City University of Hong Kong — Motto, Emblem, Colours, Anthem and Symbols

HKU has its coat of arms, CUHK has its phoenix, but CityU chose a string of English letters for its emblem — and that emblem was never originally an emblem at all. It began life as a 30th-anniversary commemorative logo; someone struck out the "30" and it was promoted, fully formed, to official status. Roughly a decade later, in 2025, it was replaced again. This article gathers the motto, emblem, colours, anthem and floral emblem of City University of Hong Kong, and the meanings behind them. The symbolic language of CityU is consistent with its self-description as "a public research-led, professionally oriented, international university" — clean, modern, forward-looking — a deliberate contrast with the heraldic traditions of older institutions (CUHK's phoenix, HKU's shield). For basic facts and campus details, see the basic fact card; this article deals exclusively with symbolism. It is compiled from official and publicly available sources.

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# 1. Motto: 敬业乐群 (Dedication to Work, Harmony in Community)

# Official interpretation

According to the University's official explanation:

• 敬业 (the first two characters): combines academic professionalism and career ethics.
• 乐群 (the last two characters): stresses personal growth and group spirit, along with care for society.
• The Latin Officium carries "a high-minded sense of duty"; Civitas denotes both "city/town" and a "union of citizens" — echoing the "City" in the University's name. (Per About CityUHK^※)

# The source: the Record of Learning on "admission by year, examination in between"

敬业乐群 is not an isolated phrase but one step in a scheme of academic progression set out in the Record of Learning. The passage opens with the framing line "比年入学，中年考校" (students enter school by successive years and are examined in the intervening years), then describes a staged sequence of assessments: "一年视离经辨志，三年视敬业乐群，五年视博习亲师，七年视论学取友，谓之小成。九年知类通达，强立而不反，谓之大成。" (In the first year [the student] is examined on dividing the text and fixing his aim; in the third year, on dedication to study and harmony with his fellows; in the fifth, on wide learning and closeness to his teachers; in the seventh, on discussing learning and choosing friends — this is called the lesser completion. In the ninth year he knows categories and reaches through to them, stands firm and does not turn back — this is called the great completion.) 敬业乐群 is the target for the third year of study — first the student must be able to parse the text and clarify his purpose (离经辨志), and only then cultivate devoted study and amity with his peers (敬业乐群), each stage building on the last. CityU's adoption of this single phrase grafts the midpoint ideal of the ancient "three-year mark" onto the entry point of modern professional education, taking its sense of "mastery in one's specialism, ease in one's community" rather than importing the full nine-year curriculum wholesale.

# Classical commentaries

The phrase has a long exegetical history in classical learning. According to publicly available sources, Kong Yingda (孔颖达) glossed it as a combination of "revere and draw near" (敬而亲之) and "wish for and take delight in" (愿而乐之); Zhu Xi (朱熹) elaborated it as devoting one's mind single-mindedly to one's work while taking pleasure in interacting with others (per the Cantonese edition of Wikipedia^※). In adopting this Confucian classical phrase, CityU anchors itself in the Chinese cultural tradition while using the Latin rendering — and its "city/citizen" resonance — to graft on a modern professional identity. It is worth noting that 敬业乐群 circulated widely in modern Chinese education and is far from unique to CityU: many primary and secondary schools in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau use it as their motto. What is distinctive about CityU's use is the Latin translation that ties Civitas ("city/citizens") back to the name "City", letting the ancient phrase play off the University's name.

# Beside the mottos of the other seven UGC-funded universities

Set against the other seven public universities in Hong Kong, CityU's 敬业乐群 leans "practical and worldly", in contrast with the older comprehensive universities' emphasis on virtue and learning:

(The comparison is compiled from public sources; for each university's exact Latin/English formulation, consult its official website. This table only indicates CityU's relative character.)

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# 2. The emblem: a modern wordmark evolved from "CityU", twice renewed

The CityU emblem is not a heraldic crest but a modern English wordmark. It did not emerge fully formed but went through three steps: "30th-anniversary logo → digits removed to fix the emblem → renewed again in 2025".

