CityU Urban Legends and Campus Lore: The Festival Walk Footbridge, the Academic Building, and the Exam Curse

City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) Comprehensive Information Database · Campus Unofficial History Module

Reading Note (Unofficial History Section): This chapter documents urban legends and superstitions transmitted orally across campus. The vast majority cannot be corroborated by any reliable primary source; they constitute campus anecdotes and should not be taken as fact. All unverified claims are presented within warning containers and attribution phrasing, juxtaposing multiple versions without drawing conclusions. Where accounts involve claims of "a suicide," this document consistently refrains from naming individuals, narrating events, or arranging a timeline, recording only the existence of the legend itself. For investigations into the university crest and architectural landmarks, see the companion piece The Crest Controversy, the Origin of the Motto, and Signature Buildings; for the threads connecting campus animals and the veterinary school, see CityU Campus Cats and Animal Anecdotes.

In a nutshell: The most pervasive piece of campus superstition at CityU is "walk through the centre door, never pass a three"—rumour has it that walking through the middle door of the red gate at the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (formerly Academic 1, named in 2017) will ensure your GPA never rises above 3. This chapter labels the credibility of each legend and traces the "curse" back to the US-style honours degree system CityU implemented from 2020.

---

This is a university fused with a shopping centre. Exit the MTR Kowloon Tong Station, cross the atrium of Festival Walk, follow a dimly lit pedestrian walkway deeper inside, and you step directly into a teaching building of the City University of Hong Kong—no need to go outside, no chance of getting caught in the rain. It is precisely because of this rare, symbiotic proximity with Festival Walk that CityU has spawned a whole set of urban legends viable only within this vertical campus: the "Time Tunnel" in the footbridge, the middle door of the red gate you must never walk through, the sculpture you must not touch at Tat Chee Avenue, and an unspeakable tale in a lavatory. This chapter sorts through the legends one by one, clearly labelling the strength of the source for all informally circulated claims and refraining from making any factual assertions.

# Why Do CityU's Legends All Revolve Around Festival Walk?

CityU's main campus is located on Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon Tong, immediately adjacent to the large shopping centre Festival Walk, to which it is directly linked by pedestrian footbridges and passageways. This spatial arrangement—a campus growing right beside a mall—is the prerequisite for understanding CityU's campus culture memes: many nicknames and legends are, at root, students' wry commentary on the inseparability of university and shopping centre.

According to a report by HK01^※, when CityU solicited opinions on a potential name change in 2021, netizens briefly propelled "Festival Walk University" (the English play on words being exactly that) to become one of the most popularly touted creative suggestions. Other informal punning nicknames, such as "Shitty U" or "Kitty U," are all phonetic plays on the English name "City U" and carry no positive or negative connotations. These nicknames are not negative incidents in themselves; they are simply part of the campus humour tradition, and this archive records them as they are, without evaluation.

This spatial configuration also dictates the "setting" for CityU's legends. At most universities, urban legends are set in secluded corners—the hill behind campus, a pond, an old dormitory. CityU is exactly the opposite: its most famous legends all take place in the most densely trafficked spots—the passageway connecting to the mall, the main entrance of the core teaching building, the essential crossroads leading to the library. A vertical campus that shares its flow of people with a shopping centre has very few desolate corners for the imagination to play in, so legends can only grow along daily commuter lines, retelling the doors and passageways walked through every day as places with "something to them."

A distinction must be made: the verifiable institutional content regarding Festival Walk and CityU's spatial property rights and its identity as a vertical campus belongs in the realm of textual research, as covered in the companion piece The Crest Controversy, the Origin of the Motto, and Signature Buildings; this chapter deals only with the legends and superstitions that derive from this spatial relationship.

# The "Time Tunnel": Spooky Passageway or Mere Architectural Quirk?

The pedestrian walkway connecting Festival Walk to the CityU academic zone is nicknamed the "Time Tunnel" by CityU students. According to a new student guide compilation^※, the origin of this epithet is quite prosaic: the walls on both sides of the passageway are plastered with CityU development updates, and with natural light partially blocked, the field of vision dims, making the walk feel like passing through a gloomy tunnel—hence the name.

