PolyU Halls in Full: The Nine Halls at Hung Hom, the Named-Colour Halls at Homantin, and Year-Round Hall Culture

In one sentence: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) runs on the principle that "the hall is a classroom": with more than 4,600^※ residents (2025/26 academic year, Student Affairs Office figures) spread across two hall complexes, a Warden-and-Tutor system, six Living & Learning Communities (LLCs), the CURI and STARS residential colleges, and the Hall Festival, the University has built a distinctive "hall culture" quite different from the college system at CUHK. For an overview of the hall system and the make-up of the Hung Hom and Homantin complexes, see the companion document residential-halls.md; for daily life, meals and the application process, see residential-halls-2.md.

---

# 1. What exactly is PolyU's "Hall Culture"?

"Hall Culture" is an informal term used across Hong Kong's university residences to describe the way of life that accumulates within a residential community — built from hall identity, student self-governance, shared activities and educational programmes. PolyU does not run a college system, but its two hall complexes (Hung Hom Halls and Homantin Halls) have developed a residential culture centred on "living and learning" through a deliberate Residential Education^※ framework. The halls are not just somewhere to sleep; they are a practice ground for cross-cultural exchange, self-management and leadership development. The University's official framing: "to create an ideal platform for cross-cultural exchange and whole-person development for students from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds" (SAO Residential Life page^※).

---

# 2. What are the nine halls at Hung Hom?

Hung Hom Halls^※ is PolyU's first student residence complex, made up of nine^※ individual halls. Each hall occupies two floors of the block, housing around 3,000^※ students in total. Of the nine, one is reserved for research postgraduate students, one is female-only, and the remaining seven are co-educational for undergraduates.

Each hall has one Warden and four to six Tutors^※ — the Warden is a University staff member or professor, while the Tutors are mostly postgraduate students who provide academic and pastoral support. The Warden of Chengde Hall, Prof. Michael Ying, describes hall life as teaching residents "collaboration, resilience, and cultural awareness" (Chengde Hall page^※) — a line that fairly sums up the value orientation of PolyU's residential education as a whole.

---

# 3. Where does the Homantin "colour hall" tradition come from?

Homantin Halls^※ was completed in 2012^※: a 25-storey^※ tower housing more than 1,600^※ students. When it opened, the halls inside were named after six colours — red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple — giving each floor-stack its own identity. This became the most recognisable cultural tradition of PolyU halls, and residents still introduce themselves to one another with "I'm from the [colour] hall".

But the "colour hall" identity runs deeper than a name. Blue Hall's theme is "Healthy Lifestyle", and its Warden writes on the hall page that hall life is "another important classroom, where you will learn to get along with people from different backgrounds" (Blue Hall page^※). Regular friendly fixtures between the colour halls — basketball, badminton, volleyball and the like — are a fixture of each year's hall calendar.

In 2021, Green Hall was reconstituted as the CURI Residential College, and Purple Hall evolved into the STARS Residential College. Homantin Halls today therefore comprises four colour halls + two residential colleges:

---

# 4. How do CURI and STARS residential colleges differ?

The two residential colleges were set up within Homantin Halls one after the other, each headed by a College Master (must be at Associate Professor level or above) and Resident Fellows. Together they form a fuller academic community structure than the ordinary "Warden + Tutor" arrangement found in the regular halls.

CURI Residential College (established 2021/22^※) is themed around "academic and research excellence through inquiry-based learning". Residents are expected to take part in the Undergraduate Research and Innovation Scheme (URIS)^※ as a priority and to maintain a cumulative GPA (CGPA) of ≥ 2.7^※. The College runs regular Mentor–Resident dialogues, innovation project showcases, and conversations with professors and entrepreneurs — the aim being that residents get an earlier start than their peers in research horizons and entrepreneurial thinking.

STARS Residential College (established 2022/23^※) exists to house students admitted through the Special Talents Recruitment Scheme (STARS Scheme), while also taking applicants with notable talents or major awards. The College focuses on four areas — music, visual arts, sports and STEM — with talent showcases, action-learning projects and leadership development, and residents must maintain a CGPA ≥ 2.5^※. Both colleges are best understood as partial, thematic experiments in the residential-college model — not a university-wide college system — and both remain under the Student Affairs Office.

