Definitive Post, Conclusion

If you were like the many who thought that I was done, you’re wrong. I need to conclude the gargantuan endeavor that is this blog with one final post. I’ve been back in the United States for about a week and a half now, and I’ve begun packing and preparing for my return to the University of California, San Diego. Workload permitting, I’ll edit over this whole blog so it flows like a novel, consolidating posts where necessary and refitting everything so it works, more than partially so that I can relive the experience that I am so missing, and know that I will continue to be nostalgic of for the foreseeable future.

And if because of the reverse-chronological format of blogs you arrive at this post first, I encourage you to start at the beginning four months back. Though I’m biased, I think it’s worth it.


Des Amis, Des Ennemis

I have this nasty habit of getting sick in some way or another before entering a new environment. So before heading off to Hong Kong, I happened to be going through the usual. It kept me going to the bathroom in short and my head was persistently and consistently hot. Thinking there was the possibility of getting quarantined, I can’t say I filled out the health declaration form truthfully, and I self-medicated to get me through the lines should they take my temperature.

Showing how much I knew, since Hong Kong just gave sick people respiratory masks and advisory literature but nothing more, I entered the cab on the way over marveling at the sheer number of bridges on surface roads that there were and the lights of Central, only to be nearly shocked at the superficial condition of buildings outside of the tourist drag.

I was sick and I get sick in such situations because of my nervousness and I know it. I didn’t know who my roommate would be, how cliquish the locals would be, how accepting my fellow exchange students would be of the contrast between my national origins and my ethnic roots. All I could tell myself was that it would all work out and that whatever happens happens.

And as I’m blessed time and time again, through privilege and circumstance, everything worked out better than I could have ever assumed. Out of my perceived adversity, though profoundly false, I guess I could say that I became a stronger person in my first learning experience of my four-month exploration.

I guess I’m a naturally shy and soft-spoken individual. Though I do enjoy the company of others on a regular basis, I also enjoy my own company alone, reading a book, writing (this blog), and much less often watching television.  For some reason I had a hunch that I would be the second case more often than not. That’s not to say that I can’t have fun, because in new situations I turn up social butterfly mode and go with it until I have at least a few good friends.

And more than a few good friends I got. They weren’t exactly the friends I was hoping for, being that I wanted to immerse myself in Hong Kong and its locals, but in some ways making friends with other international students gave me a better world view, especially an Anglophone world view, rather than just a Hong Kong- or Chinese-centered one.

Of my friends, of course some were better than others; for a few we parted ways over personality, never ideology. So I guess I’ll go bad news first.

My luck with roommates varies a lot over time. I know he doesn’t read this blog, so in this conclusion, I have few qualms about describing our dealings, especially keeping him in anonymity (at least from those who don’t know him).

He happened to have come from Illinois, the same state where I can say my parents are from (having been educated there, met there, married there, and lived there for a long time). That’s not to say that he’s like my parents though, because he turned out not to be in so many ways.

In being cordial we were good friends for the first month and a half. Though it sounds corny, this was what I like to call the honeymoon period—that being before people fully get to know each other and personalities fully materialize. Things that were so minor to me during the honeymoon period, such as his perceived need to get a girlfriend right then and there in the first two weeks, and his staying up way late to play video games only to complain of exhaustion and boredom during the day began to really annoy me.

In addition, his preconceptions of me came out one by one, one by one revealing themselves to be more specifically misconceptions. For one, he kept insisting that both my parents are from China, to which I had to remind him that my father’s from Detroit and my mother is originally from Hong Kong and immigrated mid-childhood. It followed that during a discussion about learning languages he believed that I speak Mandarin natively, as taught to me by my parents. I had to remind him that my father is a natural-born American and that my mother is from Hong Kong (where they overwhelmingly speak Cantonese over both Mandarin and English), to which I told him he should be able to speak standard German, since he claimed Austrian roots.

And I’m no saint, but on the other hand many of my hunches about him turned out to be true. For one, he whined a lot about not having enough money, though he blew it like no other, spending plenty on drinking and partying. And when he found out that I don’t get financial aid from the government, he assumed that I’m from a rich family, thereafter pointing to expensive sportscars and telling me to buy them for him. The cherry on top was the rigid attitude that he had to all things world. He described his disdain for Islam Week at HKU and described the locals in terms he should have thought twice about before saying to me and my Asian self. In his intelligence, he managed to tell his mom about me in not-so-excellent terms with me in the room. He assumed since I had my earphones in that I wasn’t listening when in reality he should have saved it for later, when I wasn’t present.

