Overview
How do we recover from the pandemic? What does it mean for individuals, communities, Hong Kong, or the world? So much has happened over the past two years. The pandemic has wrought profound changes on everyone at all levels of society. How many of these changes are permanent? How many will be forgotten once the virus loses its hold over humanity?

These are some of the questions underpinning this year’s COVID Writing competition. Perhaps you have other questions, other issues on the theme of recovery. On our questions or on yours, we would welcome your submission.

We invite secondary school students to address these topics in one of two types of essays: a personal reflection or a piece of creative writing.

1. Personal Reflection (Junior and Senior Categories, Open and DSE Streams)

Either
(1) A first-person narrative: This is based on your own experiences and views on the topic of recovering from the pandemic: how were you affected by COVID-19? Have you recovered from it, or not? Are things back to normal, or not? Where do you go from here?
Or
(2) Be an investigator: Go out and talk with people in your family, friends, your local community (teachers, people in your neighbourhood, clubs and societies) and write an oral history. How do you do this? Come up with some questions to ask people on the topic of recovery, ask people your questions and write down the answers, look through their answers to identify common themes or topics and write about how these themes relate to recovering from the pandemic.

2. Creative Writing

Stopping the next pandemic: Design and Innovation (Junior category: Open and DSE Streams)
Invent a device that could be used in the next pandemic and write a short story detailing its use in the next pandemic. What does it do? How was it created? Does it work as intended? How do people react? Remember that this is a piece of creative writing but the invention and its use need to be logical within the story.

A Recovered Future? (Senior category: Open and DSE Streams)
Set 50 years in the future, how did Hong Kong recover? How successful was the recovery? Were there unexpected consequences? What does a “recovered” Hong Kong now look like? These are just some questions to get you started. This is your creative writing piece, so you decide how things turn out. Write from your own perspective in the form of your choice (for example, a diary entry, a letter, or work of fiction), as long as recovering from the virus is at the centre of the submission.

Types for Submission
Essay formats:
(1) Personal Reflection
(2) Creative Writing

Two Categories:
i. Junior (S1-3)
ii. Senior (S4 or above)

Two Streams:
(a) DSE [for those students who are studying or will study the DSE curriculum]
(b) Open [for those students who are not studying a DSE-oriented curriculum – usually (but not exclusively) IB or international students]

Prizes
Winners in each category/stream will receive:
First: HK$1,000 book coupons
Second: HK$500 book coupons

Instructions for Submission
Please read the instructions for submission, and submit your work by filling the Google Form.

Closing Date
28 February 2022, Monday, 3pm

Enquiries
Tel: 3442-6541 / 3442-5843
Email: COVID19.competition@cityu.edu.hk
(You may refer to the poster for more details)