This name easily evokes supernatural imaginings, but based on the available material, the "Time Tunnel" is an architectural feature given a nickname, not the scene of any particular odd event. There are sporadic, informal mentions linking the dim footbridge to a vaguely eerie sensation, but these are subjective feelings; this archive has found no specific, event-based source for such claims.

A verifiable counterpart is this: the passageway is well-known for a genuinely functional reason—students hoping to eke out a few more minutes of air-conditioning in summer or avoid a stretch of rain in the wet season will deliberately route themselves through Festival Walk to enter CityU, and the university has also used the passageway walls as a display corridor for disseminating university news. Dim, long, and lined with posters—these three features together are enough to saddle a purely utilitarian commuter corridor with a name suggesting a hint of mystery, yet it requires no genuine paranormal core. The colouring of a legend often originates in the most mundane commuting habits.

# "Walk Through the Centre Door, Never Pass a Three": Where Did the Red Gate GPA Curse Come From?

The most widely circulated piece of campus superstition at CityU features the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building (formerly "Academic 1," AC1). According to an official CityU announcement^※, Academic 1 was formally named the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building on 28 April 2017, in recognition of the support of Dr. Yeung Kin-man, Co-Chairman of the CityU Foundation Council. This building is the core of teaching at CityU, housing the Run Run Shaw Library and a large number of classrooms. Students orient themselves by colour-coded zones (Blue / Yellow / Green / Purple Zone).

The legend's substance is this: This building has a "red gate," and any student who walks through the centre door will find their GPA can never reach 3, or may even fail courses altogether. Hence the formula: "walk through the centre door, never pass a three" (過中門，不過三). According to a new student guide compilation^※, "rumour has it that passing through the middle door of the red gate means your GPA won't surpass 3"—a widely known taboo circulating among CityU freshers.

Regarding the formula's origin, the youth careers platform I am, in a column collating academic superstitions, offers an informal version. According to the platform's "Superstition Desk" column^※, CityU has two "never a three" taboos, one of which is exactly this: passing through the centre door of the red gate. The legend's origin is traced back to an expatriate staff member who once collided with a student while walking through the centre door. To facilitate staff movement and keep the centre door clear as a staff-only passage, the "walk through the centre door, never pass a three" saying was allegedly disseminated around campus.

Credibility Summary: The formula itself, "walk through the centre door, never pass a three," is widely circulated in CityU fresher culture (it appears across multiple informal student compilations) and can be regarded as a genuinely extant piece of campus superstition; however, its efficacy is pure nonsense, and the explanation of its origin comes from a single unofficial source. This archive's position is: the circulation of the legend is a fact; the content of the legend is not.

# The Real "Never a Three": How Does CityU's GPA System Actually Work?

The best way to clarify this "curse" is to look at CityU's actual grading system—the "pass three"/"never pass three" that students talk about corresponds, in truth, to a set of codified degree regulations that have nothing to do with any door or any sculpture.

According to an official CityU announcement from 2020^※, starting from the 2020/21 academic year intake of undergraduate students, CityU introduced a degree honours system aligned with US universities: the minimum Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) for a bachelor's degree was raised to 2.0. Honours classifications no longer follow the British "First Class, Second Class" divisions but are instead based on graduating class rank, awarded only to the best 15% of graduates in each academic department—the top 2% receive summa cum laude, the next 5% receive magna cum laude, and the next 8% receive cum laude.

The clause in the regulations that most closely resembles the "curse" is the threshold for academic disqualification. CityU explicitly stipulates: "Any student whose Semester Grade Point Average (SGPA) is below 1.7 for three consecutive semesters will be required to discontinue their studies at the University."^※ According to a report by TOPick from the Hong Kong Economic Times^※ (June 2020), the new system was summarised as "only the top 15% of graduates receive an honours classification; students with a GPA below 1.7 for three consecutive semesters will lose their place at the university." Officials stated the aim was to adopt an American-style system, reward high-achieving students, and raise academic standards.

When placed side by side, the picture becomes very clear: the "never a three" that students fear is a real regulatory design concerning CGPA thresholds and honours quotas (a 2.0 graduation line, a 1.7 disqualification line over three semesters, a 15% honours quota). The claim that "walking through the centre door means you'll never pass a three" is a psychological metonym, projecting the tension generated by this stringent system onto a specific physical door. The source of the curse is not a door; it is a quota.

