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Life-long commitment to education
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Han Ximin
THE biannual Liu Yuxing Scholarship Award, named after Y S Lau, president of New Products Investment Co, Hong Kong, was given out to select teachers and students who contributed to English teaching, learning and research in the city.
At the awards ceremony on Friday, teachers and students of the Shenzhen Foreign Languages School received around 300,000 yuan in awards.
"Life is mortal, but dedication to education and public good is immortal and everlasting," Y S Lau, a man in his 60s, said at an interview last week. He added that he was trying to make an effort to support the education development in the city as well as in the province.
When Lau, then a member of China People's Political Consultative Conference, learned 10 years ago that the city had decided to build a modern, high quality foreign language school, he donated one million yuan to help provide a better teaching environment for the school. At the school's fifth anniversary in 1995, he donated another one million yuan to set up a scholarship award.
"The motherland's prosperity can only be revitalized by science and technology which take education as a base. Though my company is a limited company, yet my love for motherland is limitless," enthused Lau. That may be the reason why he was so concentrated on the development of China's education development.
Born in the 1940s' near Chaozhou, Guangdong Province at a time when the nation was suffering untold horrors at the hands of invading Japanese, Lau, while still a baby, became an orphan. He was later traded twice, and was finally adopted by a widow in Xingning City in Guangdong Province. The family moved to Hong Kong in the '60s and Lau started his business from scratch as a technician.
"China is my root. Everybody should do his bit to increase her prosperity," said Lau. Though he couldn't participate in China's construction in person when China opened its door to the outside world in 1978, Lau showed his deep feelings towards his hometown. He applied to donate one million yuan to set up a teaching building in his home school. In the last 20 years, he has donated nearly 70 million yuan to support universities, middle schools and primary schools and for public good in the province. His business also expanded in securities and real estate both in Hong Kong and the mainland
At all stages of his life, either as a struggling migrant worker or an enterprising boss, he kept a keen eye on the development of the motherland with great interest.
"As a descendant of the Chinese people, I am inspired by China's development, and as an orphan whose parents couldn't be traced, I feel proud of China's increasing strength in the international world," said Lau.
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