CHAN YUEN-YING MAY well have found the secret of perpetual motion. The director and professor of the University of Hong Kong's journalism and media studies centre has not taken a single holiday in the past four years. And with innumerable projects on the go, she is unlikely to take one any time soon.
Professor Chan is one of those rare people who are blessed with an endless supply of energy and the determination to stand up and fight for what they believe in. Her aim is not just to make a difference but, whenever an opportunity presents itself, to change the world.
This crusading zeal led her into journalism early in her career. Now, she wants to communicate some of that fire to the new generation of students and help them realise that more Asian voices are needed in the global media.
'China is the most important story today and we should be experts in telling our own story,' she said.
That point struck home when she got her first job as a junior reporter for a Chinese-language newspaper in New York. Many of her stories focused on the struggles of Chinese immigrants, the violence in Chinatown and international relations between the United States and China. Over the course of a decade, she worked her way up the ranks to the position of editor-in-chief.
Professor Chan's lucky break came in 1990, when she took on a temporary assignment with the New York Daily News, the seventh largest daily newspaper in the United States, with a circulation of 795,000. She was asked to work on a special immigration project. Noting her passion for the job, the Daily News editors were soon offering her a full-time role as the paper's first immigration reporter.