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Seeing the Campus as Birds Do

Tolo Harbour, Tolo Highway and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks
Ma On Shan can be glimpsed on the other bank not too many lops away from the campus
University Station and the vicinity
Ma On Shan can be glimpsed on the other bank not too many lops away from the campus

Year in, year out, we come to work or study at CUHK. We may think we know the campus very well. But the fact is that the majority of us spend most of our time here indoors, inside a couple or a handful of buildings at most. We may go somewhere at the other end of the campus for lunch, but usually in a familiar vehicle along roads we know by heart.

Seeing the campus from above is a completely different thing. On a sunny day between winter and spring, we boarded a helicopter at the Peninsula helipad in Tsim Sha Tsui, and, for the first time, saw the campus as eagles have for decades. As the chopper neared the campus roughly 10 minutes after takeoff, we were greeted by buildings of the Chinese University the size of Lego blocks dispersed among dark-green vegetation—standing stoically or with windows winking in the morning light. We also saw geometrical shapes of green, blue and russet that we figured were tennis courts, football fields and the swimming pool. And where the harbour touched the land in a pencil-straight line, we realized that land reclamation had taken place.

When the chopper touched down after the morning's shoot, we know we will never look at the campus the same ever again.

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