The record of events after the two colleges launched says a good deal about how this "partial college system" works on the ground. STARS Residential College held its opening ceremony on 6 October 2022^※, at which a calligraphic plaque presented by alumnus Ng Miu-hoi was unveiled, alongside an inspirational talk on success in one's career. Then on 28 March 2023^※, the College staged its first "STARS RC Talent Show", with a line-up covering solo singing, classical music performance, martial arts and puppet theatre — a fair sample of the range of talents the College hopes to gather. The pairing of "opening ceremony + flagship regular show" is the most tangible way the residential colleges mark themselves off from the ordinary halls.

---

# 5. What are the Living & Learning Communities (LLCs)?

The University's official breakdown of its residential education framework rests on three pillars: ResEd regular programmes (including the PolyU Hall Festival), the Living & Learning Communities (LLCs), and — covered in the next section — the House of Intercultural Living & Learning (HILL) (Residential Education official page^※). Together these three carry the day-to-day reality of "the hall as a classroom". The LLCs are the bottom-up, interest-driven strand.

Living & Learning Communities (LLCs)^※ are a cross-hall interest-community scheme under PolyU's residential education system. Their stated purpose: to "bring residents who share common interests, passions or goals together, build a support network and grow together". LLC members design their own activities and learning content around a chosen theme and invite other residents to join in. Because the scheme cuts across hall boundaries, these themed communities form an ecosystem spanning both hall complexes.

Six LLCs currently operate:

The LLCs differ from ordinary student society affiliates: they are rooted in the lived setting of "residence", their members are mainly hall residents, and their activities are designed so that sharing, learning and service happen naturally in the course of communal life. Residents interested in joining can contact the Residential Education team ([email protected]^※) to join an existing community or propose a new theme.

---

# 6. What is the HILL cross-cultural development mechanism?

If the LLCs are "interest-driven and bottom-up", the House of Intercultural Living & Learning (HILL)^※ is the Residential Education team's deliberately designed, coach-led counterpart. Officially positioned as a co-curricular programme for undergraduate residents, HILL aims — through "interactive learning with care and mentorship" — to cultivate a threefold development of "Whole-person, Intercultural and Servant-leader", so that participants become "influential leaders in their communities and professional careers".

HILL explicitly demands voluntary commitment: the official wording welcomes "students who are willing and committed to be coached and equipped" — in other words, applicants must accept ongoing, follow-up style development rather than dropping in for one-off activities. In the 2024/25 academic year^※, the activity themes covered gender equality, physical health, intercultural integration, language exchange, sustainability, and arts and culture, in formats including intercultural understanding talks, mindfulness and wellness workshops, team building and scenario simulations, and self-awareness exercises.

The programme also carries an assessment mechanism — pre-/post-test questionnaires and focus-group interviews, benchmarked against the scales of the Cultural Intelligence Center — to test whether participants show significant gains in intercultural skills and cultural intelligence. Compared with the organic spontaneity of the LLCs, HILL is closer to a teachable, traceable "intercultural competence training course". The two strands complement rather than overlap.

---

# 7. What hall culture events run across the PolyU year?

Residential education activities at PolyU run through the whole academic year. The main markers are set out below (compiled from the Student Affairs Office's announcements and official materials over the years; each year's schedule follows what is published in that year):

PolyU Hall Festival is the flagship all-halls celebration, bringing residents from both hall complexes together across a programme of cultural, artistic and competitive events — the most concentrated period of "hall culture" in the year.

The High Table Dinner is another tradition. In 2025/26 it took place on 13 April 2026^※, with some 210^※ students from more than 29 countries and regions^※ in attendance. The speaker was PolyU University Fellow Prof. Richard Leung Tim-chiu, on the theme of "lifelong learning and the mind in an uncertain world", and the evening also featured classical music from the PolyU Orchestra and a street-dance performance. The High Table Dinner is far more than a meal — it is a compound occasion of formal-etiquette training, cross-cultural learning and mentorship connection, and it embodies the "formal" dimension of residential education.

