Friendships that develop when you’re in your
teens are very true. You’re not thinking about
what you can get from a person. Friendships
are very, very pure
“When I first arrived at Choate, I was a second form
student and it was very different,” she says. “When I went
there, there were only three Hong Kong students, but we
didn’t know each other; we were all in different years. The
biggest thing I felt was culture shock, not because I didn’t
know American culture, but because they were all just so
natural. That’s not how we were brought up; we tended to
be a bit more reserved, a bit more quiet.”
Although she was homesick and lonely, 14-year-old
Ronna was determined to stay the course. “My parents
would call me once a week, and I remember it was
probably during the first 10 days, I suddenly burst into
tears because this feeling of loneliness was overwhelming.
But I said to my parents, ‘I really wanted this and I’m going
to tough it out and I’m going to try.’ And I think it was
within the next week that I was brushing my teeth in the
bathroom and there was a girl next to me brushing her
teeth, and she started a conversation. She asked me, ‘Are
you new? Where’s your next class? Why don’t I walk you
there?’ She introduced me to her group of friends and they
just embraced me and welcomed me.
“I think that really taught me the power of very simple
kindness,” Ronna says. “We became such good friends.
And they were not typical prep school kids; they were
all scholarship students. I had one friend who told me
her father was a sanitation engineer. I didn’t know what
that meant so she explained, ‘He’s a garbage man.’ Her
mother is a nurse. And I just felt like, ‘When you give
opportunities to people who have potential, it really could
change their lives.’”
To this day, Ronna is an active member of the Choate
alumni community. “It’s just a very natural thing for
me. Choate was a life-transforming experience, so to be
involved in the work that alumni do, to tell more people
about that school, to stay connected to the school—it’s
not necessarily that I’m doing something for the school—
it feeds me.”
The same passion and dedication extends to her work
as CEO of the Bai Xian Asia Institute, which, through its
Asian Future Leaders Scholarship Programme, provides
support for students in Asia to study abroad at partner
universities throughout East Asia. Established by the Bai
Xian Education Fund in 2014, and guided by the vision of
her father, Ronald Chao, the institute and scholarship were
inspired by his own experiences as a student from Hong
Kong studying at the University of Tokyo in the late 1950s.
“My dad didn’t want to go—he didn’t know Japanese—
but my grandfather said, ‘I’ve put aside this amount of
money and no matter what happens to the business,
you’ll be able to finish school,’” Ronna says. “So my dad
went, learned the language in one year, took the entrance
exam and got in. The five years he was there he lived in a
dormitory for Japanese students and other Asian students.
At the time he was only 18, and [at that age] you don’t
really think about stuff.
“I think it was at his 55th class reunion that he saw a list
of his old classmates. One of them became a very senior-
level person in the Japanese government, and [my father]
said, ‘I’m going to call him. I don’t think he’s going to
answer, but I’ll try anyway.’ So he called and the guy came
to the phone. He was stunned, but it was just like old times.
“When my father thought about this scholarship
programme, he thought about what happened when he
was young. Friendships that develop when you’re in your
teens are very true. You’re not thinking about what you can
get from a person—friendships are very, very pure—and
they last because they’re experiential. So that became the
nucleus of the scholarship programme.”
With so many Asian students choosing to stay in their
own countries for higher education or, if they venture
abroad, going to Australia, the UK or the US, the Chaos
focused their Bai Xian Asia Institute scholarships on
academic institutions in Asia.
“How can you know the world if you don’t even know
your own region?” Ronna says. “How can you impact the
world? You should impact your own area first. We think it’s
important for Asian students to know Asia first. It’s very
beneficial to the region—and eventually the world—if
relations between China, Japan, Korea and this region are
positive. And with so much in common—language, history,
culture—there shouldn’t be so many differences. We, as
civilians, can do things through intercultural learning,
interdisciplinary teaching, experiential learning—we
provide opportunities.
“The world is getting smaller; it’s not a cliché, it’s
a reality,” Ronna says. “There are fewer and fewer
borders, and more and more collaboration—a need for
collaboration. Giving young people the opportunity
to extend their own circles of influence and to be
beneficiaries of others’ influenceallows us to be better
connected, more efficiently connected—to do great
things, solve problems together.”HAIR: GLOOMY KWOK; MAKEUP: JASMINE CHAN, BOTH AT HKMAKEUPARTIST; STYLING ASSISTANT: GENNADY ORESHKIN; ALL FURNITURE BY TREE94 h o n g k o n g tat l e r. a u g u s t 2 0 1 9