It all culminated towards the end of reading week, when after landing at the airport from our group trip to Beijing, he said that had to get off the plane to go meet his friends, with the implication that we were not his friends as denoted by his overly forward tone.

That friend turned out to be a “girlfriend” located an hour’s ferry away in Macau who he probably met on the Internet. In earlier weeks, he would browse the personals section of Craigslist in his boredom, telling me about them while I was trying to study. I ended up disappearing to the library more often than not to study or at least get away from him and he ended up disconnecting from the group and disappearing to Macau nearly every weekend to go see her. That’s not to say I assumed their relationship was one of convenience, because I know how he described her to some of my other friends.

And on the upswing, throughout the whole semester, his opposition to picking up a few words of Cantonese became quite irksome. Yeah, others were like that too, since it’s plenty evident that it’s not hard to get by in Hong Kong on English alone, but with him, it fit his personality in such a way that could only be described in American English-only campaigns by many of the uneducated too lazy to press number “1” or “2” on their phones when prompted.

This isn’t to say that we weren’t friendly though, being that we had to be as we were roommates and all. We parted ways on the appropriate note. He packed away all the People’s Liberation Army “Commie” hats at Mao Zedong quote books for his friends and had be chuckle at the appropriate time. I told him he gets cheap thrills from that stuff. He said it was for his friends. I modified my statement to say that he and his friends get cheap thrills from that stuff. He also was trying to figure out how to pack away a rolled poster for his right-wing father that featured Obama morphed into Mao. He thought I was laughing with him at the witty piece of art. I was laughing at him since he couldn’t get it into his backs without crushing it, putting about thirty folds in it. And as much as I can disagree or even hate someone, defiling someone’s image simply isn’t constructive and if you have to lead with your emotions than you aren’t going to get anywhere (or haven’t gotten anywhere).

And in another falling out, this friend happens to read my blog instead of updating his own (October, November, and December all went down without a single word). This is the friend who I described as not understanding face (in the universal sense) and social relationships that I used as an example in my Traditional Chinese society class.

All of a few hours after my post went on screen he called me during class. I hung up on him since I was in class, so he texted me describing how sorry he was and how he wanted to start anew. I forgot about it by the end of the day, so he ended up sending me a message on Facebook telling me that I defamed him to the point where I should remove and retract my statements. I told him that he was in the wrong, and since it would be sufficiently difficult to figure out that it was him (though the lack of a name and a face), and because I presented my writing as my opinion and not as undisputable fact that in no way could my statements be construed as libel (which he incorrectly termed slander). In addition, he had no career of which to speak to ruin, no would anyone care about what I say about him. I told him that those people who figure out that I was talking about him already have opinions formed of him, and that my little post wouldn’t shift things one way or the other.

With nothing good to say to him and knowing that he had nothing good to say to me, we avoided each other until the last few days. We were cordial and did not mention the disagreement we had.

Later, I was told that he doesn’t like me. I replied to her that I don’t really care. What happened happened and it had gotten to the point where I practically brushed it off my shoulder.

And for the good news, most of the people that I met were genuine and open-minded. I found myself discussing contemporary issues with them and debating the past (often over coffee). I found good travel buddies after thinking for the first few weeks that I should probably find some tours to take me travelling.

Though it seems that I sold them short in this conclusion, I described much of what we all went through in nearly all of my previous posts, from travels to classes and simple cultural differences.

Seeing all of them go was in itself the end of this Study Abroad chapter in my life, since they were more than there for all of it—they were an integral part of it. I plan to stay in contact of course, and who knows?—maybe we’ll have a Hong Kong reunion in a decade’s time.


Lectures and Tutorials

It may just be because I belong to this system, but I can’t describe fully how much I appreciate the liberal arts education. Something also must be said about learning in the common language rather than the elite language.

But first things first: liberal arts as a type and theory in methods of education has a different meaning to the general public and American university students than in the international higher education community, especially along the Anglophone front. Here, we like to think as liberal arts as primarily and often exclusively referring to those institutions of higher learning termed liberal arts colleges. Names aside, this distinction is made primarily to distinguish them from research universities—the difference having less to do with what is liberal arts and more with how big the student population is, how many students there are per class, and what the professors do during their free time.

Liberal arts colleges aim to boast more intimate student experiences, with students being able to learn better through a more Socratic classroom environment with the format more along the lines of a pseudo-discussion rather than a rote lecture in which only the (doctored) professor talks.

