Bulletin No. 1, 2024

recalls having to train every Saturday after getting off the morning shift. “We would go to the Science Centre, and underneath the ‘rice cooker’ we’d march in formation, and learn how to use hoses and hose reels to fight a fire. The water was even turned on sometimes—that way we wouldn’t fumble when there was an actual fire.” First-aid training provided by Hong Kong St John Ambulance at the University Health Centre (now University Medical Service Office) was also compulsory; so strict were the requirements that even after receiving their certificates of completion, the security officers had to renew it every three years. Chan recalls: “Once, a student in the Adam Schall Residence turned on their hairdryer but left it on the bed and walked out to take a call. The hairdryer overheated and set the latex mattress alight! We had to drive the fire engine to the scene. The Fire Services Department came before we could fully put it out, so we left them to finish the job.” Owing to the vastness of CUHK, he explained, government firefighters would take time to arrive, so it was vital that the security officers got a hold on the fire before things spiralled out of control. There were three rotating shifts at the Security Office: morning, afternoon and night. Back in the day, the workload was heavy with multiple errands, whereas night shifts invariably entailed patrolling various buildings. With so much work on their hands, they took turns having lunch. Those were the days when CUHK would hire people to provide cooked lunches, and midnight snacks for night-shift workers. “We’d eat from 2am until 2.30am and they would send us our snacks using Chan Shu-pui joined CUHK in 1983 and spent seven years as a security officer before opting to become a school bus driver, transferring to the Transport Office. As a security officer, he had the arduous tasks of catching goats, dousing fires and administering first aid on top of his daily patrols; as a bus driver, he delivers passengers around campus safely and on time. He was awarded the 35-year Long Service Award in 2019 for his continual devotion to the University. P R O F I L E Every evening there’d be three or four (goats) from Chek Nai Ping village next door. Whenever you got the call, you had to go and catch them... His face has, for years, been a comforting presence to generations of the CUHK community. His name is Chan Shu-pui, and to the University he has been many things: firefighter, first-aider, even goat-catcher. Albeit always staying in the background, Chan can lay claim to more than 40 years of faithful service. His story in 1980s Hong Kong, before joining CUHK, was typical of those days: a garment production worker whose trade became a sunset industry when many factories relocated their assembly lines to the mainland. It was then that the University ran a recruitment advertisement in the newspaper for a position as security officer, and he duly applied for it. Back then the Security Office had a fire department complete with a fire engine; Chan 1 48   Chinese University Bulletin | Chan Shu-pui