# First version: from a 30th-anniversary mark, "minus the 30"

(Per the KL&K project page^※; the Cantonese edition of Wikipedia^※)

# The designer and the monolith: a touch of 2001: A Space Odyssey

The designer, Kan Tai-keung, is a doyen of Hong Kong graphic design and founder of Kan & Lau (now KL&K Design). As recounted by design media, Kan has said the mark's optical illusion stems from a boyhood memory: a flat quadrilateral in the logo has one edge drawn with a tapering line to create a three-dimensional illusion, "like a monument floating in infinite emptiness". The inspiration appears to come from the science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which he saw in 1968 — specifically its great flat monolith adrift in the emptiness of space (per Logonews^※). A piece of pop-culture "black monolith" imagery thus settled, eventually, into a university's letterform — an origin story that itself says much about the CityU emblem's "modern, non-heraldic" aesthetic.

# The designer: from the Bank of China logo to CityU's letterform

To understand why the CityU emblem is "a string of letters" rather than a coat of arms, one has to understand the designer's approach. Kan Tai-keung (born 1942 in Panyu, Guangdong; settled in Hong Kong in the 1950s) is a foundational figure in Chinese graphic design: he entered the field in the 1960s, later founded his own design firm (restructured as Kan Tai-keung Design in 1988 and renamed KL&K Design in 2013), and over his career has won more than three hundred design awards. He is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI), was the first designer named one of Hong Kong's "Ten Outstanding Young Persons" (1979), and was awarded the Bronze Bauhinia Star in 1999 (per public design profiles^※). His best-known work is the Bank of China logo, which merges the character 「中」 with the outline of an ancient coin, structuring a Chinese character into a modern mark. That methodology — "grounding Western modern design in Chinese cultural depth" — is exactly the DNA of the CityU emblem: no heraldic shields or Latin scrolls, but a geometric English wordmark, a line that plays an optical trick, and a dawn-gradient, telling the story of a "modern, professional, international" university.

# Second version: the new emblem launched in March 2025

After roughly a decade, CityU adopted a brand-new emblem on 1 March 2025. According to design-media reports, the new mark continues Kan Tai-keung's design inspiration but uses a sturdier, bolder typeface with brighter, more vivid colours; the overall form has become rounder and more harmonious, giving it a new visual personality. The new logo is said to have been completed around 2023 and gradually rolled out across the campus before the official launch (per Logonews^※). The change coincides with the University's broader rebranding in recent years, which has standardised the official abbreviation from CityU to CityUHK — in effect, one part of a full visual-identity update (for the background to the abbreviation change, see the basic fact card and recent developments).

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# 3. Colours and brand identity: CityUHK's "dynamic, bold"

• The CityU brand identity is built around a red/magenta palette, which together with the "CityU" wordmark and the dawn gradient forms its visual identity; the 2025 emblem further reinforces this with "more vivid colours".
• The official brand is managed by the Communication and Institutional Research Office (CIRO). Its brand page describes CityU's character as "We are dynamic, innovative, bold, and smart"^※, and lists core values including excellence, honesty, freedom of enquiry, accountability, and civility and collegiality; the brand's self-positioning stresses "creating knowledge, nurturing talent, and advancing frontier research that changes the world", and it describes the University plainly as "a professional school excelling in professional education and research".
• Exact colour values (Pantone / hex): CityU's public brand pages do not list standard Pantone numbers or hex values (they point to the Corporate Identity Manual PDF and the brand office), so this site does not speculate on specific colour codes (marked "exact colour values unknown"). Based on the public identity and the new emblem, the palette is described simply as red/magenta. CityU's "bold, vivid" use of colour is of a piece with its public image as one of the world's most international universities (for more on this positioning, see campus-character-and-identity.md).

