Simon Chau’s Blog

Simon S.C. Chau, leading veteran in the local Green Movement and icon, was born and grew up in Hong Kong. After graduating from the Hong Kong University in 1970, he worked as school teacher, editor, graphic designer, instructional television producer and presenter, newspaper columnist, radio talk-show host, and free lance translator and interpreter, and taught at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong before joining the Hong Kong Baptist College to design a degree course in translation. His career in social activism began in the early 1970s, and continued with renewed vigour on his return from Britain in 1984, after the University of Edinburgh awarded him a doctorate for his thesis on Translation Pedagogy.

He co-founded Greenpower (1988), an influential green group, Produce Green Foundation (1989, www.producegreen.org.hk) which set up the first commercial organic farm in Hong Kong, and the Vegetarian Society of Hong Kong (1994). He gives speeches and seminars regularly to professional bodies, social groups, schools, and international gatherings locally and abroad, and is frequently interviewed by the press on issues ranging from environmental protection and animal rights to health and spirituality. Among the 124 books he published so far (including original as well as translated works) are those on topics ranging from green philosophy to organic farming, vegetarianism, ethics, education, diet , green recipes, healing, concern for the South, feminism, marriage, social criticism, translatology, meditation, qigong, and fables for adults and children. After teaching translating at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Polytechnic, he helped the Hong Kong Baptist University to create a state-of-the-art Translation Programme.

In the recent years, his interest in Deep Ecology led to a dedicated search into spiritualism, as he started practicing qigong, vegetarianism, fasting, meditation and healing. In 2005, he treated himself to an early retirement from full time teaching and focused his energy on the launching of the Green Living Education Foundation. As the founding chair of Club O (www.club-o.org), a project of that registered charity, he presides over Zen Luncheons and Zen Suppers (where guests eat in a meditative state) every Saturday to charm members and visitors at its Mongkok headquarters. He writes regular columns for several magazines and periodicals and runs the Green New People Show every Monday live at Radio-Television Hong Kong.

After publishing over 9,000 pictures to illustrate his own and other writers’ essays in newspapers and magazines, the Sunday painter is now painting T-shirts, pullovers, curtains, table cloths, table mats, and hand bands for charity sale (Enquiries: Club O, (852) 2619 0000). Samples of his art grace his website (www.simonchau.hk) and blog (http://blog.simonchau.hk).

Among the angels who keep him sane are his cat, his dogs, his Japanese carps, his painting and sprouting chores, and his harmonicas— in no particular order.