The Redbird Symbol and the University Anthem

Note: This page distinguishes verified content (sourced to official or media outlets) from campus-lore content (marked 【lore/unverified】, circulated by word of mouth on campus, unverified). The official basis for "Redbird" as an HKUST symbol is clear; its association with the "Vermilion Bird" cultural motif is, for the most part, interpretive narrative rather than documented fact — readers should judge by the sourcing given.

"Redbird" is HKUST's most central spirit symbol — it is both the informal name of the red sundial sculpture on the Central Plaza and a motif written into the university's first official anthem, which did not appear until 32 years after HKUST's founding. This article traces the origin of the "Redbird" symbol, its relationship to the traditional Chinese "Vermilion Bird" motif, and the story of the 2023 anthem. This piece is a companion to Landmark Legends and Campus Lore^※, which focuses on the naming mystery of the sundial sculpture itself (including the "turkey" nickname); this article focuses on "Redbird" as a symbol and its role in the anthem.

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# I. The official basis for the "Redbird" symbol (verified)

The landmark sculpture on HKUST's Central Plaza, officially named "Circle of Time", is a red steel sundial commissioned by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and created by Irish-born sculptors Charles and Joan Walsh-Smith, installed on 8 October 1991^※ (see Landmark Buildings^※ for details). According to the HKUST Campus Management Office page^※, "the red sundial has then become an icon of HKUST"^※.

Because the red sundial resembles a bird in flight, "Redbird" gradually became its informal name, and this name in turn came to stand for the university as a whole. Several of HKUST's brand and programme names in recent years — such as the "Redbird Innovation Fund" and, at HKUST(GZ), the "Red Bird MPhil Program" and "Red Bird Challenge Camp" — take "Redbird" as their name, indicating that the university has systematically adopted the symbol as an institutional identifier, a naming practice that continues to expand.

# The Redbird Innovation Fund: a symbol turned venture-capital brand (from 2024)

According to an official HKUST announcement^※, HKUST launched the "Redbird Innovation Fund" (RIF) on 30 April 2024^※, with an initial HK$200 million^※ funded by the university itself, and plans to mobilise, together with external investors, a family of venture funds totalling roughly HK$2 billion^※, focused on deep-tech fields including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, robotics, new materials, energy and sustainability, and biomedicine, specifically to support startups founded by HKUST faculty, students and alumni, or startups commercialising HKUST intellectual property or incubated by HKUST (for earlier incubation cases, see Research Output and Spin-offs^※).

This brand naming was subsequently extended further: according to an HKUST announcement^※, HKUST, together with Gobi Partners and Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC), launched the "Gobi-Redbird Innovation Fund," with an initial cohort of HKUST-linked startups including robotic lawnmower company Lymow, analog-chip design firm Atom Semiconductor, and satellite weather AI provider Stellerus Technology. With this, the "Redbird" symbol completed a third transition — from an informal name for a sculpture, to an institutional identifier, to a venture-capital brand.

# The "Redbird" education programmes at the Guangzhou campus

The "Redbird" brand naming has likewise extended to HKUST(GZ), established in 2022. According to the HKUST(GZ) website^※, the "Red Bird MPhil Program" is described as the first step in that campus's "Hub-Thrust" interdisciplinary training model, intended to cultivate interdisciplinary academic and industry leaders, under a "6+18" two-year structure — six months of academic exploration followed by 18 months in which students must complete an interdisciplinary team graduation project. According to another page on the same site^※, one pathway into the MPhil programme is the "Red Bird Challenge Camp," a selection activity built on the idea that "background doesn't matter," assessing candidates' overall qualities through interdisciplinary collaboration and real-problem, project-based learning. This talent-development system, unique to the Guangzhou campus, shares the same symbolic asset as the "Redbird Innovation Fund" described in the section above at the Clear Water Bay campus, yet the two serve different generations of HKUST's brand narrative: one is an academic selection process for current students, the other an industry-incubation process for alumni.

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# II. "Redbird" and the "Vermilion Bird" (interpretive narrative)

In traditional Chinese culture, the "Four Symbols" refer to the Azure Dragon of the East, the White Tiger of the West, the Black Tortoise of the North, and the Vermilion Bird of the South. According to Wikipedia's entry on the Vermilion Bird^※, the Vermilion Bird corresponds to the south and summer, and within the Five Elements system it symbolises "fire"^※, often associated with the transformative power of flame and imagery of destruction and rebirth.

HKUST is located in Hong Kong — geographically in the south — and the campus's landmark sculpture happens to be red (the colour of fire); for this reason, some campus-culture accounts and word-of-mouth narratives link HKUST's "Redbird" to the traditional "Vermilion Bird of the South" motif, treating it as a modern embodiment of the "southern fire bird."

