Yang Zhao writes poems, novels, prose, and cultural commentaries. Yang and CUHK were born in the same year. He said he had lived through two-thirds of his life, whereas the Chinese University was still young as a university.

When Yang was 12, his elder sister said she would stop living after 30. What she meant was everyone past 30 that she knew were materialistic and without passion and ideals. Yang said it was about that time that he made the major decision that no matter how old he would live to, he must remember the kind of adults he most despised as a teenager—those who have lost their ideals, enthusiasm, romanticism and guts. He hoped that he would not have to face the 17-year-old Yang Zhao with shame and guilt when he reached 50 or 60 years of age, and would not turn into someone he despised.

‘He just sat there talking about the 50 years of his life, peacefully and at ease. He talked about what poems, literature, movies and death meant to him when he was an adolescent, about what history, news media as the fourth estate, and life meant to him. He was in fact describing a vision worthy of our pursuit, aspiration and persistence, one which has become increasingly hard to imagine as times change and we change with them. Looking back at the road he had trodden, Yang showed young people in the lecture theatre the possibility of living a good life.’ —Prof. Chow Po-chung