Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1992

CITATIONS Mrs. Alice Kiu-yue Lam, JP Owing to its unique historical and geographical conditions, among other things. Hong Kong has been an unusual success story over the last few decades. And yet Hong Kong is susceptible to interference from the outside world ， and its continuing prosperity at limes is disrupted by external forces. In the same way, although Hong Kong has never been short of outstanding women in all walks of life, in a society in which the East and the West, the traditional and the new converge, the constraints women must face seem to be particularly daunting. Mrs. Alice Kiu-yue Lam's career can be said to be a fine example of how a woman, after encountering initial difficulties ， manages to overcome them admirably. Mrs. Lam comes from a distinguished family and showed an early inclination for social work. She majored in history at the University of Hong Kong. After graduation, she spent the next nine and a half years leaching at St. Stephen's Girls' College, But then she fell the urge to have a career of her own choice, as an independent woman. To this end, she resigned her teaching job and chose to go into law. Unfortunately, because of her age, she was denied the opportunity to study law in a tertiary institution. She was forced to start from the lowest rung as a legal clerk in a law firm and serve a five-year apprenticeship before qualifying as a solicitor. Things did not turn out as planned, though. At this most crucial moment, fate struck and she found herself a widow. Again, she was obliged to rethink her career, not only for her own sake but also in the interest of her children. After careful consideration, she gave up the legal work for which she had worked so hard to get qualified. She started from the bottom again ——this time in the banking industry. And it took years of hard work before she rose to be director and general manager of Hang Seng Bank. She becomes concurrently a director of Hong Kong Telephone Company and executive director of the Wing On Bank. In short, from a secondary school teacher she became a solicitor and then the general manager of one 44TH CONGREGATION 2