【Lore/interpretive】It should be noted: HKUST's official name for the sculpture is the neutral "Circle of Time," which emphasises the sundial — humanity's earliest scientific instrument — and the imagery of the "flow of time" (see Landmarks and Public Art^※ for details). Equating "Redbird" directly with the mythological "Vermilion Bird" is, for the most part, a later cultural interpretation and association rather than part of the sculpture's official conception at the time of its creation. This archive labels this connection as interpretive narrative for readers' reference, and does not assert it as historical fact.

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# III. An official anthem, 32 years late (verified)

A piece of trivia often mentioned by alumni is that HKUST, founded in 1991, went for more than three decades without an official anthem, a gap not filled until 2023.

According to official HKUST announcements, the anthem was formally unveiled in 2023 (at the "Timeout HKUST" event on the Clear Water Bay campus)^※ (see also the 2023 entry in the University Timeline^※). It emerged from an open call for submissions to the whole faculty, staff, students, and alumni of both campuses:

• Composition: Professor Kelvin Yuen, Adjunct Assistant Professor in HKUST's Department of Economics^※, whose melody was selected from 45 submitted entries^※.
• Putonghua lyrics: written by incoming HKUST postgraduate student Jia Xianzhang^※.
• Cantonese lyrics: written by noted lyricist Chris Shum^※.
• English lyrics: completed by a team comprising Dr. Isaac Droscha, Professor in HKUST's Division of Humanities, Ms. Edith Shih, convenor of the anthem working group, and freelance writer Mr. Philip Yeung^※.

The anthem selection panel included experts from the music field; according to the announcement, its members included Yip Wing Sze, Conductor Emeritus of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta^※, who assessed entries on lyrics, melody, and composition; the selection panel together with the working group numbered seven people in total. The working group also included Council members Ms. Helen Kan, Mr. Peter Cheung, and Mr. Patrick Yeung; after Ms. Edith Shih first raised the question of "what would an HKUST anthem look like" in October 2022, then-Council Chairman Andrew Liao is reported to have responded on the spot, "good question, good idea — this is now your job," which became the starting point for the whole project.

Besides the composition and lyric-writing team, according to the official HKUST page^※ and the announcement, the anthem's full production credits also include: arranger Ng Cheuk-Yin, music producer Mr. Lawrence Tsui (the "alumnus Mr. Tsui" mentioned above), and conductor Mr. Ken Cheng. The official website currently offers two recorded versions — a full version and a live orchestral version — the latter performed by an ensemble of strings, woodwind, brass, percussion, harp, and bass instruments, with the page listing more than thirty musicians who took part in the recording.

# A "mission impossible": just over five months from proposal to premiere

The anthem's creation process was itself a fairly tense behind-the-scenes story. According to HKUST announcements, the project originated in October 2022, prompted by a question from Council member Ms. Edith Shih^※; the anthem working group subsequently decided against the conventional route of commissioning a single composer, instead opting for an open call to the whole university's faculty, staff, and alumni, with a seven-member selection panel — including conductor Yip Wing Sze — narrowing 45 submissions down to candidate works, which the working group then finalised^※.

The timeline was reportedly tight enough that conductor Mr. Ken Cheng is quoted as calling the schedule "nothing short of a 'mission impossible'"^※ — according to the announcement, the Putonghua, Cantonese, and English lyrics all had to be finished by early March 2023, with the anthem's official premiere set for 31 March^※: from a single question to a global public premiere in just over five months.

The melody's creation also had a vivid episode behind it. According to the announcement, composer Kelvin Yuen is an HKUST alumnus and one of the founding faculty members of the Department of Economics at the Guangzhou campus; his melodic inspiration came from what he saw and felt while walking near the Guangzhou campus^※ — according to the same announcement, the sight of a flock of black swans as he walked past the Guangzhou campus's artificial waterway (the "moat") sparked the inspiration; he then sketched the main melodic line on trumpet, deliberately aiming for a sound that was "catchy and powerful" rather than "solemn and stately." In other words, the melody of an anthem representing "Redbird," the spirit symbol of the Clear Water Bay main campus, first sparked into being a thousand kilometres away, near the Guangzhou campus, prompted by a different migratory bird. This detail echoes, to some extent, HKUST's broader narrative of "one HKUST, complementary campuses" (see Guangzhou Campus^※) — the "Redbird" motif ties together not only memories of Clear Water Bay, but also the imprint of the Guangzhou campus's founding period.

