The letters sent to Dr Yeang Cheng-hin.
minorities and marginalised communities to retain their identity and share life experiences with a wider audience.
In December 2023, I made a serendipitous discovery: a five-page personal record about Dr Yeang Cheng-hin, a pre-war medical student of the University of Hong Kong, being sold on the internet. I purchased the let- ters for HK$400 (£40) after contacting the seller, who told me that these letters were previously purchased on eBay: so far, this transaction is the only provenance of those letters that I have been able to find. The records, dated 29 December 1952, were original copies of letters sent to Dr Yeang and the University Reg- istrar, which were written by the university’s former Dean of Faculty of Medicine, Professor Gordon King, and sent to the General Medical Council, confirming that Dr Yeang was a graduated Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery at the Univers ity of Hong Kong in 1938 and a registered medical practitioner in Hong Kong. Other records relating to Dr Yeang found in the University Archives include Senate Minutes dated 20 December 1934, which reads “Completed the 3rd Degree Examination: Senior Anatomy and Senior Physiology”,5
and on 27 January 1938 “passed the
final M.B.B.S. examinations of medicine and surgery” respectively.6
According to the Register Book of Gradu- ation held by the University Archives, Dr Yeang matric- ulated in November 1929, and attended the graduation ceremony in December 1937, where he signed the Reg- ister of Graduation. Signatures can provide a powerful emotional connection to documents. Signatures are not only a device to protect one’s property and interests, but also have deeply symbolic importance as a tool of empowerment: as Jane Mace observes, “being able to write one’s own name in a society full of writing is equivalent to being able to inscribe one’s self in that society, and to write our own names is to write ourselves into the world.”7 Dr Yeang not only became an outstanding alumnus of the University, but was also committed to the medical profession. He became a role model back in his home- town Penang, Malaysia.
Unfortunately, his official student records at the Uni- versity were lost during the Second World War, and not much public information has been found relating to Dr Yeang, including at the National Archives of Malaysia. His name appeared in the Hong Kong Gov- ernment Gazettes twice announcing him as a “person qualified to practise medicine at Queen Mary Hospital Hong Kong” and as “person qualified to practise med- icine and surgery generally” by the Director of Medical
June 2024 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 43
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