Campus
The hillside, sea-facing campus, its buildings and ecology, and the housing, general education and traditions of its nine colleges.
05 Campus Geography · Architecture · Ecology
6 articlesThe hillside, sea-facing campus, its list of buildings, transport facilities, sustainability efforts, and its museum and ecology.
Campus Geography: A Hillside Campus Between Mountain and Sea
Traces the location and site‑selection history of CUHK’s Ma Liu Shui campus (from Chung Chi College’s move in 1956 to the University’s founding in 1963), the three‑plateau layout carved out of a hillside, and the resulting vertical drop and shuttle‑bus culture.
Campus Buildings, Landmarks and Sustainability: A Gazetteer and Visual Guide to the Mountain City
CUHK buildings are named according to four logics: donor-named, commemorating a distinguished predecessor, functional, and conceptual. The core teaching, administration, and library buildings, along with United College, are largely the work of architect W. Szeto, who established the modernist skeleton on three terraced levels along the mountainside. This entry unites three dimensions: a building gazetteer, a visual guide to landmark sites (University Mall, Gate of Wisdom and Ju Ming Gate, Pavilion of Harmony, Lake Ad Excellentiam), and sustainability (Carbon Neutral 2038).
Transport & Facilities – Campus Bus · MTR · Ferry
A systematic look at CUHK's external transport (the evolution of University MTR Station from "Ma Liu Shui Station"; buses; Ma Liu Shui ferry pier) and the free shuttle bus system that moves people between three stepped plateaux — with route categories and historical context traced source by source.
Museums and Campus Ecology
Chronicles the development and collections of three major exhibition venues — the CUHK Art Museum (founded 1971, new wing opened 2025), the Jockey Club Museum of Climate Change, and the University History Gallery — as well as the campus ecological landscape centred on the Shiu-Ying Hu Herbarium.
art-museum-and-institute-of-chinese-studies
A word from the Vice-Chancellor: At the exhibition's opening, the then Vice-Chancellor, Rocky S. Tuan, stated:
University Station and the Campus Railway Story: From the Kowloon–Canton Railway to the MTR East Rail Line, Gateway to a Hillside University
Originally named Ma Liu Shui station, it opened on 24 September 1956 as the first new KCR stop built after the war, created specifically to serve Chung Chi College. Renamed University Station on 1 January 1967 as CUHK grew, it was rebuilt for electrification on 2 May 1983. Since the East Rail line Harbour Crossing opened on 15 May 2022, passengers can travel directly to Admiralty on Hong Kong Island. Across seven decades, every transformation of the railway facilities has echoed a beat in CUHK's own development.
10 Colleges Nine colleges · General education · Housing
11 articlesHong Kong's only collegiate university: a detailed profile of each of its nine colleges — Chung Chi, New Asia, United and more — covering their history, character and traditions.
From Four to Nine Colleges: The Four-Year Degree Restructuring and the Birth of Five New Colleges (2006–2012)
How a secondary-school reform gave birth to five new colleges in six years, pushing CUHK’s college tally from four to nine. This piece unpacks the institutional logic of the “3-3-4” reform, the donation landscape, and the “small-college” design philosophy, then connects forward two decades to the latest shockwaves over “staff-student co-governance” among those very same colleges.
CUHK Chung Chi College: Founded 1951, the Torch of Thirteen Schools, and Lake Ad Excellentiam
One of CUHK’s three foundation colleges, founded in 1951 by representatives of Protestant Churches in Hong Kong and carrying forward the torch of thirteen former Christian universities on the Chinese mainland. The only college with a chapel, divinity school, and chaplain’s office; the chapel altar is carved with the emblems of the thirteen schools, and its theological education traces its roots to the Canton Presbyterian Mission of 1864. Its motto is *Ad Excellentiam* (“In pursuit of excellence”). Together with New Asia College, it forms the Christian wing of CUHK’s “dual-source humanistic tradition”.
New Asia College: \"Sincerity and Intelligence,\" Fallen Blossoms, and the Torch of Neo-Confucianism
One of CUHK's three founding colleges, established in 1949 by Ch'ien Mu, Tang Chun-i, Chang Pi-chieh, and other scholars who had come south, starting from nothing in a few rented classrooms on Kweilin Street. With fewer than one hundred staff and students and persistent deficits, \"Our hands are empty, we possess nothing\" was a statement of fact. It is a bastion of contemporary Neo-Confucianism and Chinese cultural research; its motto is \"Sincerity and Intelligence.\" The Pavilion of Harmony is praised as \"Hong Kong's second-best view.\" Summarises the 1976 restructuring and the resignation of nine Council members, with a pointer to the University Governance module.