On the other hand there are the research universities, where professors teach large lectures with much of the grading being left to teaching assistants, often graduate students, allowing them to research with the time leftover (though often research comes before teaching). In this sense, students have to work at getting to know their professors, most notably by taking advantage of office hours. Misconceptions about research universities stem from that basis—that because lecture halls regularly encompass three hundred students, they cannot be nearly as effective as liberal arts colleges.

In my opinion, people should choose what works better for them rather than just thinking that liberal arts colleges are just better or worse. I know two things: that both formats work well for me, with me myself preferring the anonymity that a large lecture hall can afford me, and also that out of the fourteen or so classes that I have taken thus far at UCSD, most have had less than seventy students, with my smallest class having around ten. I believe that the value of what you get out of anything is what you put in, meaning that it’s irrelevant which format, whether it be large lectures or small discussions, you choose, insofar as you take full advantage of the resources at hand.

But American public definitions aside, what is really meant by attaining a liberal arts education is not the methods in which you met you ends, but rather what you get out of it. As I understand it, without consulting any literature on the matter, the liberal arts education is one of breadth, notwithstanding continuing depth, meaning that you should come out of college understanding not only your subject, but also other subjects—not necessarily all of them, but of those that you do, at least their basis or even some finer points, or in other words, well-roundedness. The theory behind this is that by getting a good depth of feel for more of what our universe of knowledge is about, you can produce more profound critical thought on your own discipline, seeing material in a more comprehensive manner if you will.

In this sense, American universities and colleges are all based in liberal arts, since all have general education requirements of sorts to gain breadth {as well as to keep accreditation). You can contrast this with vocational schools, which, being more skill-based, teach you what you need to know for your future job with much less emphasis on critical thought.

In other countries, higher education is often somewhere in between liberal arts institutions and vocational schools. In Hong Kong for example, general education is advertised by the university as something for personal enjoyment rather than as a requirement. So in this sense, breadth is more an optional asset rather than a requirement for graduation.

Of course, there are pros and cons. Using the simple comparison between the American education system and that of Hong Kong, graduates from American universities and colleges come out as highly skilled in terms of critical thought, or more pragmatically put—problem solving. Graduates from Hong Kong universities will come out with more specific knowledge on the specific fields that they’ve trained for.

So automatically, one would compare the two and ask which one is better. On top of the fact that I just got back from Hong Kong, I compare the two because of their similar economies. Hong Kong’s is based on the service sector, largely in finance, with much industrial manufacturing having gone to nearby Guangdong Province in Mainland China. That of the United States is going in that direction, with (industrial) jobs going overseas because of cheaper labor in places like China. As such, Americans are finding it more and more necessary to upgrade their educations with children now being expected to go to college or likely end up in a dead-end job.

So which system of higher education is better? Though I’ve tried to fully express my viewpoint in earlier posts and very simply stated my ardent appreciation of the system I happen to be in, I’m not going to delve into that again here, because then I’ll end up going into dollars and cents, and past subsistence (including security), I’ve never felt like happiness or the meaning of life were embedded in numbers of any sort.

The second point of contention that I intend to mention is the language of instruction. Hong Kong, having been a British Crown Colony for the vast majority of its successful history, tends to over-idealize and overestimate its colonial heritage. As such, much emphasis is placed on English-language education, with the appropriate policies being in place and in action in the territory’s major universities, of course including the one that I attended on exchange.

Before coming to Hong Kong, I read in the pamphlet that the school sent me to help me find my way upon arrival that though classes are all in English, the local students speak to each other in Cantonese. I took a double take at the sentence, knowing that there is generally the tendency to prefer speaking in the language with which one is most comfortable in. It was in a sense of what was to come, because the pamphlet was correct as expected.

While I fully believe in language rights, certain things about Hong Kong local students weren’t quite clicking as I was hoping. The pamphlet itself used funny English. It had funny constructions, odd prepositions, and “the” before nearly every noun, whether it needed it or not. I assumed that the way the pamphlet was written simply reflected the variety of English used in Hong Kong. I don’t think this was an unreasonable assumption at all. It is well known that especially since English has such large geographic spread, there are bound to be vast differences in various technical usages of certain words and even different grammatical features. For example, a British English speaker would say, “at weekends,” whereas an American English speaker would say, “on weekends.”

As I would find out, it’s hard to classify Hong Kong English as a true variety of English. This is because the differences in word usage between Hong Kong English and American English were anything but consistent (and hence not predictable and not easy to internalize). When Hong Kong English speakers would say something, it seemed often that any preposition could go in conjunction with any verb, and because of that, it took a great deal of effort during my entire stay there (meaning it didn’t get any easier) to understand what people were saying.

