The Citations for Honorary Fellows

中大榮譽院士的介紹是隆而重之的,特別委任校內知名教授為每一位榮譽院士撰寫讚辭。我的讚辭由鄧思穎教授撰寫。

以下是他的英文讚辭:

 

Honorary Fellowship

A Citation

Mr Wong Man-yin Denny

Bai Juyi is one of the great Tang poets. The young Bai did not find it easy to make ends meet when he was young and had not yet estab­lished a name for him­self. Once he had resolved on a lit­er­ary career, he trav­elled from Jiang­nan to the cap­i­tal, Changan, to show his poet­ry to Gu Kuang, a lit­er­ary leader at that time. Since ‘Juyi’ lit­er­al­ly means ‘easy liv­ing’, upon see­ing Bai’s name on the man­u­scripts, Gu joked: ‘Rice is expen­sive in Changan. Liv­ing here is no easy mat­ter!’ What Gu meant was that, giv­en the high liv­ing stan­dard in the cap­i­tal, mak­ing a liv­ing there is not an easy mat­ter at all. In fact, the same could be said of Hong Kong 1,200 years lat­er. Peo­ple who live in Hong Kong, espe­cial­ly the younger gen­er­a­tion, have faced sim­i­lar liv­ing and hous­ing prob­lems. The basic neces­si­ty of ‘easy liv­ing’ becomes a chal­lenge. The young must be real­is­tic and always go an extra mile in the hope of climb­ing up the social lad­der in order to put a roof above their heads.

Forty-five years ago, Mr Wong Man-yin Den­ny grad­u­at­ed from New Asia Col­lege of the Chi­nese Uni­ver­si­ty of Hong Kong (CUHK) with a Bachelor’s degree major in Eco­nom­ics and minor in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion. In a talk giv­en at his alma mater, he shared with the stu­dents how he coped with life’s chal­lenges in the first few years after grad­u­a­tion and how such tribu­la­tions had made him stronger. He did not hes­i­tate to point out that, step­ping into a new work­place, fresh grad­u­ates ‘should be hum­ble, expand their social net­works, be proac­tive, thor­ough and swift in acquir­ing new knowl­edge and cher­ish each learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty.’ He encour­aged the stu­dents to spare no effort to take up more work so as to learn more. What is learned this way will one day become the cor­ner­stones and assets of their careers. From his first­hand expe­ri­ence Mr Wong thinks that being proac­tive, eager to shoul­der respon­si­bil­i­ties, sin­cere and friend­ly are the keys to suc­cess. His resound­ing words of wis­dom are music to the new grad­u­ates which will bring them life­long benefits.

Mr Wong does not only preach a proac­tive and open atti­tude. He has prac­tised it him­self all his life. After grad­u­at­ing from CUHK, he worked for a lead­ing prop­er­ty devel­op­er. As a new recruit, he per­sist­ed in tak­ing up the chal­lenges with humil­i­ty, accom­plish­ing the tasks through seek­ing coun­sel and exert­ing relent­less effort irre­spec­tive of how demand­ing the work was. Mr Wong absorbed new knowl­edge like a sponge and always direct­ed him­self towards right­eous­ness. He cul­ti­vat­ed friend­ships with peo­ple from all walks of life with thank­ful­ness and in good faith. In 1978, after hon­ing his skills for four years, he co-found­ed the Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency with Mr Shih Wing-ching. The Agency start­ed as a nano-busi­ness with only a desk and a tele­phone shared between the two part­ners, rent­ed from a lease­hold­er of a small office in Cen­tral. Ten years lat­er, the Agency was already a mar­ket leader amongst Hong Kong real estate agen­cies. With his high com­pe­tence, dis­cern­ing eye and strong lead­er­ship, Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency had changed the busi­ness mod­el of real estate agency and raised the busi­ness ethics, pro­fes­sion­al con­duct and ser­vice stan­dard of the indus­try. By 2018, the Cen­taline Group had devel­oped into a mam­moth ven­ture with 2,600 branch­es in main­land Chi­na, Hong Kong, Macau, and Tai­wan employ­ing over 55,000 per­sons. Its turnover was HK$18.98 bil­lion, and its after-tax prof­its was HK$501 mil­lion, and even reached HK$1.05 bil­lion in the good year of 2017.

