Diaspora diaries

As a secondary school student at King George V School in Kowloon in the late 1970s and early 80s, Jason Leigh would arrive two hours before the bell rang, to play with computers.

'I was intrigued by them,' Leigh says. 'A computer club had sprung up and, even though there were no formal classes, I became really enamoured with the technology. I was basically self-taught. I picked up every book I could find.'

Born Lee Chik-shing, Leigh was given his English name when he was a day old.

'My dad figured it would be easier to get a Chinese kid into a British primary school [if he had] a British name. My first attempt was at Beacon Hill [School], since it was near our apartment, and, in the end, I wound up at Kowloon Junior. My dad claims Beacon Hill didn't take me because it didn't take Chinese students back then.'

After he graduated from King George V, while waiting for his United States college applications to arrive, Leigh would spend time at an Atari store in Tsim Sha Tsui. While there, he stumbled across an American computer magazine. He submitted one of the programs he had taught himself to write to the publication and was surprised a couple of months later to receive a letter saying it would be published and he would be paid US$50.

Leigh's early enthrallment with computers wasn't a passing fancy. Although he had intended to study chemical engineering, he switched to computer science on his first day at the University of Utah. Today, Leigh is the director of the Electronic Visualisation Laboratory and a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Leigh's father was an English teacher and his family was among the many who left Hong Kong before the handover. Leigh has not returned to the city of his birth since.