Simon Chau Sui-Cheong

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Simon Sui-Cheong Chau (周兆祥) is a social and environmental activist in Hong Kong. He co-founded the environmental group Green Power綠色力量 (1988), and Produce Green 綠田園有機農場, the first commercial organic farm in Hong Kong (1989). Most recently, he launched Club O, an alternative education/spiritual community.

After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, Chau worked as school teacher, editor, graphic designer, instructional television producer and presenter, newspaper columnist, radio talk-show host, and freelance translator and interpreter, and taught at the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong before joining the Hong Kong Baptist University 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.

Dr Chau 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 diets. Among the 100 odd books he published (including original as well as translated works) are those on topics ranging from green philosophy to organic farming, vegetarianism, ethics, education, diet and 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.

Married with two children, he vowed to stay in Hong Kong after 1997, as he believes the British colony has a vital role to play in the greening of China, which is of paramount importance for the welling being of the planet in the coming century. In his spare time, he grows his own vegetables in the garden, and bean sprouts in the kitchen.

In the recent years, his interest in Deep Ecology led to a dedicated search into spiritualism, as he started practising qigong, vegetarianism, fasting, and meditation. His organisation, Club O is a community in Mong Kok, providing free Zen luncheons, classes in qigong, hands on healing, meditation, interfaith dialogue, etc. Club O also does a variety of education and media related activities, and has a shop that sells organic food.

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