Their lack of English skills was in large created by the fact that they don't speak English with each other, and based on what I have heard and witnessed, that they seem to subconsciously view English as a hindrance to their educations despite its advantage in their futures. The reason I say that is because during a floor meeting at Lee Hysan Hall, the students conducted all their business in Cantonese despite the presence of non-Cantonese speakers. This meant that instead of everyone switching to English (which they are all expected to be able to speak), they had one member translate for those who could not understand. It seems as though if they had more practice, they would either get their prepositions correct or at least consistent.

I say this to mean that everyone should speak English properly, like many Americans would have it be, just that in a school that boasts English as its language of instruction, it might be good as a student to get to speaking well a consistent variety of the language if not an already existing standard.

This isn’t to say that everyone was a bad English speaker, for I’m sure there are. What I mean is that overall, the local student population needed dearly to refine their English-language abilities.

What this meant for my classes was that in my opinion they were largely diluted. Ask me what I learned in class and I’ll tell you I’d rather talk about my travels. Professors had to speak slowly so that students understand. This meant that in the fourteen-week semester (my quarters at UCSD are ten weeks), I feel I learned less than back in California during a significantly shorter term.


La Gran Obra de Arte

I know I’m not the first in using my passport as a something of a symbol of my travels, but I’m going to do it anyways. Doing so is popular because such a representation is apt. After all, that little booklet accompanied me all along the way.

The original sections of that little booklet were completely full by the end. If you recall, by mid-November, it readily became clear that my passport book was filling up with stamps. Since Hong Kong and Mainland China have separate immigration schemes, the fact that I did a lot of frequent traveling to the mainland meant that most of those stamps were red rectangles and ovals. Under advice online from the Department of State, I ventured over to the consulate-general to have more pages added to lessen the likelihood of being turned away when going through immigration. Unfortunately, none of those pages were actually used since no one wanted to be the first to stamp on those pages, being that they are a different color from the rest of the booklet. Instead, they took the liberty of being economical and went backwards the booklet, stamping wherever they could find a corner here and there.

Most know of the pride I take in my passport, and the fact that I will have to get a new one soon means that this one, once invalidated, will likely find its way into a bank vault somewhere (though probably not). I may be one of the few who do this, but I like to exhibit my passport when people ask about my travels. The fact of the matter is half of them are asking to be polite more than out of interest, so handing over my passport to them for the first time gives them something physical to match with the various stories wandering around my brain. I know that I’m not the best storyteller in speech, and I don’t deny that there is always room for improvement in my writing.

Before going to Hong Kong, I had been to China for the first time in my life on a two-week tour of some of the major sights. Prior to that trip, my international travels consisted of one road trip to Canada from Ohio with my aunt and uncle in Dayton. Back then you didn’t need passports to re-enter the United States through that border—just American birth certificates or American naturalization certificates plus identification. Even now with passport control, the United States doesn’t stamp Canadians (I’m pretty sure) and Canada doesn’t stamp Americans (I’m certain).

I went through Canada again at the end of an Alaskan cruise, having been routed through Vancouver. But the bottom line is that I got my passport first for my trip to China. I used it again for going to the Schengen Area when my family and I toured Paris and much of Italy. This means that in the first three years of having my passport, the first two pages were used: one with my Chinese visa and one with immigration stamps.

Applying for my Hong Kong student visa through the university and receiving my new full-page sticker made me pretty happy despite the fact that it was one of the ugliest pieces of paper ever designed. It made me realize both the definite fact that I was going to be going on a long trip and that that trip was happening soon.

And as visas go, I had to get one more to enter Mainland China, for which I applied and received in Hong Kong. The process reaffirmed my nationality in the fact that my visa cost over $1000 HKD when most other people in line paid less than $300 for exactly the same piece of paper.

And on my multiple-entry visa, I got most of my passport stamps. On exchange, I went to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guilin, crossing the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China twelve more times. Other trips that I made were to Macau and Taipei. Outside of Greater China though, I only made one trip—to Phuket, Thailand. I genuinely intended to get to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Tokyo, had it not been for the increased costs in traveling alone, and I’m confident that had I stayed for the entire year, I would have gone to Vietnam and Cambodia as well.

