The picturesque setting of HKIEd’s Tai Po Campus possesses a magnetic draw of its own. It has, at the least, attracted Michelle Gu Mingyue, the girl with the poetic name (“ming yue” means “bright moon” in Chinese), to study here.

Michelle comes from Tianjin in Mainland China. She enrolled in Hong Kong for a doctoral programme in social linguistics in 2003. Chance and destiny worked in collaboration to bring Michelle to the Tai Po Campus, where she attended a seminar hosted by the HKIEd. She was very attracted by the campus’s beautiful surroundings and extremely impressed by the friendliness of the teaching staff and students, who were responsible for organising the seminar.

“Land in Hong Kong is extremely expensive. There are no high-rise buildings here in Tai Po. It’s like Shangri-la in Hong Kong. That was a really pleasant surprise for me,” said Michelle. Influenced by her mother who is an educator, Michelle has held a keen interest in the profession since childhood. Therefore, when she saw the HKIEd’s advertisement for the post-doctoral position, she immediately applied for the post and is now doing research work at the Department of English.