Sub-societies and the “Sheung Jong” Culture: A Scuffle on Registration Day 2014, and the Youth Behind the Cabinet Names

On the rainy evening of 12 August 2014, three human walls formed at PolyU’s freshman registration site. This was not a student protest—it was a turf war over who could reach new students first, a battle between sub-societies that escalated into a jostling, shouting scuffle involving over twenty people. This nearly forgotten episode offers the most precise entry point for understanding the sub-society ecosystem and the “sheung jong” (上莊, taking up a cabinet post) culture at PolyU: on the surface, it is all orientation socials; underneath, it is an entire framework of competitive rules built around quotas, face, and lineage.

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# “Three Human Walls”: The Sub-society Scramble on Registration Day 2014

According to consolidated media reports, on the evening of 12 August 2014, dozens of individuals, suspected to be orientation camp organisers, formed three human walls outside PolyU’s freshman registration venue to recruit newcomers for their camps. It was raining at the time, and some were holding umbrellas. During this, two groups of suspected organisers, totalling more than twenty people, began quarrelling loudly, pushing and shoving each other and knocking over chairs. The situation grew volatile, and other students nearby kept clear. The incident was defused only after people present pulled the two sides apart. Reports indicate that the PolyU Students’ Union later stated that those involved were all alumni who had already graduated.

The incident is worth documenting not for its severity—no one was injured, and no one appears to have been held accountable—but for how precisely it exposes a hidden competitive chain within PolyU’s orientation ecosystem: alumni (known as “old ghosts” or lou gwai) intervening in the recruitment efforts of active sub-societies, even resorting to physical confrontation at the registration site to help their parent association or department grab more freshmen. This also illustrates, by extension, that the pressure to sustain a lineage in sheung jong culture does not automatically disappear upon graduation.

credibility: corroborated — The details of the scuffle on the 12 August 2014 registration day and the Students’ Union’s statement that those involved were alumni are relayed and cross-referenced from consolidated media reports, with consistent details.

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# Big O, Small O, Dark O: A Layered Orientation Landscape

To understand the context of the conflict described above, one must first grasp the three-tier taxonomy of Hong Kong university orientation camps. Based on explanations of university terminology summarised by media outlets like UPower:

• Big O (Giant O): A university-wide orientation camp organised by the Students’ Union. The largest in scale, it is usually the “official” first stop for incoming freshmen.
• Small O: Orientation camps organised by individual departmental societies or clubs. Smaller in scale, they focus on bonding and lineage within that specific department or society.
• Dark O: Orientation camps not officially approved or registered by the Students’ Union. Often organised privately by individual sub-societies, hall-level groups, or even graduated alumni, they sell themselves on being more “free” and less regulated, but simultaneously lack accountability and safety oversight.

The scuffle on Registration Day 2014, according to the context of existing reports, precisely involved on-site competition between different groups recruiting for “Dark O” camps. “Dark O” camps operate outside the Students’ Union’s formal regulatory system, which explains why the union was able to distance itself from the conflict, stating that those involved were “all alumni who had already graduated”—by definition, Dark O camps fall outside the union’s purview.

This layered structure also helps to understand a key point reiterated in Module 19 and this module: the boundary of risk governance for orientation camps does not always align with the "SU vs. non-SU" divide. Because Dark O camps escape formal oversight, they theoretically carry a higher risk of going out of control than Big O or Small O camps—which is one reason why public opinion called for “unified standards” in the wake of the 2023 city-wide orientation camp scandals (detailed in the chapter): if oversight only covers Big O and Small O, grey zones like Dark O become loopholes.

credibility: corroborated (terminology definitions) / single source (direct link to the 2014 event) — The classification terms Big O/Small O/Dark O are used consistently across multiple media reports and student culture features. While reports of the 2014 incident mention "suspected recruitment for Dark O", no authoritative source explicitly defines the specific camp category involved in this conflict. The causal link drawn in this section is therefore a reasonable inference by this site based on terminology and reportage context, and does not represent a verified official classification.

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# “King Jong,” “Saai Jong,” “Old Ghosts”: A Complete Ritual of Succession

Sheung jong is not a one-off election vote, but a whole set of social rituals spanning several months, with its own fixed terminology:

• King Jong (傾莊, deliberating the cabinet): Students interested in sheung jong meet current cabinet members to understand the society’s structure and division of duties—the first step in forming a team.
• Forming a Line-up (組班底): After king jong, prospective candidates get to know each other and piece together a tentative candidate cabinet list.
• Saai Jong (曬莊, sunning the cabinet): Candidate cabinets “expose” themselves to the wider student body by distributing leaflets, putting up posters, and other means, to canvas for votes.
• Old Ghosts (老鬼, lou gwai): Former cabinet members who have previously served on a particular jong and have since graduated or stepped down. Old ghosts often use their own past experience to “interrogate” the new generation of candidates during consultation sessions—a role that, at other institutions like CityU, has even evolved into public “table-flipping” scenes (see next section). Similar generational Q&A traditions exist within PolyU’s sub-society culture, though this site has not located specific public reports of conflicts reaching the “table-flipping” level at PolyU itself.

