The Department of Chinese and History (CAH) of CityU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) held the award presentation ceremony for City Literary Awards 2020 online on 6 February 2021. It was attended by officiating guests from the University, 12 Hong Kong writers, who are also the members of the judging panel, the advisors of the competition, and the 50-plus awardees and their parents and teachers.  

“Thanks for being here in this virtual space, for a ceremony supposed to be held in a grand lecture theatre…” said Professor CHING May-bo, Head of CAH and Director of the Chinese Civilisation Centre. Ching commended the effort of the organising committee and judges, who did their utmost to make events of City Literary Awards 2020 happening amid the social events and pandemic, and appreciated the support from the teachers and participants. She was also delighted to read through the participants’ works and have glimpses of young people’s perspectives.  

Professor Raymond CHAN, CityU’s Vice President (Student Affairs), expressed his gratitude to the Tin Ka Ping Foundation for its generous donation in his remark. It allowed CAH to organise the City Literary Awards and seven other large-scale events to elevate the teaching quality of secondary school teachers and learning outcomes of young students. He also thanked Mr Zhang Da Peng for his sponsorship, which made the collaboration between CAH, teachers and famous local writers to enhance Chinese creative writing standard of the younger generation in Hong Kong possible. 

Professor Richard M WALKER, Dean of CLASS, related the missions of the Awards with the educational philosophy of CLASS and emphasised its values in strengthening humanistic concern. He also added a note of thanks to the 18 judges who spent valuable time to read hundreds of submissions in less than two months, and the supporting organisations which provided the platforms for CLASS to reach out to the community. He hopes the pandemic will end soon, so that the 18 top winners can set off for the Tokyo literary field trip and get insights for their next piece of writing. 

Apart from announcing the results, six representatives from the judging panel were invited to comment on the entries and share how they selected the winners. It is followed by a talk themed “The City and Literature”, in which Dr Ma Ka-fai, Programme Leader of CityU’s Master of Arts in Chinese and a renowned Hong Kong writer depicted the present situation of Hong Kong’s literary circle, and the challenges and prospects faced by creative writers. He encouraged students to keep writing stories of the metropolitan city in which we live.  

Receiving over 600 entries, among which 265 were from tertiary institutions and 371 from 91 secondary schools, the Awards represents a significant event in the promotion of Hong Kong literature. The 54 winners of the six categories were finalised after rigorous, three-stage judging. In addition to the competition, nine lectures and workshops were held to familiarise the public with the features and writing techniques of proses, novels and poems from late 2019 to early 2020.