation from the S.H. Ho Foundation, welcoming its first freshmen in 2010) takes a different route to internationalisation — according to the CUTSA college handbook chapter on S.H. Ho College^※, the college's "degree of internationalisation is low, with most students being local or from mainland China". Of its two residential blocks, Ho Tim Hall "is predominantly local residents" while Lee Quo Wei Hall "has a relatively high share of mainland students". According to consolidated public sources, since 2012 S.H. Ho has maintained a full complement of 600 residents (across Ho Tim Hall and Lee Quo Wei Hall), of whom roughly 450 are local students and about 150 are from mainland China or overseas — a local-to-non-local ratio of about 3:1. That is higher than the roughly 20% non-local share across the old colleges such as New Asia and United (see mainland-students-and-tensions.md), but well below the "one-third each" design Morningside deliberately pursued.

Both are "small colleges" of under six hundred, yet Morningside and S.H. Ho's freshman compositions are almost opposites — and so, as a result, are their camps' language environments and icebreaking approaches. Morningside's camp must naturally accommodate multilingual communication, while S.H. Ho's camp handbook reminds local students that "mainland classmates unfamiliar with Cantonese may find things difficult" and that team leaders need to take the initiative in looking after linguistically disadvantaged freshmen. S.H. Ho's camp runs four days and includes City Hunt, CU Hunt, large-group "Beat" performances and various outdoor games, plus a late-night "night talk" session — attendance is compulsory barring force majeure.

# What follows the camp: mandatory communal dining

The biggest institutional difference between the new and old colleges' camps lies not in the camp activities themselves, but in the living arrangements that kick in immediately afterwards. According to the CUTSA Complete College Handbook chapter on C.W. Chu College^※, C.W. Chu's big O is compulsory, officially framed as "a good opportunity to get to know Hong Kong people". More crucially, the "O-mate" bonds formed within camp groups carry over into mandatory communal dinners held every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — the college requires attendance at over 60% of these meals. According to the official CUHK college introduction page^※ and the official C.W. Chu College page^※, C.W. Chu is one of only three CUHK colleges that require students to reside on campus for all four years of study, paired with a "full residency and communal dining" regime. The orientation camp, then, is not merely "the first week of university" — it is the opening of four years of high-frequency communal life.

This stands in contrast to the old colleges' "one in four years" residential model (typically guaranteeing residency for only some years). For New Asia, Chung Chi, United or Shaw freshmen, camp ends and most will not live day in, day out alongside their camp groupmates for four years; C.W. Chu and Morningside freshmen, by contrast, are almost fated to live and eat with the people they met at camp right through to graduation.

# Wu Yee Sun and Lee Woo Sing: the thousand-person "middle ground"

Not all new colleges took the "three-hundred-student small class" route. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry for Wu Yee Sun College^※, the college was endowed by the Wu Yee Sun Charitable Foundation and named after the founder of Wing Lung Bank; established in 2007, it was designed to hold up to 1,200 people — 600 residents and no more than 600 non-residential students — making it the largest of the new colleges, a scale between the "three-hundred" C.W. Chu and Morningside and the "three-thousand-plus" old colleges. Its students shout a signature slogan at camp and college gatherings (the official version being "Go Green, Be Sunny", reflecting the college's environmental orientation). Since 2014, competition for residence places at the college has emerged, with roughly two students for every bed; the university plans to add 250 new places, with completion expected in 2027 — meaning that around half of the college's freshmen enter knowing full well they may not be able to live in residence for four consecutive years. Lee Woo Sing College (named after its founding benefactor, Mr. Lee Woo Sing; the Chinese name additionally carries the meaning of "harmonious sound") was likewise established in 2007 through a private donation of HK$150 million, with a planned capacity of about 1,200, roughly half of whom are residents; it welcomed its first freshmen in 2011 and is the youngest of the nine colleges — its orientation camp history is consequently the shortest, and it has yet to accumulate decades-settled rituals like New Asia's Four-College Rally or United's four signature traditions. Notably, Lee Woo Sing's English and Chinese names are not direct translations: the English name preserves the donor's surname, while the Chinese name independently draws on the "harmony" in the donor's given name to convey a meaning of "amity and auspiciousness". This naming logic differs slightly from colleges like Morningside or S.H. Ho, which take the donor's name directly (with matching Chinese and English forms) — and freshmen at Lee Woo Sing's camp often have to untangle this name-reality relationship during the college history introduction session.