The core function of this ritual is the transmission of organisational memory from one generation of cabinet members to the next—cabinet names, activity traditions, sponsor contacts, and past financial experience are all informally passed down through the role of the “old ghost.” This is why this site repeatedly emphasises in the chapter that each new executive committee and union council is composed of “newbies,” and while the old ghost system provides a certain inheritance of experience, it can also become a latent risk where “informal influence” overrides formal oversight mechanisms—especially when significant financial decisions are involved.

credibility: corroborated — The definitions and operating methods for terms like king jong, saai jong, and old ghost can be cross-verified by multiple independent sources, including features from the CUHK Student Press and Hong Kong 01’s “5 Things at University” series. They are part of a prevalent cross-institutional culture at Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions, not unique to PolyU.

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# The “Table-Flipping” Culture: A Warning from Another Institution, and PolyU’s Restraint

In 2015, during a consultation session for a candidate cabinet under the CityU Business and Departmental Joint Societies, a serving student leader, dissatisfied with the candidate cabinet members’ performance and attitude, lost control and “flipped a table” while hurling profane insults at them, demanding they stand to receive the harangue. The incident was filmed and went viral online, becoming a representative case study of the “dark side of sheung jong culture” in Hong Kong’s higher education sector. The individual later applied to the police force and, when interviewed by the media years later, admitted that his loss of control back then was 「幼稚、不成熟」(childish and immature).

This CityU case is worth mentioning in this article because it draws a clear line: the “tradition of interrogation” by old ghosts towards new cabinet members, once it loses restraint, transmutes from experience-sharing into public humiliation. In publicly available sources, this site has not found reports of a similar-level “table-flipping” conflict occurring at consultation sessions for PolyU sub-societies or its Students’ Union. This may reflect genuine relative restraint at PolyU in this regard, or it may simply mean such incidents never entered the public reporting field. Following the principle of “truthfully state when evidence is lacking, do not speculate,” the CityU case is juxtaposed here merely as a sectoral cross-reference and does not represent a specific assessment of PolyU’s sub-society culture.

credibility: corroborated (CityU case) / unverified amongst the community (whether similar incidents occurred at PolyU) — The 2015 CityU table-flipping incident was cross-reported by multiple media outlets, including Hong Kong 01 and Ming Pao, and confirmed by the individual involved in interviews. Whether similar incidents occurred within PolyU sub-societies, this site has not found public reports; therefore, no assertion is made, only the verification result is stated.

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# The Internal Economics of “One Cabinet”: Favours, Responsibility, and Friction

Within the sheung jong cultural circle, it is often said that 「一支莊係一個內閣、一個整體」(one jong is one cabinet, one whole)—in theory, cabinet members should be mutually considerate of each other’s workload and responsibilities, sharing the burden. However, according to a synthesis of student life experience-sharing articles, sheung jong in reality often comes with quite substantial interpersonal friction:

• Uneven Workload Distribution: Some cabinet members invest far more time than expected in handling society affairs, event planning, and external liaison, while others remain relatively passive. Over time, resentment easily accumulates.
• The Double Burden of Studies and Cabinet Duties: As experience-sharing articles point out, “balancing studies and sheung jong is genuinely not easy; the workload on both sides is really heavy.” This is one reason many university students, while listing “sheung jong” as one of the “Five Things in University Life,” also attach cautionary advice.
• High Pressure During the Publicity Period: The saai jong phase is widely considered the toughest part of the entire sheung jong cycle. Candidate cabinet members must continuously devise ways to reach potential voters and canvass for their support, with the pressure concentrated within a limited publicity window.

Most of this friction does not make it into public reports, yet it forms the mundane backdrop for understanding “why some years no one wants to form a cabinet to run for election.” While macro-level explanations for the wave of broken successions inevitably involve changes in the political environment (detailed in the chapter), sheung jong itself, as a form of high-intensity, low-material-reward (usually no substantive pay beyond connections and experience) voluntary labour, has long had a natural attrition rate. When political and institutional pressures are superimposed upon this already-existing fatigue, broken successions become more likely.

credibility: corroborated — Descriptions of the workload, interpersonal friction, and high-pressure publicity period associated with sheung jong can be cross-verified by multiple university life experience-sharing articles from sources like Hong Kong 01 and Tutor Circle. They reflect common perceptions across Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions, not phenomena peculiar to a single institution.

