Welcome to the University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong held its orientation for non-local students this last Friday, August 28. Though I appreciate the effort, much of the event seemed to drag on and students found themselves socializing with each other more than listening to the presentations, making the presentations hard to hear. Apart from the main event, there were a few subsequent components to orientation that I found were much more informative and useful than the opening act.

The day was opened with all of the non-local (mainland Chinese and international) students gathered in the assembly hall of Main Building. My HKU buddy informed me that, as that building is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant edifices on campus, important events are held there to give a good first impression of the university.

Unfortunately, since the hall is so old, it’s also quite small, and many of the students could not fit. They were directed to nearby rooms where the presentation was broadcasted live to them. What happened at that first event were mostly formalities—introduction of the administration, various resources available to us, and a plug for the Chinese-language courses they would be offering to us in the coming semesters.

As a bad sign, I couldn’t understand a significant amount of what they were saying. Though while listening closely I could gather 75-90%, I’m still uncomfortable with the current degree of comprehension. But I’ll get to language in another post.

About those Chinese-language courses, I’ve decided to take Cantonese for Foreigners 1, as I have a pretty good Mandarin foundation, and figured that it could be good to get as local as possible. I think that the biggest thing I’ve found here is how profoundly bad my Cantonese is. And though a Canadian exchange student “called shenanigans” on me for not speaking Cantonese, she was highly uninformed of my upbringing, but I’ll talk about that more in that upcoming language post.

They provided us with a “light lunch” which was actually quite filling with three half-sandwiches, an apple, and a juice box. At that point most non-local students were done with their orientation; however, American students had an additional meeting with a representative from the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.

That meeting started with her asking where everyone was from. Starting with California, about a third of the American students raised their hands. The other two thirds were from various places scattered around the country. As many of the students from California (undoubtedly mostly University of California students) were Asian Americans, my roommate mentioned that night that Asian American students being a big chunk of students studying abroad in Asia should be no surprise, but I informed him that the UCs have a large Asian population, and still more students, at least at UCSD, went to Europe for study abroad.

Like I said earlier, I’m in good company.

At the meeting basically said the standard “don’t make yourself stand out” stuff and told us how to handle ourselves if we were to get arrested. The consulate would provide a list of attorneys to help, but if someone’s incarcerated, he or she will be visited every quarter by a member of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.

Someone asked how serious jaywalking in Hong Kong is, and the representative said that she didn’t know, but it would be safer to cross at the crosswalks and she herself prefers to wait a couple seconds after the light turns green to cross, allowing those running red lights to do so.

An hour after that, my faculty had a quick session (that lasted an hour and a half) on how to register for classes. It was really complicated, but more on that later. Off to class now!