I guess it’s difficult for me, especially as an American, to say that I'm not well traveled. Because although the farthest trip I made when I was under 10 was from northern Los Angeles to San Diego and my first plane trip happened the summer right before September 11, 2001, it’s hard for me to claim such a statement in the present. The fact of the matter is that not only have I gone to New York state and back through thirty states, but also my passport has become the great work of art that it now is.

With my internalization of the fiction that is nationality, I understand that talking about my passport in such a manner can be construed as a double-edged sword, but because it’s recorded the majority of my travels in such a succinct yet unique way, it serves me more as a momento and a souvenir rather than a document proving my citizenship.


Dollars, Yuan, Baht, and Those Unsung Heroes

In planning this conclusion, I initially intended to list out the costs of my study to Hong Kong. I’ve decided as of now though to stop short of this. I will say that after making my final summations the number is not small, or at least not nearly as small as I would have expected.

I consider my lifestyle comfortable, perhaps upper-middle class, but not lavish or particularly elitist. My travels were much of the expense. Encouraged my mother in words and parental financial assistance, I found myself going somewhere nearly every other weekend. In short, traveling outside of Hong Kong added up to about 40% of my total expenses.

However, my biggest single purchase came in the form of a digital single-lens reflex camera, which, being on sale, I splurged about 9% of my total expenses on. I got a Nikon D90, which sits at the top of the mid-range section, right under professional.

It cost me so much that in a very stable, rational matter I assure you I just about didn’t hand over my debit card to my salesperson. After the fact, I lamented for weeks about how much I paid for it, comparing it to how much money I would have spent on more trips and such, how much it costs to free a modern slave, how many times over I could have paid off my friend’s library late fees.

Since I did study abroad rather than just travel abroad, I should probably mention how much I paid for my education abroad. At just over 30% of my total expenses, tuition was about $4000 USD, paid to the Regents of the University of California. I actually don’t know how much it costs to go to the University of Hong Kong because since the University of California sends as many students to the University of Hong Kong as the University of Hong Kong sends the University of California (under the exchange program), students pay their home institutions. This means that the amount that I paid was about equivalent to how much as semester would have cost at Berkeley or UC Merced.

And herein I start my thanks. At the urging of my father, I applied for a $500 USD-scholarship at UCSD (with multiple recipients). This is one of the very few merit-based scholarships that don’t look at financial need.  I happened to get this scholarship (for whom I have no idea who to thank) and it was automatically transferred to my EAP program in a miracle of the bureaucracy that feeds into UCSD Finance office.

For the longest time I had no clue where the $500 came from in my EAP financial accounting. I assumed it was a glitch in the system. When I had to pay a bill to UCSD though for a Programs Abroad Office administrative fee, I saw the two register lines devoted to this scholarship (receipt and subsequent transfer). So to whatever committee or person thereof that I got this scholarship from I owe my first thanks.

My second thanks goes off to the Programs Abroad Office here at UCSD, the staff of which (save one particular advisor for the Global Seminars Program) were all extremely nice and helpful. They, along with the system-wide Education Abroad Program office helped me and all the exchange students sift through all the paperwork involved. Especially regarding immigration-department paperwork for Hong Kong students, these two offices, along with the Center for Student Development and Resources (CEDAR) pushed all my paperwork through the bureaucracy of Hong Kong immigration.

If memory serves me right, I had to submit about ten forms through the offices. The two big forms were the application to the University of Hong Kong after my acceptance to the program which took me the better part of an hour to fill out in English and my student visa application that in all its thirty pages was divided into parts “A” through “K” with every letter in between.

Of course, my greatest thanks go to the financiers of this expedition and my support crew, both of whom happen to be my family. As cliché as it sounds, my family has always been there for me, if not emotionality at least in person, and without them it is clear that at my age, and especially because of my financial viability, that this trip would not have gone as far as it did. Without their assistance and their blessing, I would not have had the ability to jet around East Asia. I also acknowledge that while my parents pay for much of what I do so that they have a controlling interest in what I do, it is always for my own good if not for the good of the family.

And in this sense of family, there is one thing left of my heritage that I think is not only important but also incredibly moral. I vow never in my life to ever just send them off to a nursing home. The fact of the matter is that while I’m told I was an easy infant to take care of, the amount of good that my brother and I brought to their lives in constituting a family is offset by the negatives, such as opportunity cost in careers lost, significantly long periods of sleep deprivation, and financial well being. At one point in my mid-teens, my parents noticed I was drinking expensive lactose-free milk at such an alarming rate that I equated the situation with water being flushed down a toilet. But ultimately from a moral perspective, it would just be wrong to cast off one’s parents in their time of need.