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# After Broken Successions: The Sub-society Ecosystem Shifts to the SAO System

After the PolyU Students’ Union entered a prolonged state without an executive committee from 2022 (detailed in the chapter), administrative tasks for sub-societies and departmental societies—such as registration, activity applications, and venue bookings—increasingly shifted to the Student Affairs Office (SAO) system (detailed in the overview chapter, §3.1). The impact of this change on sheung jong culture itself is structural rather than superficial:

• Sub-societies still exist. The daily operations of departmental societies, interest clubs, and non-local student organisations largely continue. New students still see recruitment booths, promotional campaigns, and invitations to king jong.
• However, the succession chain of the “central jong” (the Students’ Union itself) has broken. Without an executive committee, there are no legally constituted “old ghosts of the Students’ Union” to pass on organisational memory to a new generation. The Union Council and Provisional Executive Committee take on a custodial rather than incubating role for new cabinet members.
• Sheung jong culture at the sub-society and departmental society level is, to some extent, more resilient than at the central Students’ Union level. Because while the administrative paths for the registration and resourcing of these organisations have changed, the communal foundations of the organisations themselves—departmental camaraderie, hall affiliation—did not vanish with the dissolution of the Students’ Union.

This phenomenon echoes the observation raised in the overview chapter: student self-governance at PolyU has not completely disappeared, but the boundaries of that self-governance have been bureaucratised. Sheung jong culture remains vivid at the sub-society and departmental society level, but it has lost the overarching central Students’ Union that once served as the top-level node for lineage and coordination.

credibility: corroborated (overall framework) — For the administrative shift of sub-societies to the SAO system after the broken succession, see sources cited in the overview chapter; this section is a synthetic observation and does not represent an additional verifiable singular fact.

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# Three Years of Pandemic: Another Rift in the Sub-society Ecosystem

Before the Students’ Union’s broken succession in 2022, the sub-society ecosystem at PolyU and across Hong Kong had already experienced an earlier, more widespread shock—campus controls during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. According to a summary of public reports, during the pandemic, while institutions like HKU, HKUST, PolyU, and HKBU did not object to student organisations holding physical orientation activities, they had to comply with capacity limits and health measures. University-wide “Giant O” (Big O) camps organised by student unions completely vanished from all eight UGC-funded institutions during this period—a result, alongside pandemic restrictions, also compounded by the simultaneous broken successions of student unions at multiple universities.

This means that, from 2020 onwards, PolyU’s sub-societies actually underwent two consecutive waves of impact: first, the pandemic caused cross-institutional recruitment, orientation camps, and other gathering-based activities to shrink dramatically or move online; immediately following, the Students’ Union’s broken succession in 2022 further weakened the organisational resources and coordinating capacity at the “central jong” level. The fact that sub-societies and departmental societies could largely sustain operations through these two successive shocks speaks, to some extent, to the resilience of sheung jong culture—even when the highest-level student union was paralysed, the inherent bonds of departmental friendship, hall affiliation, and interest-based communities were enough to sustain the survival of grassroots organisations.

credibility: corroborated — The capacity limits for orientation activities during the pandemic and the city-wide disappearance of “Giant O” can be verified via public reports. The analysis of the compounded impact with the 2022 broken succession is a synthetic observation by this site and does not represent an additional verifiable singular fact.

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# Sub-society Naming and Cabinet-Name Culture: A Low-Key Carrier of Collective Memory

Beyond formal organisational names, PolyU’s sub-societies and departmental societies have a custom, upon each annual transition, of adopting an informal “cabinet name” (jong meng) for that year’s executive committee. These names often carry cultural, philosophical, or humorous connotations, serving as a collective identifier for that generation of cabinet members (detailed in the overview chapter, §11 In-Depth Look at “Sheung Jong” Culture). This practice is not unique to PolyU but is a phenomenon common to all Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions: student unions and sub-societies at HKU, CUHK, and CityU also have their own traditions of historical cabinet names, with some departmental societies even preserving complete annual tables of cabinet names as a form of informal archive for organisational memory.

Cabinet-name culture is worth documenting here because it provides a low-sensitivity, high-persistence carrier for organisational memory. Unlike formal archives such as financial reports or election results, cabinet names often circulate through internal word-of-mouth, in orientation briefings, or in social media profile bios. Even when formal archives are missing, historical cabinet names might still serve as one of the clues for outsiders to trace a sub-society’s duration and lineage. The fact that the PolyU cabinet name “Woon Yiu” (煥曜, meaning “Radiance”), belonging to the executive committee elected in 2021 and dissolved in January 2022, could be repeatedly cited in subsequent reports is precisely because this name itself carries a specific historical moment, allowing an otherwise abstract “28th Executive Committee” to be concretely identified and remembered.

credibility: corroborated — Cabinet-name culture as a widespread phenomenon in Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions can be verified by multiple features from the CUHK Student Press, Hong Kong 01, and others. The specific reference to “Woon Yiu” as the cabinet name for PolyU’s 28th Executive Committee can be verified by sources cited in the aforementioned chapter in this module.

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