Campus Legends and Hall Traditions: The Lily Pond Ghost, the Cursed Statues, "Vniversity," and Documented Hall Customs

Wild-history section · Module 15 · One of the deep-dive files. This article has two parts: Part One collects HKU campus folklore and urban legends, all physically isolated in vermilion legend cards, marked "circulating informally, unverified" or "tongue-in-cheek," and not presented as fact; Part Two collects hall traditions supported by official or credible sources, named and sourced factually. Individuals are referred to only as "Mr. [Surname]"; proper nouns (halls, awards, hall emblems) retain their original names. This article does not concern current leadership.

# Navigation

• Part One · Campus Folklore (The Lily Pond Ghost · The Cursed Statues of University Hall · The Medical School Mortuary · The "Vniversity" Spelling)
• Part Two · Documented Hall Traditions (Naming Loke Yew Hall · St. John's High Table Dinner and Round the Island · University Hall's "Three Treasures" and Auntie Three · Lady Ho Tung–Ricci Hall "Gong-Grabbing")

See also: for hall fact files, see 10 · Colleges/Halls; for student-media controversies, see Student Media and Free-Speech History; for campus-building facts, see 05 · Campus.

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# Part One · Campus Folklore

⚠ The items below are all campus legends circulating informally, with no official record, no incident report, and no archival support. This archive collects them as folklore, physically isolated, and does not present them as fact or dramatise them.

# The Lily Pond Ghost (Unverified Folklore)

# The Cursed Statues of University Hall (Unverified Folklore)

# The Medical School Mortuary Locked at Night (Unverified Folklore)

# The Main Building's "Vniversity" Spelling (Legend, Officially Clarified)

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# Part Two · Documented Hall Traditions

The hall traditions below are supported by official or credible media sources and are recorded factually; for the fact files, see 10 · Colleges/Halls.

# Naming Loke Yew Hall: From Great Hall to Loke Yew Hall (1956)

Loke Yew Hall is the great hall inside HKU's Main Building, one of the campus's most representative ceremonial spaces.

According to the Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO)'s page on HKU's Main Building^※, Main Building was completed in 1912 and is HKU's oldest building; in 1956, the Great Hall inside it was renamed "Loke Yew Hall," in memory of HKU's early benefactor Dr Loke Yew.

Also according to AMO^※, Dr Loke Yew originally hailed from Jiangmen, Guangdong, and later became a leading figure among Chinese businessmen in Malaya; in 1915 he provided HKU with an interest-free loan of HK$500,000 over a 25-year term, which was critical to the university's early development, and he also established scholarships to support Chinese students from Malaya studying at HKU.

What has the hall actually been used for? According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry on HKU's Main Building^※, Loke Yew Hall can seat 450 people and has historically been used for matriculation ceremonies, examinations, graduation ceremonies, high table dinners, and dances; today HKU's annual honorary-degree conferment ceremony is still held there, and it is occasionally used for concerts and cultural events. The hall's classical decor largely retains its original appearance, though the roof and timber structure were rebuilt after wartime damage in the Second World War. The best-known moment in the hall's history took place more than thirty years before the hall's renaming: according to the same entry^※, on 20 February 1923, Dr Sun Yat-sen was invited to deliver a speech there, stating plainly that Hong Kong was where his learning and revolutionary ideas were formed — at that time the Great Hall had not yet been renamed "Loke Yew Hall" (the renaming took place only in 1956), but this speech is often cited in HKU's own historical narrative as the single most significant memory associated with Main Building.

Masking note: "Loke Yew Hall" and the "Loke Yew Scholarship" are proper nouns and retain their original names; the naming benefactor, Dr Loke Yew, is a founding-era benefactor and a positively framed named donor, and under the naming convention (00–12) may be named; this article uses "Dr Loke Yew" throughout for consistency. Dr Sun Yat-sen is a public historical figure and is named and described per the cited source.

# St. John's College: High Table Dinner and Round the Island (RTI)

St. John's College is HKU's oldest residential hall (see 10 · St. John's College for details); two of its signature traditions have official documentation:

High Table Dinner — according to the Wikipedia entry on Accommodation at the University of Hong Kong^※, St. John's was the first HKU hall to hold high table dinners (started in 1916); staff and students dine together in formal dress, continuing an English collegiate tradition.

Round the Island (RTI) — according to St. John's College's official history page^※ and the official "Cultural" page^※:

# University Hall's "Three Treasures" and Auntie Three (The Documented Part of the Three Treasures)

University Hall has a tradition known as the "Three Treasures," two of which are identifiable artefacts and one an identifiable person:

According to University Hall's official history page^※ and the fact file (10 · University Hall), the "Three Treasures" are: the statue of "David's Deer" at the entrance (the hall's emblem and spiritual symbol), the copper spiral staircase in the South Tower (said to be one of only two such staircases in Hong Kong, with University Hall home to one of them), and the cook known as "Auntie Three."