# Interview admission: filtered once before camp even begins

According to the Tutor Circle "CUHK College Comparison" blog post^※ and the Knowdable CUHK college guide^※, the admissions processes of Chung Chi, Morningside, S.H. Ho, C.W. Chu, Wu Yee Sun and Lee Woo Sing include a group interview stage, while New Asia, United and Shaw require only a preference form, with places allocated by departmental JUPAS scores and no separate interview. This means that freshmen at new colleges like Morningside and C.W. Chu have already been through an interview interaction in which the college actively selected them before they ever set foot in the camp — for these students, camp is to some degree a continuation of the "interviewer–candidate" relationship rather than pure icebreaking among strangers.

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# The nine colleges' orientation camps at a glance

Sources: New Asia College Wikipedia^※, Chung Chi College Wikipedia^※, S.H. Ho College Wikipedia^※, Morningside College Wikipedia^※, Shaw College official orientation page^※, C.W. Chu College official^※, Tutor Circle comparison article^※; details on Wu Yee Sun and Lee Woo Sing's scale and residency arrangements draw on the consolidated comparison articles, not verified item by item against single sources, and are flagged as multi-source corroboration.

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# Two approaches to camp, two ways of building "college belonging"

The four old colleges' camps run on "history" — walking freshmen through old campus sites, staging cross-college joint rituals, and having full-time staff run mature, polished processes year after year. Belonging comes from "you have joined a place with a story". The five new colleges' camps run on "scale" — the small classes of three hundred, the early familiarity that interview admissions bring, and the mandatory communal dining that follows immediately after camp. Belonging comes from "you know everyone here, and everyone knows you".

Neither approach is inherently superior, but together they explain a common observation on campus: new-college students often say their college is "full of warmth but short on events", while old-college students say theirs has "rich traditions but is so big you can't possibly know everyone". According to the Tutor Circle comparison article^※, this impression recurs across campus comparison pieces, yet its cause is rarely traced back to the size and ritual design of the camps themselves — this article is an attempt to supply that institutional explanation.

The two symbols — the "Four-College Rally" and "mandatory communal dining" — correspond precisely to the different problems each type of camp is trying to solve. The old colleges number three thousand or more; getting to know all your college peers in three to five days of camp is simply impossible, and so the Four-College Rally exists not so that freshmen come to know one another, but so they remember "I belong to a college with seventy-seven years of history (by Shaw's count) or even more" — the object of identification is the college itself, not any particular person. The new colleges are the opposite: at a scale of three hundred, three to five days is enough for freshmen to know a good part of the whole college, but a college barely two decades old has no weighty history to claim, so the source of belonging shifts from "the college's past" to "the concrete people around you" — C.W. Chu's camp groupmates becoming dining partners, Morningside's camp first bridging language gaps to bind a diverse cohort, S.H. Ho's camp attending to mainland freshmen's Cantonese adjustment — all expressions of the same logic. The small colleges' camps are in the business of "making relationships"; the large colleges' camps are in the business of "making a sense of history".

Worth noting, this divide is not static. According to the official CUHK central orientation enrolment page^※, since the Joint Committee on New Student Orientation (JCNSO) strengthened its coordination in recent years, the nine colleges' big Os have been unified through an online "orientation activities enrolment system", with application windows, fee approvals and training requirements converging — meaning that even as the ritual particulars of each college's camp remain wildly divergent, the administrative framework at university level is quietly consolidating. Nine ways of building belonging now share a single enrolment and oversight infrastructure (the framework's sexual-harassment training and committee oversight mechanisms are discussed in The Orientation Camp Complete Archive, and not repeated here).

For a comparison of the nine colleges' general education curricula and high-table dinners, see College General Education and the High-Table System; for the historical controversies over game conduct at the camps and the university's oversight framework, see The Orientation Camp Complete Archive — neither is repeated here.

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# Further reading

• The Orientation Camp Complete Archive: Traditions, Organisation and Controversies over the Years
• College General Education and the High-Table System: How the Nine Colleges Educate in their Own Ways
• Shaw College Revisited: The Building Cluster of the Western Hillside and the All-Residential Life
• Residence, Hall Culture and College Traditions

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