How Chinese language proficiency can be enhanced is a key concern in the Hong Kong community. As the current literature suggests that student teachers' beliefs and past experience show great impact on the effectiveness of their learning to teach, this researcher made an attempt to investigate pre-service teachers' perceptions of teaching and learning Chinese in primary schools - a survey that involved 501 student teachers was conducted. The key findings include, first, over 80% of the respondents rated their own Chinese proficiency average or above average, and over 10% respondents considered themselves poor in the mastery of Chinese. Second, while a total of 86% of the respondents considered themselves average or good at speaking Chinese, they still expressed the need to receive more training in oral presentation and writing. And third, among the 13 prescribed teaching objectives set in the syllabi of Chinese, "fostering students' thinking ability" came first in the survey responents' ranking of the importance of teaching objectives, reflecting they needed training in both the subject knowledge of Chinese and pedagogical content knowledge.[Copyright © 2002 The Hong Kong Institute of Education.]