Club Life
Over a hundred and thirty gatherings a year, and not one of them staffed.
The Club's year falls into four parts, and has for as long as anyone has kept count: the social, the intellectual, the artistic, and the service we owe Hong Kong. What follows is what that actually looks like.
- 130+Activities counted in 2025
- 50+Volunteers leading them
- 134Members in the Lunch Club
- 6×YAA Excellence Awards
Nobody is paid. Everything is volunteered.
In a recent year the Club ran seventy-seven programmes with more than fifty different volunteers leading, performing or serving. The committees exist, but most of the ideas do not come from them — they come from members who wanted to do something and were told yes.
“If any of you are going to do something fun, feel free to make it a Yale Club event.”
From the Club’s review of the year, at the Annual General Meeting
Intellectual
The life of the mind
Since we all come from Yale, the life of the mind matters here. A typical year is filled with speakers — Yale professors and deans passing through, alumni with something to say, and people Hong Kong ought to hear from.
The Speaker Series
Convened by the Club's speaker committee. Some evenings fill a hall; some are a dozen people around a table arguing properly. Both are the point.
Visiting faculty
Deans of the Schools of Music, Nursing and Management; professors of anthropology, law, history and medicine; Yale's President and its Vice President for Alumni Affairs. When Yale comes through Hong Kong, this is usually where it stops.
Also through the year
- ATEC & entrepreneurship
- The Club sends startups founded by alumni to the Asian Tigers Entrepreneurship Competition each year, and has repeatedly advanced to the later rounds.
- Discussions on AI
- A standing series of small, working discussions on what the technology is actually doing — closer to a seminar than a talk.
Artistic & Musical
What the Club makes
An unusual amount of the Club's talent is on stage rather than in the audience. The rest of us go looking at things — Sotheby's, M+, the Palace Museum, a member's own collection.
The Yale Alumni Chamber Music Society
Alumni musicians who rehearse and perform as a group, and who give much of that time away — recitals, Easter services, and performances at a hospice. Its founding was sustained by the late Randolph Kwei ’58, a past president of the Club.
Sleepless Moon
A Chinese-Western fusion opera, produced by Club members Eddie Tam and Lora Chow — and the highlight of the 2025 year. The two met at an afterparty following a Club event; the production is what came of it.
Art & museums
Led by the Club's art committee. Sotheby's, White Cube, M+, the Hong Kong Palace Museum, the Art Museum at CUHK, Fine Art Asia, a cross-border trip to the museums of Shenzhen, and a Japanese tea ceremony.
Henry Steiner
Hong Kong's foremost graphic designer, a Yale man, and an advisor to this Club. M+ mounted a retrospective of his work; we marked his 91st birthday together.
Community Service
Beyond our own community
The Club is not only concerned with itself. A steady share of the year goes to Hong Kong — and, when it was needed, to New Haven.
Tree planting on Lantau
An annual reforestation day on Lantau Island, led by the Club's community service committee. It has gone ahead in pouring rain more than once; the group went anyway.
Yale Day of Service
The Club takes part in Yale's worldwide day of service each year, alongside clubs on every continent — most recently by replanting a hillside that had burned.
In any weather
One year the planting day opened in a downpour. Everyone came anyway, walked in under umbrellas, and planted. It is the shortest possible description of how the Club treats a commitment.
Also through the year
- Kindness Walks
- With ImpactHK, distributing food to Hong Kong's homeless — a population the city keeps mostly out of sight.
- Service for the elderly
- Regular sessions at a local centre — exercise, company, and an afternoon that is not spent alone.
- Masks for Yale New Haven Hospital
- In 2020, with Hong Kong's supply chains still working and New Haven's not, the Club sourced and shipped face masks to Yale New Haven Hospital. The Yale Alumni Association's Excellence Award that year was for this.
Recent speakers
Who has stood in front of this Club.
A partial list, most recent first. Some evenings filled a hall; others were a dozen people around a table, which is often the better evening.
- Joe Tsai
- James A. Robinson, Nobel laureate in Economics
- Azita Emami, Dean, Yale School of Nursing
- José García-León, Dean, Yale School of Music
- Yale Professor Helen Siu
- Yale Professor Marcia Inhorn
- Yale Music Professor Michael Friedman
- Asim Khwaja & Fatema Sumar on international development
- Zhiwu Chen
- Lynn Leong, Yale Director of Squash
- Peter Salovey, President of Yale University
- Amy Chua
- Stephen Roach
- Megan Ranney, Dean, Yale School of Public Health
- Kerwin K. Charles, Dean, Yale School of Management
- Rocky Tuan, Vice-Chancellor, CUHK
- Mike Chinoy
- Debin Ma on Britain and China's modernisation
- Ray Friedman on the Asian-American experience at Yale
- Kevin Ye
- Gregory May, U.S. Consul General to Hong Kong and Macau
- Joan O'Neill, Yale Vice President for Alumni Affairs
- Zhiwu Chen
- Nelson Cunningham on U.S.–China relations
- Henny Sender & Anthony Neoh on the capital markets
- James A. Fok on the financial cold war
- Taisu Zhang on the ideological foundations of Qing taxation
- Peter Schott
- Lois Conner
- Denise Wong & Colin Ward on leading with purpose
The year in review, year by year.
Every November the Club holds its Annual General Meeting and Thanksgiving Dinner, and walks the room through the year in pictures. Those accounts are kept here.
- 2025Most active Yale club in the world.Guest speaker: Joe TsaiRead the year
- 2024A president steps down after seven years.Guest speaker: Kevin YeRead the year
- 2023Seventy-seven programmes, fifty volunteers.Guest speaker: Zhiwu ChenRead the year
- 2022The year the Lunch Club won an award.Guest speaker: Henry SteinerRead the year
None of this happens without someone offering.
Every programme on this page started with a member saying they would like to do something. If you have an idea — a hike, a talk, a dinner, a concert — the Club's answer is almost always yes.
Social
Just having fun
We want to bring Yalies from all the schools and of all ages together to create real connections. Much of it is deliberately unstructured — a lunch, a trail, a table with room at it.
The Lunch Club
Members are paired at random and simply go to lunch. Old alumni with young, bankers with violinists, professors with lawyers. It began with 40 Yalies; a year later 70, then 106, and now over 130 — and the model has since been taken up by clubs in New York and Taipei.
Hiking
Free, good for you, and the most reliable way to meet the Club. Sunset Peak, Lantau Peak, High Junk Peak, Big Wave Bay, the Yuen Tsuen Ancient Trail, Tsing Ma Bridge, Wan Chai Gap. Led year after year by the Club's hiking committee — often ending, as these things do, at a restaurant.
The Ivy Ball
Black tie, the eight schools in one room, and the largest Yale table we can fill. Organised with the other Ivy clubs in Hong Kong.
The Christmas party
Our signature celebration, and the one tradition nobody will let us change: the gift exchange, started years ago by Ambassador Clark “Sandy” Randt ’68, a past president of this Club.
Feb Club Emeritus
Yale's worldwide February tradition, kept up in Hong Kong every year — one evening, no programme, everyone welcome.
Casual gatherings
The spontaneous half of the calendar: a Fourth of July dinner, a class-year reunion, a lunch at the first place in Hong Kong to serve New Haven pizza. Members propose them; the Club says yes.
The Foodies group
The Club's newest interest group, and the one with the shortest brief — one cuisine at a time.
The Yale-China Lamma Island trip
An annual boat out to Lamma with the Yale-China fellows and a long table at the Rainbow Seafood Restaurant, run with the Club's Yale-China liaison.
Also through the year