United College: Illustrious Virtue, Five-School Merger, and the Guangdong Private Higher Education Tradition
The only one of CUHK's three founding colleges born of a merger—formed in 1956 from five Guangdong private post-secondary colleges (Canton Overseas, Kwang Hsia, Wah Kiu, Wen Hua, Ping Jing) at the suggestion of Columbia University President Grayson Kirk and the Asia Foundation (originally eight colleges negotiated, three withdrew). With the motto 明德新民—'Illustrious Virtue and Renewal of the People' and a pragmatic 'third ethos' rooted in diaspora education and business studies, it pioneered programmes in Electronic Engineering, Biochemistry, and Social Work at CUHK.
Shaw College: “Cultivate Virtue, Engage in Learning”, Sir Run Run Shaw, and the Fourth College
CUHK’s fourth constituent college, founded in the late 1980s with a donation from Sir Run Run Shaw, motto: 「修德講學」; the first college founded without independent teaching facilities; also the college with the largest student body at CUHK (c. 3,400), located on the western hillside; currently 1,211 residential places in Kuo Mou Hall and Student Hostel II, rising to over 1,500 upon completion of the under-construction Mona Shaw Hall; College GE offers GESC and service-learning, a dedicated “Appreciating Cantonese Opera” course, High Table Dinners, and four signature traditional activities.
Morningside College: Scholarship, Virtue, Service, a Nobel Laureate Master, and a Fully Residential Liberal Arts Community
The only CUHK college whose founding Master was a Nobel laureate in economics — Sir James Mirrlees presided here for twelve years until his death; a 300-strong international liberal arts community whose unofficial mascots were two Malamutes, successively owned by the Associate Master and both now deceased — a tender, unusual detail among the nine colleges' traditions.
S.H. Ho College: \"To Learn and to Practise with Utmost Sincerity,\" Ho Sin-hang, and the Fully Residential, Communal-Dining Model
In his later years, Hang Seng Bank founder Ho Sin-hang channelled the banker’s spirit of \"serving the public and putting the customer first\" into educational philanthropy, leaving behind a medium-sized, fully residential college of about six hundred students. From the founding of Hang Seng Ngan Ho on Bonham Strand in 1933 to his surrender of a controlling stake to protect depositors during the bank run of 1965, Ho Sin-hang’s commercial career itself is a footnote to the college motto, \"To Learn and to Practise with Utmost Sincerity.\
C.W. Chu College: Self-cultivation, Public Service, and the Smallest Fully Residential College
The smallest-tier, fully residential, communal-dining college at CUHK, named for the philanthropist C.W. Chu and his legacy of \"cultivating oneself to benefit others,\" perched in the most remote corner of Campus Circuit North; in January 2025, its student union became the first of the nine colleges to suspend operations over the \"independent registration\" requirement.
Wu Yee Sun College: Extensive Learning, Earnest Practice, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and the Green College
A mid-sized college that earned the alias \"The Sunny College\" from a pun on the character \"孫\" (Sun), founded to commemorate Wu Yee-sun, the man who began working at a money exchange shop at fourteen and built Wing Lung Bank from scratch; in December 2025, its student union became the second college student union, after C.W. Chu, to be suspended under the University's \"independent registration\" requirement.
Lee Woo Sing College: Wisdom, Humanity, Integrity, Harmony; Lee Woo Sing and an Anonymous Mega-Donation
An initially anonymous HK$150 million mega-donation, unveiled three years later, gave rise to a medium-sized college named for \"harmony\" and guided by the motto \"Wisdom, Humanity, Integrity, Harmony\"; over a decade later, it has navigated a smart-card privacy controversy, an unauthorised alteration scandal, and the January 2026 suspension of its student union, which drew the curtain on a wave of student union shutdowns across CUHK's nine colleges.
College General Education and High Table Dinners: How the Nine Colleges Educate
Every CUHK student must complete 6 credits of College GE, with specific courses and activities varying by college. Morningside, S.H. Ho, and CW Chu Colleges operate a \"full-residence communal dining\" model with mandatory four-year residency. The larger colleges—Chung Chi, New Asia, United, and Shaw—use college assembly attendance each semester as an assessment mechanism. Lee Woo Sing and Wu Yee Sun require students to attend at least two High Table Dinners or round-table activities per semester.