The Green Living Programme has in recent years been scheduled in some detail. In the 2025/26 academic year^※, for example, the activities included a "Low-Carbon Cooking Workshop" (teaching how to prepare food with a lower carbon footprint), an "Intercultural Vegetarian Carnival" (pairing vegetarian food cultures from different countries with tasting sessions), environmental promotion run jointly with the Environmental Protection Department, an "Urban Farming Workshop" held within the Hung Hom and Homantin halls (learning local growing methods, plant care and hands-on vegetable and herb cultivation), and a 25 October 2025^※ farm visit to Fanling, taking residents off campus to experience the full "from farm to table" journey. The programme is designed to cultivate residents' sustainability awareness, collaborative spirit and sense of civic responsibility — the "green" dimension of residential education made concrete.

---

# 8. How does the Warden-and-Tutor system work?

Residential education at PolyU is delivered by a dedicated team on the ground. The Hall Warden is a member of the University's academic or administrative staff, responsible for overseeing the operation of the whole hall and its living environment, and for providing academic and pastoral guidance and support. The Hall Tutors are mostly postgraduate students who live on the residential floors alongside the undergraduates, taking part in the same activities; they organise hall events and serve as the first line of peer support.

In the two residential colleges at Homantin, the structure steps up a level: the Warden role is upgraded to College Master (at Associate Professor level or above), supported by Resident Fellows (at Research Assistant Professor level or above), forming a supervisory framework with a stronger academic-community character. This three-tier arrangement of "Master + Fellows + Tutors" gives the residential colleges a sense of academic connectedness much closer to a traditional college.

Some Wardens publish a message on their hall page setting out the hall's educational philosophy. The Warden of Blue Hall, Prof. Xiaolin Zhu, for instance, writes that hall life "is another important classroom" (Blue Hall page^※) — a sentiment echoed across several halls and a neat summary of PolyU's residential education philosophy.

---

# 9. How do the Hall Associations work?

Alongside the Wardens and Tutors, PolyU halls also have a layer of self-governance run by residents, for residents, with their own budgets — the Hall Associations^※. The nine Hung Hom halls and most Homantin units each have their own association, operating under the Regulations Governing the Hall Associations. They work alongside the Residential Education team but retain relatively independent control over activity planning and finances.

The official resources page publishes a series of guidance documents that sketch out how this self-governance works in practice: the associations handle their own financial matters (the treasurer's role, imprest accounts, budget applications), plan and run in-hall social programmes such as orientation camps, formal dinners and Halloween events, handle venue and equipment booking applications, and must comply with the University's regulations on anti-sexual-harassment and venue use. In short, the Hall Association is both the "operator" of hall activities and the interface between student self-governance and university administration — complementary to the "educational guidance" role of Wardens and Tutors. One side manages how events are run; the other, how running events becomes learning. Compared with the election controversies and cabinet disputes that are common among CUHK college student unions, Hall Associations at PolyU — having no college-level resource-allocation power — show markedly fewer governance disputes in the public record. This is consistent with the positioning of PolyU halls as "not a college system, purely a living-and-services" arrangement.

---

# 10. What is the substantive difference between PolyU's "Hall Culture" and the CUHK college system?

This is the comparison question the University is asked most often. The two differ fundamentally in both form and depth:

PolyU's residential education is best described as a pragmatic "whole-person development" — within the constraints of limited places and a non-college structure, it uses educational activities, diverse communities and cross-cultural contact to supply what a college system would otherwise provide in "community belonging", rather than copying the college model. The CURI and STARS residential colleges at Homantin are recent attempts to build a more structured academic connection within the halls, but they remain thematic learning units inside a residence, not a college affiliation that runs through a student's whole career.

---

# 11. What practical impact does this residential education have on students?

The official aim is to let residents develop collaboration, intercultural understanding and leadership in a living setting. The longest-running LLC, the Hall Community Services Group (active since 2007^※), still provides home visits, fundraising and tutoring for disadvantaged families in the Hung Hom area — evidence that the mechanism can sustain a lasting service-learning tradition. The Hall Music Collective (since 2002^※) has grown into a performance platform of cross-cultural membership involved in university-level events, while PolyU Dreaming Cameramen (since 2017^※) fuses visual-creativity skill-building with hall community life.

Here is how residential education translates into student development in practice:

PolyU describes the halls as "an ideal platform for cross-cultural exchange, providing students with ample opportunities for personal development through a wide range of residential education programmes and activities" (Residential Life official page^※) — and judging by the longevity of the LLCs and the sustained investment in the residential colleges, that goal rests on real institutional support rather than on slogan alone.

---