Tsang Wing-wah
Mr TSANG Wing-wah
Honorary University Fellow (2018)
When Mr Tsang Wing-wah graduated from the St Paul’s Co-educational College in the late 1950s, Hong Kong did not yet have a law school. Like most of his contemporaries who wanted to pursue a career in the legal field, he served as an articled clerk to a practising solicitor in a law firm and studied the subject through correspondence course, before going to the UK to attend a law course at the College of Law, London and take the solicitors qualifying examinations. Mr Tsang has specialised in practising commercial law. In 1971, teaming up with several solicitors, he founded Messrs Yu, Tsang & Loong Solicitors and Notaries Public, which offers a wide range of commercial legal services. On retiring in 2013, Mr Tsang became a consultant to the firm.
The seasoned solicitor is one of the eight children of Mr Tsang Shiu-tim, a successful businessman and an untiring philanthropist who donated to many charitable causes during his lifetime. After he passed away in 1972, the Tsang family honoured his wishes by continuing to contribute to a wide range of charities, notably in education and social services. In 2007, the Tsang Shiu Tim Charitable Foundation was established to oversee the family’s charitable activities. Mr Tsang Wing-wah and other family members have become directors of the Foundation.
Over the years, the Tsang family and the Foundation have been supportive of education in Hong Kong with generous donations made to the local universities, S K H Tsang Shiu Tim Secondary School and S K H Holy Trinity Church Tsang Shiu Tim Kindergarten. Apart from these, the Foundation has rendered generous support for elderly welfare in Hong Kong, including the establishment of The Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation Tsang Shiu Tim Home for the Elderly.
In 2010, the Foundation made a generous donation to the University in support of its Campus Master Plan for facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration, inspiring creativity among teachers and students, and enhancing its quality Whole Person Education. To express its deepest gratitude for the Foundation’s generosity, the University named the auditorium on the second floor of the Academic and Administration Building the “Tsang Chan Sik Yue Auditorium” in memory of Mr Tsang’s late mother. Mr Tsang Wing-wah and his siblings consider it fitting that their mother be remembered, as she had done a lot in boosting education, particularly for women. Back in the 1930s, when schooling was denied to most women, she had set up a primary school for girls in Mong Kok.
In 2016, the Foundation established the Tsang Shiu Tim Endowed Chair of Chinese Medicine Clinical Studies at the University. The professorship aims to support world-class scholars in Chinese medicine to conduct advanced clinical research and develop new drugs and treatments to cure serious illnesses. For its generous and long-standing support to the University, the Tsang Shiu Tim Charitable Foundation is an Honorary Permanent President of the HKBU Foundation.
Under the leadership of Mr Tsang Wing-wah and other directors, the Tsang Shiu Tim Charitable Foundation has also extended its good work on medical services to the Mainland through sponsoring The Amity Foundation’s programme to set up village clinics in rural Guizhou province.
Mr Tsang Wing-wah is also a co-founder, with classmates of 1956 and 1957 classes of St. Paul’s Co-Educational College, of the Faith Hope Love Charitable Foundation Limited. Founded in 2007, the Foundation is dedicated to relieving poverty in underdeveloped areas of Mainland China by improving education services. So far, it has supported the reconstruction or renovation of close to 200 primary schools and other educational institutions in Yunnan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Guangxi and Guizhou as well as provided scholarships and bursaries for hundreds of needy students. Occasionally the Foundation also supported building of bridges in villages in remote areas of Gansu and rendered care to elderly and handicapped people in Hebei, Liaoning and Zhejiang.
In attending to the needs of his clients as a lawyer and the demands of his philanthropic work, Mr Tsang says he is guided by the motto that one must take responsibility for the task at hand and give of one’s best in getting things done. Only by personally completing a job could one derive a sense of satisfaction and avoid committing a major blunder, he says.
In recognition of his leadership of the Tsang Shiu Tim Charitable Foundation and various philanthropic endeavours, the University bestows upon Mr Tsang Wing-wah the Honorary University Fellowship.