Honestly though, I can’t say that it’s only because of my heritage that I aim to espouse such a principle in my conscience. My parents have always struck the right balance between being imposing and controlling to the point where I’m led in the right direction and laissez-faire to the point were I could find the right direction by myself. Because of that, not only have I never had an intense period of rebellion, whether it be in middle school, high school, or right after leaving the nest, but also my parents are the two people who I’m most open with, whether or not they would like to believe it.

And though friends don’t usually get mentioned in such a context, I feel I owe thanks to my friends both at UCSD and at HKU who gave me first-hand support. From my friends at UCSD, their interest in the normalized craziness of what I was doing have a certain kind of value to this endeavor that, while kind of superficial, made me enjoy the whole thing that much more. And my friends at HKU, who came to the territory as disoriented as me helped pull me through all the changes set in front of us, though many of us came from different backgrounds, different homes per se. I guess it was through diversity that we aided each other in perceived adversity and because of the lot of them that I went from missing California then to missing Hong Kong now.

If you haven’t slipped into beta mode yet, you probably realize that I gave you enough information to figure out how much I spent in acceptable detail. I just didn’t want to throw numbers around for people to preoccupy themselves with.


In the Quest

This blog itself had an interesting role in my experience abroad. Though I had no intentions of telling anyone about my blog because I wanted to have the freedom of conscience in a sense to write whatever I wanted to write on it, word leaked. I could blame Facebook for not allowing me (at least at the time) to promote my blog to friends back home at the exclusion of new friends in Hong Kong—but that would be somewhat irrelevant.

In this age of social media, I knew what I was getting myself into by starting a blog for the whole thing rather than just writing my thoughts down into a physical journal. And therein lies a paradox in my said motivations in writing a blog rather than a traditional journal.

I have said a few times that in all my writing I write for myself. And it’s true. So the paradox that seems to be lies in the fact that I write for myself yet I publish it on the World Wide Web for the whole world to see. Now I wouldn’t be publishing it online for others to read in my own self-interest.

Actually I would. Let me explain. I write for myself in the sense that most directly I write for my own purposes—say so I may be able to read this when I’m old and crumbling. I also write for myself in the sense that ultimate benefit will come to me. This isn’t to say that you lot who have read my blog won’t get anything out of it—just that by you reading it I get some ultimate benefit, often in addition to yourselves.

This works on two levels. I talked about how on a superficial level seeing that other people take interest in what I’m doing gives me satisfaction in the sense that what I’m doing is worth something rather than in the sense that now I can become popular. On the higher level, me publishing what I have to offer (in a sense) puts something out there for everyone, including people to whom I have no connection, to comment on. This means ultimately that as I get older and mature into a career, I will have mileage posts to speak of about my life. From there not only will I able to reflect upon my past, but also what other people have to say about my past. For all my uncertainty in life, this blog is staying on the Internet.

To me, this means that this blog can prove more interactive and in a sense provide advantages over traditional publishing. Taking a step back, I write papers for class ultimately because I need to get a good grade on it to a good grade point average to go to a good graduate school and establish a solid career in which I will hopefully be able to do meaningful work. These papers are unlike a blog though in that there are only a few people who will ever read them.

Because of my inhibitions about my work, I am and have always been hesitant about putting it out in the open for everyone to view. But because of the fact that blogs and the Internet come off in my subconscious as quite anonymous, I have few qualms about putting nearly everything about my experience out there on the web.

And honestly, it’s nice not having any editors past yourself. I’m ultimately going to have to go over this monstrosity of over well one hundred ten thousand words (a mid-size novel) to make it flow. My photos that I have put in separate posts out of convenience could be integrated into my text, ultimately reducing the number of posts (currently one hundred forty-six), which I’ll make look more like chapters, yet increase the number of words in smoothing everything over.

As for the style of my narration, I wrote everything descriptive in the past because everything of substance happened in the past. In terms of flow, I understand this blog to be more formal-sounding than most. I have also been told that I write like I speak, which meant close to nothing to me since I think the best writing is genuine thought, regardless of research. My conventions I wrote in my native dialect without regard to Standard American English (except in orthography). This means that the overwhelming majority of grammatical mistakes you seem to find are actually perfectly fine in my eyes. If you see few and far between in the way of weird words and odd grammatical constructions, it means that you and I have more in common than you may outwardly imagine. Bottom line is that my balance between sheer informality and stringent formality strikes a tone of authenticity in myself from which you can gauge yourselves.


