Film star Chow backs his alma mater

Lamma Island's most famous son returned to the heart of the community last Sunday for the launch of the primary school's alumni association.

Actor Chow Yun-fat, who recalled playing truant when he was a pupil at Northern Lamma School in the early 1960s, called on the government to give greater support to village schools.

'With village schools, people stay very close,' he said. And during the ceremony one of Hong Kong's favourite movie stars did just that, mingling happily with children, parents and other old boys and girls. Chow, star of the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, was made life honorary chairman of the new association.

'The government should support these schools with manpower and money, though they may have their own management ways,' he told the South China Morning Post. The school had heard on Saturday that the $15 million school improvement project planned for the campus by the Education Department had been postponed.

Chow said he was aware of the controversy over the school's leadership. 'I support the principal. She is very nice and clever, but has suffered a lot. She is the best,' he said.

Principal Jennie Yuen Chun-ni was sacked in June by the school's supervisor Chau Kim-hung and reinstated by the Education Department, which then removed the supervisor from the management committee.