Difficulty: Challenger (Level 2)
An annual virtual choir unites thousands of Hong Kong students with the power of music.
The Hong Kong Inter-School Choral Festival (HKICF) started its virtual choir in 2023. It was a response to the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last year’s virtual choir had more than 2,000 students from 46 schools. After recording their parts, the pupils’ voices were combined into a music video released last August.
They sang an original song called “We Sing”. It was written by award-winning lyricist Chow Yiu-fai and veteran composer Vicky Fung Wing-kei. The song was about mental well-being.
“I felt so touched because it’s a song that cares about teenagers’ mental health,” said Form Six student Rachel Lui Wing-lam from The Methodist Church HK Wesley College.
“And with the song’s music video ... we sing together [even] though we don’t know each other. But through music, we are connected.”
The song’s message for teens
The choir project began in 2024 when the songwriters spoke with 12 teens about mental health.
“We didn’t want to write a song based only on what adults think students feel. We wanted to hear their voices,” said Kelvin Lau, founder and artistic director of HKICF.
He hoped the song could encourage young people to take care of their mental health and reach out for support.
“The world often tells them to achieve more, to push harder,” Lau said.
“But none of that means anything without good health, both physical and mental,” he added.
Chow is also a lecturer at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. He observed that many teens were good at hiding their pain.
“Years of teaching have shown me that students who seem healthy, lively and chatty in class can also feel very lonely and carry hidden wounds,” he said.
Growing up is not easy
Both Chow and Fung remember what it was like to struggle during their teenage years.
Chow recalled when being overweight at an all-boys school made him vulnerable to bullying.
“I was terrible at sports,” he said. “When we played football, the captains would ... pick teams. I was always the last one chosen.”
He was also a target because he came from a single-parent family. His peers also thought he was too feminine.
This drove Chow to find ways to hide himself, “trying not to be seen”.
Fung, too, understands how it feels to be rejected.
“I really loved singing. I started writing songs at six,” she explained.
“But my family felt that pursuing music had no future.”
Now, with a successful career as a composer, Fung hopes “We Sing” can remind adults to be open-minded towards young people.