# The name and mark are "protected assets"

CityU manages its name, visual identity and trademarks as core institutional assets. According to its official logo/name policy^※, "the name, visual identity and trademarks of CityU represent excellence in education, applied research and professional services; they are important assets of the University and must be protected." Any external use of the name, emblem or abbreviation must follow its corporate identity guidelines and be properly authorised. This also explains why the 2025 emblem change was a coordinated campaign rather than a piecemeal swap — from letterheads, name cards and signage to the website, a visual identity has to switch over as a whole, one touchpoint at a time. For this site, the policy is also the reason we do not guess at exact colour values or type weights: the precise specifications exist only inside the password-protected corporate identity manual.

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# 4. The anthem: 2021 version, lyrics by Way Kuo, music by Li Jun-yi

CityU's anthem is a comparatively recent symbol — younger than both the emblem and the floral emblem. According to the Cantonese Wikipedia, the current anthem is the 2021 version, developed with the assistance of a University Anthem Working Group and launched after approval by the Council. The lyrics were written by President Professor Way Kuo and the music by composer Mr. Li Jun-yi (李峻一). It has two movements, 《学研出尘》 ("Learning and Research, Rising Above the Mundane", the first movement) and 《科创入世》 ("Science and Innovation, Engaging the World", the second), each with Chinese and English lyrics; the English title is Beyond Boundaries (per the Cantonese edition of Wikipedia^※).

• Lyrics — Way Kuo (郭位): the then President, in office from 2008 to 2023 (for the full list of presidents, see governance-structure-and-presidents.md). It is unusual among Hong Kong universities for a sitting president to write the anthem's lyrics personally.
• Music — Li Jun-yi: a veteran Hong Kong songwriter and lyricist, who also adapted the Cantonese lyrics. The anthem was made in-house, not commissioned from outside.
• The meaning of the two movements: the titles "Learning and research, rising above" and "Science and innovation, engaging the world" map neatly onto CityU's dual character of "research + application" — aspiring to scholarly transcendence (出尘) while also bringing technological innovation down to earth, into society (入世). The second movement's lyrics even close on the line "大学之道，教研合一" (The way of the university is the unity of teaching and research), gathering the anthem's theme into that single idea.

The fact that the anthem was only systematically established in 2021 also reflects CityU's nature as a young university still actively constructing its symbolic apparatus — the emblem has been changed twice, the floral emblem was only chosen in 2016, the anthem only took shape in 2021. Almost the entire suite of "university symbols" is the product of the last decade or so, not of the University's founding.

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# 5. Floral emblem: the bougainvillea, "City flower" chosen by 1,500 votes

The "City flower" was not decreed from on high — it was the result of a public vote. According to the University's official news release^※, in 2016 the University put forward eight candidate flowers commonly found on campus (including camellia, hibiscus, ixora and osmanthus) and invited more than 1,500 staff, students and alumni to vote online with a "LIKE". The bougainvillea won. At the naming ceremony, the then President Way Kuo explained that the bougainvillea is "easy to grow, resilient and tenacious, and blooms all year round, symbolising the University's ceaseless striving and repeated achievements"; Vice-President (Administration) Edwin Lee Kwo-on (李国安) added that the plant "can adapt to a variety of harsh environments and blooms several times a year". At the ceremony the two men planted bougainvillea by hand in CityU Plaza, and the University said it planned to plant the flower across campus so the "City flower" could be seen everywhere.

An apt coincidence: the bougainvillea is also the city flower of Shenzhen. CityU chose an extremely common, flamboyant, scrambling climber of southern China — not a rare or precious bloom — as its emblem, fitting its own self-narrative of "pragmatic, resilient, perpetually in bloom".

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# 6. English name and abbreviation

• Full English name: City University of Hong Kong
• Official abbreviation: CityUHK (formerly CityU; the cityu.edu.hk domain retains "CityU")
• Chinese abbreviation: 城大 (also 香港城大)

In recent years CityU has standardised its official English abbreviation from CityU to CityUHK (to distinguish itself from other "City Universities" in mainland China and overseas), and the 2025 emblem was launched in the context of this rebranding. "城大 / CityUHK / CityU" are still used interchangeably in common parlance and on older signage, and all refer to the same university; for the full story of the naming and renaming, see naming-history-poly-to-university.md.

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# 7. Symbols at a glance

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