# The "Four Unlikes" at Tat Chee Avenue: The Sculpture You Must Not Touch

Another CityU taboo, one ranked alongside the "never a three," features a sculpture. According to a compilation by the youth careers platform^※, beside the staircase leading from Tat Chee Avenue to the Yeung Kin Man Academic Building, there is a sculpture students colloquially call the "Four Unlikes" (四不像). The informal taboo holds that it "must not be touched, must not be climbed," or else one will fail to graduate. A study-abroad information compilation^※ also records a similar claim—that facing the direction of Festival Walk are a pair of "Four Unlikes" statues, and "lore has it that CityU students must not touch or climb them, lest they fail to graduate."

The question is: what exactly is this sculpture? This archive has found no authoritative CityU statement on the sculpture's official name, artist, or intended meaning. "Four Unlikes" is a student nickname for its form (describing it as hard to categorise) and is not an official designation. In the absence of primary sources, this archive merely records the informal phenomenon that "a sculpture exists that students call the 'Four Unlikes' and to which a graduation taboo is attached," and does not speculate on its actual identity.

This type of "don't touch X or you won't graduate" taboo is not unique to CityU. According to the same compilation of academic superstitions^※, multiple universities in Hong Kong have their own versions of "graduation taboos"—often associated with a plaza sculpture or a particular gate or doorway. The CityU version's only distinction is that it anchors the taboo in the "Four Unlikes" located right next to Festival Walk, a spot through which crowds stream every day.

# The 3M Lavatory Chiller: A Legend Best Viewed From a Distance

The most lurid of CityU's urban legends involves a lavatory. According to The Honeycombers' compilation of ghost stories at Hong Kong universities^※, the university's most notorious tale centres on the "3M lavatory" in the Yellow Zone. This English-language media outlet records two contradictory informal accounts—one involving a female student, the other pointing to an accident involving a worker during the building's construction—and notes that the women's lavatory in question was subsequently converted into a men's lavatory, a decision informally interpreted as "boosting yang energy to drive away inauspiciousness," after which the ghostly chatter reportedly subsided. An overseas study compilation^※ also includes a version with similar content.

This archive exercises particular restraint with this legend for three reasons: First, the two origin accounts contradict each other (female student vs. male worker), which is in itself evidence of the legend's unreliability. Second, wherever content involves claims of "a suicide," this archive consistently does not name individuals, narrate events, reconstruct details, or arrange a timeline; it records only that such a chiller tale exists. Third, the claim that the conversion to a men's lavatory was to "boost yang energy" is a folk feng shui attribution; this archive has found no official or primary source whatsoever confirming any connection between the lavatory conversion and any alleged incident.

Placed in the context of Hong Kong campuses at large, this genre of "lavatory / swimming pool / dormitory suicide chillers" is practically a fixed repertoire item whispered during orientation period at every Hong Kong tertiary institution. According to The Honeycombers' compilation^※, CUHK, HKU, PolyU, and HKUST each have their own versions. CityU's 3M lavatory chiller is less a dark secret unique to CityU and more a CityU variant of the folkloric genre that is the Hong Kong campus ghost story—its value lying in folklore studies, not in factual verification.

# Situating CityU in the Genealogy of Hong Kong Campus Ghost Stories

CityU's legends are not isolated cases. The most effective step in assessing the credibility of a campus chiller is to check whether a near-isomorphic "twin version" exists at other universities in Hong Kong—if the same motif recurs at multiple institutions, with only the place name swapped, it is highly likely a circulating narrative template rather than a real event unique to one campus. CityU's legends map neatly onto counterparts elsewhere.

According to The Honeycombers' compilation of ghost stories at Hong Kong universities^※, The Chinese University of Hong Kong has the "oxtail soup" legend (attached to the tragedy of a lovelorn student) and the story of the "Queue Girl" by the railway tracks. The University of Hong Kong has the tale of a female student committing suicide at the lotus pond (Hok Kok Ping Garden) and becoming a ghost. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has a chiller about a drowned child in the swimming pool crawling towards the canteen at night. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has a legend about a "red eye" peeping tom driving someone to suicide. Reviewed together, CityU's "3M lavatory" chiller immediately reveals its generic nature—"someone died by suicide at a campus location and became a lingering presence" is a script nearly every Hong Kong university possesses, the plot skeleton highly similar, just restaged in each campus's most shadowy corner.

