Hong Kong -- Every year, Hong Kong’s Dragon Boat Festival is a colorful, exciting, holiday affair.

Dragon boat races are held at different places with gusto and enthusiasm all around the city. Boat crews represent all levels of society – from the very athletic to daring house wives’ groups.

As I watched the races this summer in Shatin, a suburb of Hong Kong, I was struck by the symbolic similarities between the dedicated hard work of the dragon boat crews, and the deaf international students at Chinese University of Hong Kong’s (CUHK) Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies (CSLDS).

On the day of the races, the weather was grey, rainy, and stormy with almost boat stopping winds and a strong tidal current running against the boats, making it even tougher to get a good racing speed through the turbulent waters.

In the same sense, people affected by deafness must swim against a tide of obstacles-- a hearing only society, personal issues about deafness, employment difficulties, and access to higher education.

It is the “race” for higher education that people affected by deafness are still struggling to win. In Asia, there is one major center for the deaf to get a comprehensive university diploma – CSLDS.

At this centre, deafness is not perceived as a handicap, but a distinct culture embedded in the visual language of sign linguistics.

CSLDS attempts to 1) improve communication between deaf and hearing people, 2) raise public awareness of the well-being of deaf people, particularly, their educational and social and opportunities; and 3) develop interdisciplinary research on Sign Linguistics, Deaf Education, and Deaf Culture.

CUHK is the first academic institution in the Asia Pacific region to specialize in sign linguistics research and deaf training. These efforts resulted in the establishment of CSLDS within the university in November 2003.

Since then the centre has been dedicated to bridging the gap between the hearing and deaf worlds by combining the strengths of spoken and signed languages by such projects as publishing dictionaries and deaf teaching materials of a number of sign languages in Asia.

It has now expanded its training program to educate promising students from the Asia-Pacific region so they can return to their home countries with diplomas and MA degrees to promote and develop sign linguistics research and training.

These efforts and scholarships for deaf students studying at CSLDS have been steadfastly supported by The Nippon Foundation, whose contributions are helping to create a new paradigm in the participation and awareness of people affected by deafness in the region.

The “Dragon Boat” team work symbolism of these advances initiated by CSLDS and its students, CUHK, The Nippon Foundation, and the collaboration of regional Deaf Associations, the World Federation of the Deaf/Regional Secretariat for the Asia-Pacific Region, universities and government bodies is providing dynamic energy in the steady advancement of deaf education -- overcoming whatever strong winds and tides that confront them.