CUHK Lives and Legends

32 J acqueline So , co-founder and chief executive of Malvern College Hong Kong, discovered what differentiated Hong Kong’s education system from that of mainland China after she moved to the city with her family at the age of 12. The mainland immigrant of Fujian ancestry was at that time admitted to Secondary One. ‘Throughout my entire primary education on the mainland, I attended no more than two or three physical education classes. That was because the class hours were used to teach Chinese or mathematics instead. After coming to Hong Kong, I found that physical education, music and art lessons would go ahead as planned, and the schools here encourage their students to form clubs and join societies, and not just pursue academic results for the sake of good marks,’ she recalled.  Extracurricular activities have been dubbed ‘experiential learning’ in recent years. In Jacqueline’s secondary school days, such learning was not in abundance as it is now but ‘enough to influence my life.’ Once, she was sent to Singapore on an exchange programme as a School Environmental Ambassador and to her amazement, found the streets there spotlessly clean. During her graduation year, she joined an exchange tour to Beijing which turned out to be another eye-opening experience.   ‘Honestly speaking, how much knowledge could we still retain from the books we studied in our secondary school? Yet, after many years, we could still vividly remember the novel places we had visited that stimulated our thinking, or the stage drama we acted in that taught us the importance of communication and cooperation. It was these experiences that truly expanded our horizons and even influenced our future developments and orientation.’ Jacqueline later enrolled in CUHK and majored in professional accountancy while being actively immersed in the University’s various extracurricular activities. She chaired the Society of Accountancy, took part in an Accounting and Business Case Competition in the US and Canada, and, as a Japanese language minor, went on a homestay in Kyushu, Japan. ‘I always believe that if we could bring experiential learning to the children in mainland China, they would grow up more healthily and happily.’ For this reason, Jacqueline did not apply to the Big Four accounting firms as most of her classmates had done after graduating from CUHK. Nor did she seize the opportunity to work in Wall Street after finishing her MBA at Harvard Business School. On the contrary, she set up her own business, Babylon Education Limited, in 2011. The life goal she formulated for herself was to run the finest secondary school in mainland China and to this end, sought partnership with the traditional British boarding schools. Jacqueline flew to the UK to negotiate with several elite schools and finally, with sincerity and a feasible plan, won over the century- old Malvern College that authorized her to establish its overseas campus in Qingdao, China.    Battling communication problems fuelled by cultural differences became a part of her everyday routine. ‘For instance, whether or not an outdoor physical education class should be cancelled due to rainy c c Jacqueline So (2nd left) chaired the Society of Accountancy while studying at CUHK ‘I always believe that if we could bring experiential learning to the children in mainland China, they would grow up more healthily and happily.’