Prof. Zhao Zhenkai (Bei Dao), honorary professor of the Faculty of Arts, was awarded the Golden Wreath Award, the Struga International Poetry Festival's highest honour, on 20 March. He is the second Chinese poet to receive the award.

Founded in 1962, Struga Poetry Evenings in Macedonia is one of the world's three major poetry festivals and the oldest one. The Golden Wreath Award is one of the most authoritative international poetry prizes. Many Golden Wreath laureates have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Struga Poetry Evenings committee believes that 'Bei Dao is widely considered to be one of China's most important contemporary authors today who created poems exceeding the literary boundaries of his time.'

Bei Dao, known by his real name Zhao Zhenkai, was born in Beijing in 1949. He co-founded the underground literary journal Today (Jin Tian) and is one of the key poets in meng long shi (obscurist poetry). In 2007, Bei Dao was invited to teach at CUHK. In addition to teaching, he is committed to poetry education, as well as the translation and promotion of international poetry. He launched many activities such as the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong and International Poets in Hong Kong. He also hand-picked 101 Chinese and foreign classical and modern poems for children. These were compiled into a book Selected Poems for Children, and published in January by the Chinese University Press.