Leung Chun-ying was in a young group that brought mainland officials up to speed
For Hong Kong's younger generation, who grew up among high-rises, shopping malls and luxury cars, Leung Chun-ying's descriptions of the mainland in the late 1970s might sound slightly absurd.
Mr Leung, a young surveyor at Jones Lang Wootton, a British real estate consultancy firm, was part of a small group of professionals who would regularly make their way across the Lo Wu Bridge in 1979, a year after the mainland started down the path of opening and reform, to give lectures on market economics and other topics to mainland officials in Shenzhen, Zhuhai , Guangzhou and Shanghai.
Lo Wu was the only border checkpoint, and there were no direct flights from Hong Kong to cities such as Shanghai. Underdeveloped transport networks at the time forced the group to spend a night in Shenzhen if they intended to travel to other cities.
'In those days, the five-storey Huaqiao Hotel was the only place in Shenzhen where a cross-border traveller could stay,' Mr Leung said. 'During peak seasons, we might have to sleep on canvas beds in corridors when no single or double rooms were available.'
Paying for their own transport and lodging, the group who made up the Association of Experts for Modernisation would cross over at weekends and whenever they had annual leave, bundles of lecture notes in hand.
The group was founded in 1979, with the outspoken pro-mainland politician Dorothy Liu Yiu-chu serving as the founding chairwoman. Mr Leung would go on to become chairman in 1984. 'We crossed the border to give lectures and seminars on a voluntary basis and had no intention of seeking any personal benefits.