In 1992, Mr Wong did not fur­ther man­age the Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency and found­ed Cap­i­tal Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tants.  But he did not sell his shares in Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency and remains until today as share­hold­er of Cen­taline Group hold­ing 45% of its shares. In 1996, Mr Wong estab­lished the Hong Kong Cham­ber of Pro­fes­sion­al Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tants Lim­it­ed with oth­er cap­tains of the indus­try and became its first Chair­man. In 1999, he acquired Easy Prop­er­ty Co. Ltd, lat­er also acquired Easy House Prop­er­ties Ltd., then merged the two Easy real estate agen­cies under the trade name of Easy Prop­er­ty, and has served as man­ag­ing direc­tor since 2002. Nowa­days, the Easy Prop­er­ty spe­cial­izes in prop­er­ty agency busi­ness in Hong Kong Island East and Shatin. More than 40 years have now passed since Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency was found­ed. From Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency to Cap­i­tal Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tants, and from Cap­i­tal Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tants to Easy Prop­er­ty, Mr Wong has been lead­ing his com­pa­nies in new direc­tions, onto paths not tak­en by oth­er agen­cies before, such as estab­lish­ing inter­nal guide­lines to refrain from tak­ing part in prop­er­ty spec­u­la­tions., He places his pri­or­i­ties on pro­fes­sion­al ethics and ser­vices, as well as decent organ­i­sa­tion­al man­age­ment. He also empha­sizes that a prop­er­ty agency should prac­tise social respon­si­bil­i­ty.  Mr Wong spares no effort in cre­at­ing an easy liv­ing envi­ron­ment and has estab­lished him­self as a leader in the indus­try as well as a role mod­el for the young.

In addi­tion to giv­ing fre­quent media inter­views to pro­vide pro­fes­sion­al analy­ses on real estate, Mr Wong often serves as keynote speak­ers at pub­lic forums and com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties. Since 2000, Mr Wong has been writ­ing arti­cles to com­ment on the real estate mar­ket and to express his views on polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic, social, edu­ca­tion­al and human­i­ties issues. The arti­cles are known for their per­spi­cac­i­ty and style, and can be found in major news­pa­pers and web­sites (e.g., the web­sites of Cen­taline Prop­er­ty Agency, Rica­corp Prop­er­ties, Prop­er­ty Hong Kong, Many Wells Prop­er­ty, Easy Prop­er­ty and Finet etc.).

While pur­su­ing a dis­tin­guished career in the estate agency pro­fes­sion, Mr Wong has not neglect­ed his role in doing ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty and has been lend­ing a help­ing hand to the young. Every year, he donates on the aver­age half of the net prof­it of Easy Prop­er­ty to char­i­ty, ben­e­fit­ting the com­mu­ni­ty and set­ting an exam­ple of social respon­si­bil­i­ty. As a CUHK alum­nus, Mr Wong cares about the devel­op­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty and New Asia Col­lege. He has been pro­vid­ing car­ing and gen­er­ous sup­port to the cause of tal­ent cul­ti­va­tion. He has served as a mem­ber of the Gen­er­al Edu­ca­tion Advi­so­ry Board of New Asia Col­lege since 2008 and the Board of Trustees since 2009. Through his self­less con­tri­bu­tions, Mr Wong became a role mod­el for all mem­bers of the New Asia com­mu­ni­ty. He has also donat­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to estab­lish schol­ar­ships that encour­age stu­dents to improve them­selves and broad­en their hori­zons. In 2014, he was invit­ed to give a talk enti­tled ‘Keys to Suc­cess – Abil­i­ty, Per­son­al Qual­i­ty and Vision’ for the Pro­gram for the Gift­ed & Tal­ent­ed of the Fac­ul­ty of Edu­ca­tion at CUHK, where he shared his expe­ri­ences and wis­dom with stu­dents and par­ents. Today’s stu­dents are the pil­lars of tomorrow’s soci­ety; through his benev­o­lence, Mr Wong has sowed the seeds of many good things which will cer­tain­ly be har­vest­ed by us in the years to come.

In Chi­nese, ‘easy liv­ing’ and ‘pleas­ant liv­ing (the Chi­nese name of Easy Prop­er­ty)’ are homonyms. How­ev­er, a sub­tle dif­fer­ence sep­a­rates them: the for­mer speaks of a basic neces­si­ty, where­as the lat­ter is a state to which every­one aspires. A dis­tin­guished entre­pre­neur, Mr Wong’s dis­tin­guished career has helped to pro­vide an ‘easy liv­ing’ envi­ron­ment for cit­i­zens. He has devot­ed him­self to serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty, tak­ing care of the young, shoul­der­ing social respon­si­bil­i­ties, and paving the way for oth­ers to attain ‘pleas­ant liv­ing’. In recog­ni­tion of his enthu­si­as­tic and gen­er­ous sup­port to CUHK and New Asia Col­lege, and his exem­pli­fy­ing a good alum­nus mod­el, Mr Chair­man, it is my great plea­sure to present to you Mr Wong Man-yin Den­ny for the award of an Hon­orary Fel­low­ship of the University.