Cross-boundary students return to school in Hong Kong after a three-year hiatus

Pupils and teachers of Fung Kai No 1 Primary School in Sheung Shui take a photo after a flag-raising ceremony to record their long-awaited reunion on Wednesday, the day cross-boundary students returned to school after three years away. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

Hong Kong’s Fung Kai No 1 Primary School in Sheung Shui on Wednesday welcomed back over 30 cross-border pupils among the first batch of the city’s 18,000 cross-boundary students to return to school after a three-year hiatus. 

Longing for face-to-face interaction with their teachers and peers, the students, accompanied by their parents, embarked on a cross-boundary journey from various parts of Shenzhen.

Zhou Ziyi, 10, was one of the early returners. He had to wake up at 5 am in order to get ready for his commute to school. After having a light breakfast prepared by his grandma, Zhou left home with his father, bathed in the dawn sunshine, to head to Futian Checkpoint, 10 minutes’ walk from home. 

Zhou Ziyi (right) continues his journey to Hong Kong at the Futian Checkpoint. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)

Waiting across the boundary for Zhou was a welcoming ceremony held by the school and the many happy faces of friends and teachers. He urged his father to hurry up as he didn’t want to be late for the big welcome on the first school day after the Lunar New Year holiday. 

After arriving, Zhou checked in at school and with his teachers waiting at the security booth to help take his temperature and sanitize his hands. 

Then he attended a flag-raising ceremony to start the school day with other students, followed by a group photo to mark the occasion and various activities to help the cross-boundary students familiarize themselves with school life and the campus.

Zhou Ziyi, a 10-year-old student from Shenzhen, takes the East Rail line to his school on Wednesday for his first face-to-face class since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)

The first thing that primary six cross-border pupil Khoo Tsz-ham did after arriving at school was to check the garden and to play with her classmates in the playground. 

Khoo was thrilled to be able to return to school, despite the fact that attending classes every day means she will need to do COVID-19 nucleic acid tests and spend at least an hour commuting. 

According to the school’s principal, Chu Wai-lam, about 20 students couldn’t make it because of transportation issues and a failure to provide valid COVID-19 negative results within 48 hours and get a prior booking for the checkpoint, required to cross the border.  

Cross-boundary students and their companion enter Fung Kai No 1 Primary School in Sheung Shui, Hong Kong, on Wednesday. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

Chu expressed his hope that the Hong Kong SAR government will soon offer special travel arrangements for cross-boundary students, including lifting the COVID-19 test and quota-booking requirements.

For Guo Kaixin’s son, who is in primary two and lives in Shenzhen’s Luohu district, it was his first visit to the school. The boy was anxious about his in-person meeting with his classmates and teachers at school after having spent one and half years talking to them online. 

In the short term, Guo will have to accompany her son to school on daily basis as he is too young to book a place for the border-crossing on his own. So Guo will also have to do COVID-19 nucleic tests. 

Zhou Ziyi greets his classmates who are still taking online classes on the mainland. He was one of them before the quarantine-free travel resumed between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. (PARKER ZHENG / CHINA DAILY)

The children’s excitement was shared by Chen Xiaoping’s daughter, who is in primary five and returned to Hong Kong via Shenzhen’s Wenjindu Checkpoint. Chen said that she needed to buy a new school uniform as her daughter has outgrown the one she bought three years ago. 

Zhou’s teacher, Sze Wing-tung, the head teacher of primary five and six, said two cross-border students were in her classes on Wednesday. 

Noting that the school will closely monitor the cross-boundary students and provide sufficient support to help them adapt to their new environment, Sze said the school will maintain online teaching until the test-free and quota-free cross-border service is fully restored.

Various offline campus activities resume for cross-boundary students, who joined their schoolmates playing with shadow puppets, learning in the classroom, and playing hopscotch on the playground. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

In late January, Hong Kong’s Education Bureau said that cross-border students will be exempt from prior quota bookings from mid-February, allowing them to commute as they did before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cross-border students and parents have long yearned for a full resumption of the free flow of travel between Hong Kong and the mainland. Quarantine-free travel resumed on Jan 8 after a three-year hiatus. 

But cross-border travelers still need to obtain a negative COVID-19 test result within 48 hours of departure and reserve an online place for traveling. 

Various offline campus activities resume for cross-boundary students, who joined their schoolmates playing with shadow puppets, learning in the classroom, and playing hopscotch on the playground. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

Various offline campus activities resume for cross-boundary students, who joined their schoolmates playing with shadow puppets, learning in the classroom, and playing hopscotch on the playground. (ANDY CHONG / CHINA DAILY)

Several other schools in the city also welcomed cross-border pupils on Wednesday. 

Principal Chu said he expects another 100 cross-border students to return to school on Thursday and more to follow on Friday. Most cross-boundary students are expected to return at the end of February when COVID curbs are expected to be lifted, quotas scrapped and more transportation options reinstated, such as cross-boundary buses, he said. 

Contact the writers at williamxu@chinadailyhk.com