Class of '62: fifty golden years!

Hong Kong, November 9th, 2012. Like a teenage girl about to embark on her first date, I felt my adrenalin surging as I ascended from Queens Road Central to mid-level on that impressive engineering feat, the outdoor escalator. Passing to the left and right of me the busy thoroughfare of myriad shops and sundry eateries with big and colourful billboards hanging over them, as the escalator took me up the northern slope of Hong Kong Island, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia and expectation, reminiscing my days growing up in Hong Kong, my birthplace, my hometown, my school days. To a good extent, time had stood still on those small streets on the slopes of old Hong Kong. I had come back many times on personal and business trips, but this time, it was different and special, because I was back for the Golden Anniversary of my high school graduation, a reunion of the Class of ’62 of Sacred Heart Canossian College, a Catholic girls' school I attended from kindergarten on. Fifty years are a marker, a truly golden, magic number, and well worth traveling thousands of miles for. 

The two days of reunion celebration involved a visit to the Sun Yat Sen Museum in Hong Kong, a multi-course dinner attended by almost eighty students of that graduating year, with a handful of very supportive husbands, and four teachers from our era, a mass at the well-preserved heritage chapel in the old school site, a walk down memory lane, through whatever was left of the old school on mid-level Caine Road where we spent our high school years, a dimsum luncheon, and finally a tour of the new campus on Chi Fu Lane, Pokfulam, quite a distance from the old school site. A good number of overseas graduates returned to Hong Kong for the occasion, some with spouses. A wonderful, memorable time, reliving the glory and the dream of youth, reviving  friendships formed over fifty years ago. A time of gratitude to the school and teachers so much a part of our formative years. A time for old classmates to fill in on the intervening years between then and now. Those two days were not just looking back: it was also a celebration of life beyond high school, no matter what route we had taken, what fate had bestowed. Regardless of stations, choices, careers, achievements, triumphs, disappointments, misfortunes and tragedies the past fifty years, we were brought closer in those hours of the Reunion.

One of the original buildings of the old school campus on Caine RoadThe Chapel as it stands today
The high school building of the old Sacred Heart campus

Only too soon, it was over, some returning home across the seas, some carrying on in our old beloved Hong Kong, all back to the normality as each defined it. For some, the 50th Anniversary Reunion promised to be the beginning of long-term renewed friendships. For others, it was a spark that lit up the wonders of youthful camaraderie, only to be extinguished when the party was over. Irrespective, it was wonderful while it lasted. If nothing else, it must have left some lasting residual sweet taste of remembrance with everyone. The Golden Reunion was a grand achievement, thanks to the organizers and the participants. 

Looking ahead, I am thinking Diamond -- 60.