The story of the spiral staircase is more complicated than the legend suggests. According to the English Wikipedia entry on University Hall^※, this copper spiral staircase, which runs through three floors of the South Tower, originated in Paris and was installed around 1896, when the building that preceded University Hall was still Douglas Castle under the Nazareth House convent; the staircase was originally painted red — hence residents' name for it, the "Red Staircase" — and it is only because the paint wore away over the years that today's copper colour is visible. According to the same entry, which in turn relays a hall-history account, the staircase was reportedly removed by Japanese forces during the occupation and returned after the war at the request of the British Hong Kong government — if that account is accurate, the staircase would be more than a decorative item among the "Three Treasures"; it would also stand as a physical witness to wartime dispersal and postwar return. This article relays that account faithfully from the traceable source available, but no primary archival record has been found for the specific details of the wartime removal and postwar return, and readers should treat it as a hall-history account rather than a fully archived, settled fact.

Of the three, Auntie Three is a verifiable real person and an official honouree, and is accordingly named and described factually: according to HKU's official Honorary University Fellows page^※, Ms Yuen So Moy (known to residents as "Auntie Three") served at University Hall from 1957 for more than forty years, retiring in 1998; her official titles were Cook IV, Assistant Cook, and hall attendant. She not only cooked but also looked after residents in the manner of an elder — preparing meals for those who were unwell and offering encouragement — and in 2009 she was conferred an Honorary University Fellowship by HKU.

Masking note: "Auntie Three" / Ms Yuen So Moy is a positively framed individual publicly honoured by HKU (naming convention 00–12), and is accordingly named per the official page; other individual residents are not named. The "curse" attached to the statue belongs to the folklore section and has already been isolated in Part One.

# Lady Ho Tung Hall and Ricci Hall: The Gong, the Unicorn, and "Gong-Grabbing"

Another documented set of hall customs at HKU involves two halls facing each other across a street — Lady Ho Tung Hall (HKU's only all-female hall; see 10 · Lady Ho Tung Hall for details) and Ricci Hall (HKU's only Catholic all-male hall; see 10 · Ricci Hall for details).

First, the origin of the hall emblem and the gift. According to the Chinese Wikipedia entry on Lady Ho Tung Hall^※, the hall's motto is "Justitia Et Veritas" (Justice and Truth), its guardian animal is the unicorn, and its colour is yellow; at the inauguration ceremony of the hall's first residents' association in 1951, the HKU Students' Union presented the hall with a gong, to mark the hall's founding — this gong, together with two other treasures of the hall (the original lawn and a mattress woven from pandanus leaves), is together known as the hall's "Three Treasures." According to Lady Ho Tung Hall's official "Tradition and Heritage" page^※, the gong later took on ceremonial significance: it is struck before the induction ordeal (O-camp) to signify the resolve to join the hall, struck again after the ordeal to mark formal membership, and struck once more at graduation — the hall regards this as a solemn and meaningful ritual.

Next, the origin and rules of "Gong-Grabbing." According to the same official Lady Ho Tung Hall page^※, "Gong-Grabbing" is an annual tradition that has circulated between Lady Ho Tung Hall and Ricci Hall for decades: the story holds that it began when mischievous Ricci Hall freshmen "stole" Lady Ho Tung Hall's gong, and Lady Ho Tung Hall residents fought back by throwing water bags to defend it; this back-and-forth gradually evolved into a fixed annual activity during freshman orientation each September — Ricci Hall freshmen try to "grab" the gong, while Lady Ho Tung Hall residents defend it with water bags, and after the event the two halls hold a joint social gathering, so that the rivalry stays playful while the friendship between the halls continues. On Ricci Hall's side, the High Table Dinner stands as its own most formal hall tradition: The high-table dinner derives from the English collegiate tradition and is a formal occasion held regularly by the hall, regarded as an important part of hall education; guests share their life experience with residents over dinner, and residents wear suits out of respect, with associate members also attending^※. HKU CEDARS's hall page likewise lists the "High Table Dinner", the Gong Fight and Champion Day together as Ricci Hall's signature activities^※, the High Table Dinner continues the English collegiate tradition and functions as part of the hall's educational programme, regularly inviting guest speakers to address the dinner, with all hall members attending in formal dress as a mark of respect.

Masking note: both parties involved are hall-wide collective activities and do not name any specific living individual; the gong, the unicorn, and the motto "Justitia Et Veritas" are proper nouns and are named as they appear in the official sources.

These three sets of hall traditions — the naming ceremony of Loke Yew Hall, St. John's high table dinners and Round the Island, and the "treasure" rituals of University Hall and Lady Ho Tung–Ricci Hall — share a common thread: donation, gift-giving, and ritualised rivalry, forming the "documented" half of HKU's hall culture; compared with the ghost stories and curses isolated in Part One of this article, both sides have equally been passed down orally from one generation of residents to the next, but the former is backed by official pages, Wikipedia entries, and honorary-fellowship records, while the latter remains confined to legend cards marked "circulating informally, unverified" — and that line is precisely the basis on which this archive applies physical isolation.

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# Credibility Summary

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