The performing and production lineup was likewise made up of alumni. According to the announcement, the anthem's vocalists included alumni Mr. Lam, Ms. Lee, and Mr. Wan, with the music production led by alumnus Mr. Tsui^※ — from proposal, selection, and composition to lyrics, performance, and production, the anthem was, from start to finish, almost entirely "handled in-house" by HKUST's own people, making the anthem project itself, in a sense, a collective act of emotional connection between alumni and their alma mater.

Founding President Woo Chia-Wei (then 85, reported to have attended every working-group meeting) gave the finished anthem high praise: he compared its emotional power to the French national anthem "La Marseillaise" and the Chinese national anthem "March of the Volunteers"^※. According to the same announcement, he also spoke to why HKUST had gone so long without an anthem: the construction project, originally planned to take seven years, was actually completed in just three, and the founding team's energy at the time was almost entirely absorbed by the urgent task of recruiting a hundred scholars, leaving no room for anything else — which accounts for the "32 years late" referenced in this section's title.

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# IV. Not just HKUST: a comparison of anthem timelines across Hong Kong's UGC-funded universities

HKUST taking 32 years to get an anthem is not, on the timescale of Hong Kong higher education, particularly unusual — if anything, the anthem histories of several local universities vary widely.

HKU's anthem history is, in a sense, a mirror image of HKUST's: the former was born on opening day itself, then lay dormant for a century before being "revived" for the centenary; the latter only filled this gap after more than three decades, once it had already entered what the HKUST working group is reported to have internally called a "2.0" phase following the establishment of the Guangzhou campus. Both universities' anthem re-recording/premiere were led by the same conductor, Yip Wing Sze — she served as a judge on HKUST's anthem selection panel and also conducted HKU's re-recorded centenary anthem in 2011, a rare shared thread running through the anthem narratives of these two Hong Kong UGC-funded universities.

Note: this section compares only the two cases of HKU and HKUST, for which officially documented sources are available; the anthem histories of other local UGC-funded universities (CUHK, CityU, etc.) are not included here, as no authoritative public documentation detailing their composition dates and process has been found; this is left open pending further sourcing.

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# V. The "Redbird" motif in the anthem (verified)

Most notably: the anthem's opening line is, in fact, "Redbird." According to the official announcement^※, the English version of the anthem opens with "Red bird standing guard beneath the rising sun"^※, inspired by the campus's landmark Redbird sundial. According to the complete lyrics published on the official HKUST anthem page^※, later verses continue the imagery of "standing guard" and "taking flight," further connecting the line "Fountain of knowledge lifts our flight" to the disciplines of science, humanities, engineering, and business, and closing with "Scholars and dreamers heed the call" — the lyrics' overall structure proceeds from the "Redbird" motif through to an evocation of HKUST's multidisciplinary identity.

With this, "Redbird" completed its evolution from a red sundial sculpture installed in 1991, to a university-wide brand symbol, to the name of a venture fund in 2024, to a motif formally written into the opening of the official anthem in 2023 — this symbolic throughline is a microcosm of HKUST's three-decade-plus process of campus-culture self-construction.

According to the official announcement^※, HKUST's current President is quoted as saying the anthem "perfectly captures and conveys our shared identity and spirit of innovation," calling it "an important chapter in the university's history."

The official page currently offers two formal recorded versions for download: the full version and the live orchestral version, the latter performed by the thirty-plus-member ensemble described in the previous section. The official page also includes an "Anthem Singalong" section to help faculty, students, and alumni learn the song.

Note: where current university leadership is referenced, this archive follows editorial policy in referring to them by title rather than by name. The complete anthem lyrics and official recordings can be found on the official HKUST anthem page^※; this article quotes only the opening line and key imagery as presented in the announcement and the official page, and does not reproduce the full lyrics. For the "Redbird" symbol's extension into research and entrepreneurship, see also Research Output and Spin-offs^※ and HKUST's "Unicorn" Ecosystem and Unicorn Day^※.

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# Related reading

• Landmark Legends and Campus Lore^※ — the naming mystery of the "Circle of Time" Redbird sundial itself and the origin of its "turkey" nickname
• HKUST "Firsts" and Milestone Achievements^※ — other milestones from the same three-decade-plus HKUST history as the anthem's creation
• Research Output and Spin-offs^※ — how the "Redbird" symbol extended into research commercialisation
• HKUST's "Unicorn" Ecosystem and Unicorn Day^※ — the full startup ecosystem supported by the Redbird Innovation Fund
• Guangzhou Campus^※ — the Guangzhou campus education system home to the "Red Bird MPhil Program" and "Red Bird Challenge Camp"