After the Quest

I go to UCSD, but when I was applying to Harvard I wrote for one of my essays something I entitled “The Last Prologue.” Obviously it either wasn’t enough to get me accepted or it was enough to get me rejected, but either way I mean the title as a way to see how I positioned myself in my surroundings.

You could say that immaturely, I felt like my childhood was kind of a prologue to me real life, which would begin when I became an adult. The first time I doubted this conviction came the day I turned 18 and felt nothing different. In my newfound adulthood I was no different than the day before, and at that moment I thought in a different way how there are so many young people who have wisdom beyond their age and so many old people who lack the years that they possess.

I don’t mean maturity in playful banter. In this regard arrogant people would be classified as immature. Ultimately though, if my childhood of eighteen years was my prequel, then my old age lasting a few decades, say from retirement, would be my afterword, my conclusion, and my epilogue beginning with my death. In my reformed mindset, I feel that since to call old age an afterword would be unfair, to call childhood a prologue would be nonsensical.

I now firmly believe that one’s life is the entirety of one’s life. So though there’s no getting rid of your past, for the rest of your life there is always opportunity for maturity.

In the same regard, I will be graduating college within a year and a half. It could even be as soon as fifteen months, each month of which I am confident will fly by whether I want it to or not. Before studying abroad, I’ve gone through my childhood and the various levels of education in the public school system. I’ve worked in a few very small jobs as a tutor and as a translation assistant and I’ve also sat on a large non-profit’s Board of Directors. After studying abroad, I’ve lived and studied outside the country. I’ve felt lost in translation but not as lost as some people. I’ve discovered that I’m a dual national. Most notably yet most simply though, I’ve advanced one term in my university career and became a more mature, open-minded individual in the process.

People like to say that the journey is the destination in that what you learn is in the journey. I would like to modify this to say that the journey is but after. I have learned so much my studying abroad, but I know that as much as I have learned and will have learned by the time I, say, turn 50, there will always be more to learn. Hence, the journey is after, and in that sense, you’re always in a journey, since the day after tomorrow is but tomorrow come today’s tomorrow.

And so in the title I refrain from calling this the last post, because though this is indeed my last post to this blog, in no way is it my last bit of writing. And though it’s usually uttered in a different context, it’s always the case that when one door closes, another one opens, even if it’s not the one you planned for.

So out of college in less than a year and a half, what’s my next door to open?

After the Quest

Psyched to Go Back

It’s quite sad to see this whole experience ending with me seeing my newfound friends one by one. In some ways, it seems just yesterday when we were all introducing ourselves adamantly to each other. Eagerly we traveled together as strangers and in the process quickly became friends. In some ways it was just yesterday—just four months ago. Was it enough time? I’d rather not think about that—I just have to keep telling myself that it had to end eventually.

I began packing up my things several weeks ago, yet today, the day before I leave, I still have items to stow, drawers that I don’t want to empty, last meals with friends that I wish were just meals. It had to end at some point, but in no way is this the conclusion to this blog, nor this chapter in my life.

Though it seems like we’ve moved beyond this, as Rhinesmith would point out, I’m now at stage seven. But I think that in his little analysis, either he got something slightly wrong or it doesn’t quite apply to exchange students in particular. Stage seven points out return anxiety, and honestly, I don’t think my anxiety levels are at a high right now. Quite the opposite, I’m not eager to return home.

It’s not that I’ve become adverse to home or anything. I love constant weather at livable temperatures as any friend of mine could quickly tell you. I love driving and speaking English as a part of every aspect of every day of my life. No matter where I go and how far I go, I will forever hold California in the very center of my heart, even if there’s nothing left for me to go back to.

I’ve realized that there is more now though to the world I suppose, as corny as it sounds, and I really want to see just how far away the edge of the planet is. I guess I’ve got my future to accomplish this, and accomplish this I will.

I am blessed and I understand that, because I know that while my life is not perfect and never will be, so many doors have been opened up to me. By chance or by higher power, so quickly and so definitely I have found my place in the absence of such a place. I regret ever having thought the world was against me, however long ago that was, and shall never feel that way again.

I am not psyched to go back. As much as I know that the longer I stay away, the more I will end up missing my home seven thousand miles away, I really want to stay here—stay studying here, stay traveling from here, stay experiencing other lives from here. But alas I cannot.

Due to the wisdom of past me, I decided not to file the proper paperwork to pre-approve my extension at the University of Hong Kong all the way to May. I understand why and I assumed that I would have an easier time accepting this preemptive decision on my past counterpart’s part.