Similarly, "you must not walk through a certain door / must not touch a certain sculpture, or you won't graduate" is a cross-campus template. According to the youth careers platform Superstition Desk's compilation of academic superstitions^※, multiple universities in Hong Kong have their own taboos regarding "a gate you cannot walk through" or "a sculpture you cannot touch." CityU's "Red Gate Centre Door" and "Four Unlikes" are merely local instances of this template. Recognising the template does not make the legends uninteresting—on the contrary, it reveals their true nature: what these stories genuinely record is not a haunting somewhere, but the collective act of one cohort of freshers after another, on orientation night, transmitting the same set of anxieties to the next generation. This is also the angle from which an anthropologist might study campus ghost stories: the function of the stories is to translate an unfamiliar new environment and imminent academic pressure into a narrative that can be shared and laughed off.

# Why Do Legends Grow on a Campus Like CityU?

Juxtaposing the above, a common generative logic emerges for CityU's urban legends: the more distinctive the space, the more specific the legend. The dimness of the Festival Walk footbridge spawned the "Time Tunnel." A red door in the core teaching building, coupled with the stern GPA system, spawned "walk through the centre door, never pass a three." An oddly shaped sculpture at the busiest junction of Tat Chee Avenue spawned the "untouchable Four Unlikes." Legends do not arise out of thin air; they must adhere to a specific, slightly uncanny spot that countless people pass daily.

This also explains why CityU legends are almost all tied to "graduation/grades" and rarely feature pure horror motifs. At a university known for a rigorous GPA system where honours quotas are reserved for only the top 15%, the students' deepest collective anxiety is not ghosts—it is grade points. Thus, even doors and sculptures are imbued with the power to sway one's GPA. The curse is a vessel for anxiety. This observation gets closer to the truth than the veracity of any single legend. Once this is understood, it is easy to see why CityU's superstitions so consistently take aim at "graduation" and "passing a three" rather than anything else: they are, in the end, the means by which new students project an intangible, invisible pressure over grades onto a tangible, visible door or sculpture.

# Items Found Unverifiable (Recorded As-Is, Not Supplemented by Speculation)

• Any specific, verifiable source for paranormal events in the "Time Tunnel" footbridge—none found; only a nickname and subjective impressions exist.
• The official name, artist, and reason for the installation of the "Four Unlikes" sculpture—no authoritative record found; "Four Unlikes" is a student nickname.
• Any specific person, event, or date involved in the "3M lavatory" chiller—no primary source found; the two origin accounts contradict each other.
• Any official CityU response or refutation of the above legends—none found.

# Summary

The CityU urban legends sorted through in this chapter can be grouped into two categories: architectural nicknames and taboos (Time Tunnel, Red Gate Centre Door, Four Unlikes sculpture) and campus ghost stories (the 3M lavatory chiller). The former can mostly be traced to specific locations and informally transmitted formulas, but their efficacy is nonsense and the explanations of origin are generally from a single unofficial source. The latter are a CityU variant of the folkloric genre of the Hong Kong campus ghost story; plotlines involving individuals are consistently left unelaborated.

What is truly verified is only the institutional reality encased at the core of these legends: CityU adopted a US-style degree honours system starting from the 2020/21 academic year; the minimum graduation CGPA for a bachelor's degree is 2.0; honours classifications are awarded only to the best 15% in each department; and students whose SGPA is below 1.7 for three semesters lose their place. The reason "walk through the centre door, never pass a three" can circulate from one cohort of freshers to the next has never been about whether the door is magical, but about the fact that this red line of 1.7 is sufficiently real and sufficiently nerve-wracking.

For investigations into the crest and landmark buildings, see the companion piece The Crest Controversy, the Origin of the Motto, and Signature Buildings; for campus animals and the veterinary school narrative, see CityU Campus Cats and Animal Anecdotes.

---