WONG YAN-LUNG 41-year-old promises to be a breath of fresh air

Speaking at a symposium on poverty earlier this month, Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen said the next justice minister would be 'a classic Hong Kong success story', someone who started out 'in the lower reaches of society'.

Most observers seized on his remarks as confirmation that 41-year-old barrister Wong Yan-lung had been chosen as Elsie Leung Oi-sie's successor.

Throughout his childhood and adolescence, Mr Wong lived with his family in a tiny room in a rundown pre-war building in Wan Chai. The family later moved to Wah Fu Estate in Aberdeen.

His father was an ice-cream vendor outside the Peak Tram station in Garden Road, Central.

Mr Wong excelled at school. He scored As in seven subjects in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Exam in 1981, ranking first in the arts stream at the elite Queen's College in Causeway Bay. In 1983, Mr Wong won the Prince Philip Scholarship to study law at Magdalen College, Cambridge.

He began practising as a barrister in 1987 as a protege of Chief Justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang, then a barrister. Mr Wong specialised in constitutional, administrative, property and civil law. He was made a senior counsel in 2002.