Confessions of a Cat-holic (22)

Then it was its school motto. BPS girls prided themselves for their ability to "climb high and see wide". It was in their DNA to excel and achieve success in all means, maybe even illegitimately via dirty tricks. Well, I would say it was one thing to stand out, and it would be another to get ahead at the expense of others' welfare. That's the thing about BPS. It was a public government school, hardly with any ethics education or religious boundaries to limit the dreams of its students. BPS girls could do anything, including sex trades, just to stay ahead, but they forgot about the tall poppy syndrome. When girls became too keen to climb up but knew nothing about God and karmic consequences, strangest things could happen. Their disruptive behaviors could turn out to be a societal disaster. For god's sake, all I asked for was a bit of mindfulness and consciousness, maybe some bottom line when they exchanged their bodies for social benefits, you know, the typical Hong Kong way of their approaching accomplishments? A little bit of self-awareness should keep people running away from them.

I was not saying that BPS was a second-class institution that needed to be fixed in any sorts of ways. Actually, I needed to thank the British and its colonial government for planting a seed in the North Point community, building an institution that had haunted Hong Kong with its alumni for more than a century. It surely had the traditions of shaking up the society with its innovative means and belligerence. BPS was a standalone secondary institution, meaning it had no affiliations with another boys' school or any other school, period. It also had no direct linkage with any elementary school so they had to open doors to literally anyone who wished to apply. It surely needed a good reputation to attract applicants. If not a brand, what else could BPS offer to an average Joe in the clueless band 1 circle to maintain its admissions policy? BPS was especially well regarded and respected among the new immigrant communities in Hong Kong. And trust me, these new immigrants had a tendency to surpass Hong Kong locals academically by doing things that a normal Hong Konger wouldn't bother to do.

That was why I never judged a school purely by its reputation or "brand". I looked at its student profiles, rather than the school tales, aka "xiao hua", that meant to earn you a laugh. You know, I meant to be concerned about the typical questions such as what kind of students were attracted to the school? What kind of students liked to apply there? What kind of behaviors were common among its students? What values did the school infuse in its student body? What did their alumni end up doing? Just to name a few BPS students in my circle, they all happened to be some oppressed and mistreated new immigrants who struggled to find a way out to survive in the world city of Hong Kong, sadly only via academic means and under the table exchange of sexual favors.

There was this girl named Jun, Chu Yi Jun in my high school. She transferred to LPCUWC from BPS in the last two years of the high school program. I never doubted her academic achievements. Well, she scored 8As in her HKCEE exam, and she was a humanities student too. That placed her at equivalent standing as my academic results. But then again, she was also a new immigrant from some rural parts of China, given her rustic beauty looks. Judging from the way she put others down and totally unaware of the pool of talents in this Asia's world city, I suspected that she came from a remote village in China prior to her immigrant life in Hong Kong. She spoke English with a very thick Chinese accent and she liked to battle my Chinese guzheng performance with her showy dulcimer skills but she ended up looking like a bumpkin from some Suzhou hamlet. Then again, she married a white guy from Yale University and successfully immigrated to the United States, only to prove that BPS could be a hot spot for South African values and white supremacist tendencies.