Confessions of a Cat-holic (8)

Sharon had a lot of aspirations. She loved talking about the future. It was not surprising when she asked me what my dream school was. Dream school? Was she talking about university or high school, I asked? I didn't think I had any. She said she wanted to attend MIT. I told her her maths was not good enough. I didn't want to discourage her though. So I made up a dream school myself too. I told her I wanted to attend Tsinghua University. I didn't know why I said that but I thought Tsinghua would suffice to match MIT. That dream was not completely off and my choice was not at all baseless or unreachable. I visited a few times the home of my uncle, Liu Da, the Principal of Tsinghua in the 90s, when I spent my lunar new year holidays in Beijing. He said I should apply there when I grew up. I said, yeah why not. I was just a kid then. I didn't know what it would take to get in there. If I was given an offer to go there, I would gladly accept it. I was not lying to Sharon. At least, I didn’t think I was.

Of course, I wouldn't tell Sharon anything about my family's relationships with Tsinghua. In case I ended up finally attending Tsinghua, I wanted to be appreciated for my talents and abilities, instead of my legacy with the school. I didn't want Sharon to go around discrediting my qualifications and calibre if I really got in one day. Sharon then told me about the myths of MIT students moving an automobile to its dome and a few other genius hacks. I was not particularly interested in prodigy stories myself but I kind of went along with her conversations which lasted for hours.

She asked me if I would try another school upon elementary school graduation. Even if I wanted to, I would not tell her. The regime in our school was that we should only apply to our alma mater and never trust our luck in the lottery system. The Catholic church was not a democractic one. Its totalitarian styles gave us no leeway or any freedom. I did not want to risk my pupilship at St Francis in case I applied elsewhere and got thrown to a second tier district school. I made up a dream school again. Yes, I was a hypocrite. I told her I would apply to St Paul's Convent, if I had my complete free will. I had had friends there. Her name was Yuki Lee. She lived in South Horizons and she told me I should live there too. She showed me all the prospectus and leaflets of the then up and coming real estate project in Ap Lei Chau.

I told Sharon that I liked the school uniform of St Paul's Convent. Of course that reason alone would not be convincing enough to apply there. But I told her anyways. She kind of condescendingly laughed at my choice, as always. She was that type of the girls who would max out her selection in all possible areas, be it the brands she wore, the clothes she dressed in, the watches she bragged about, the car she rode in, the necklaces she bought for herself, etc. She said St Paul's Convent was not a sensible choice. St Paul's Co-educational College would be her dream school. St Paul's Co-educational College? I had never heard of that school. Not in the press, not from my relatives, never from my friends. I didn't even know where it was located. She said St Paul's Co-educational College had a prestigious brand that attracted many tycoons and blue blood nobles in town. It was supposed to be academically rigorous and hard to get in, she added. Okay, maybe it had a classy reputation but, other than Danny Chan, I didn't know any alumni from that school, let alone any affiliates who had said anything positive or expressed any gratitude towards this school. I was not from a blue collar family and even if I were from a blue collar family, I should have at least heard about Harvard or Cambridge. Could St Paul's Co-educational College be another Deep Springs College or Cooper Union, some hidden gem which only the insiders knew about? As a third generation Hong Konger with an uncle from La Salle, I heard about its rivalry with DBS before I could mutter words in kindergarten. I told Sharon that I was a conservative. I preferred single sex school. Almost 95% of the band 1 schools in Hong Kong were single sex schools. It was and always had been, since I didn’t know when. I was not a believer of co-educational schools, I confessed. Most of the gangster schools in Hong Kong were co-educational. Just to name a few, the New Method School, Kiangsu & Chekiang School, Rosary Hill, Clementi, and many other ones that embedded a three-word Chinese name.