Right now I’m not accepting it. Right now I feel like it wasn’t so necessary for me to graduate college in the three-year manner that I am. I know that until I finish my education (as if it’s ever done) I will flip back and forth between whether it was the right decision to plan my graduation so early.

I sit at my desk this last night of mine in Hong Kong at nineteen years of age—not yet two decades old, not yet old enough to ask for a beer on the airplane back to the United States. Who am I to do this at this age? I’m the youngest of the exchange students I know here, by as little as a few months to as much as six years. I understand that my mind is pliable, that I’m not in my own yet, that I may still have an inch in height to grow.

But on the other hand, not to sound old, but I know that my youth is closing up on me. For a good year and a half, I could read in cars without getting sick. I could stay on boats for hours on end and not feel the least bit nauseous. As silly as it sounds, I know times are changing. I know that my glasses are getting thicker, unevenly on different axes; I know that reading—even a bit—on a moving vehicle will get my head rolling for hours; I know that as much as I try, as hard as I try, certain things just aren’t so easy to learn anymore. And as much as I know not to let the future take all the brownies, I know that there’s only so much I can do—mind over matter only works to a certain extent.

This last night in Hong Kong is adding up to be a sentimental one. The number of friends still here I need not one hand to count. The number of hours until my plane leaves Hong Kong as I write this sentence stands at thirteen.

I finally got to taking the Star Ferry Night Harbour Tour and it was amazing. They circled Hong Kong as I took two hundred pictures with my new Nikon D90 camera. I got a good night as it wasn’t too hazy, and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing this skyline for quite some time.

As much as I know I'm coming back one day, someday, I also know that it’s going to be far in the future—I might have a different passport; I might have multiple passports.

But for now I’m moving back to the University of California, San Diego. Good old UCSD in the bubble that is La Jolla, California. I’ve already got my accommodation sorted and I know I’m moving in the day before classes start. I’ve already begun buying books for classes and filed plenty of paperwork to re-matriculate.

I’m set to continue with my life. I’ve laid my provisions out as I have since the end of middle school. I’ve kept watch on my own deadlines and made sure I’ve never been late on anything since I was twelve. The time to move on is now, and though the road has been paved for me by me, I know that not only am I going to be apprehensive getting on that asphalt for the first time in a long time, but also I’m not so sure I’m going to be emotionally ready for it. But as they say (though not usually in this context), life moves on.

Pride and Prejudice

Do you ever wish life were easier? When I was little, I definitely did. Why did it need to be so complicated? It all seemed like farce to me. I thought as I advanced in life, maybe complexities would either become simpler or maybe I would be able to deal with them better.

I used to hate politics. You know? It’s complex and winds around and around until you’re sick in the head as well as the stomach. If you were to ask seventh-grader me what I think of politics, I’d tell you that they’re useless and stupid. I’d say something like, “You suck up to someone and you kiss of another.”

In some ways, I wasn’t wrong. In many more aspects, I never realized that in my banter against politics, I was speaking more to my views on social convention and my desire (probably more common than not) to be different. I wanted to stand out from the crowd in some way, I suppose. Minus the killing, I felt like l’etranger, but in my introverted world, I suppose I could not see past myself and the society that invisibly bound me.

Many of us are still like that. I personally found that my being self-centered led me to droop my head more often than not, and that in the quest to become your own, you just commute from one norm to another.

But this post is about my anthropology slash sociology class, Traditional Chinese Society. It begins with a lively discussion, climaxes at a professor’s realization, and ends with a request.

In Chinese society (traditional, modern, or whenever you want to place it), there’s always been the very conscious concept of face. There is a whole array to describe the concept and another set of words to describe the various processes and actions required to (properly) attain face.

The specifics of the discussion centered on those specific processes. One anthropologist made the discovery that in her anthropological case study in rural China, she discovered that there were some five steps in creating good face with others. With the ultimate objective of creating good face being benefit, frankly, she applied this to how someone of a lower status would get favors out of someone of higher status by following a pretty set process. It would involve the presentation of gifts and invitation to dinner. The only way that it would work out would be through mutual benefit, otherwise there would be no reason to take action.

The professor began to tell his story about his happenings in Chengdu. Originally from Canada, he moved to Chengdu (in China) to teach. There, he encountered the socialist system of human capital organization that had started being dismantled. The people were happy to be switching to an economic system wherein they could buy goods with money. This is because before, they found themselves dealing with their relationships with others. To get rice from one party, you’d have to trade for something else. In this sense, you had to constantly maintain complex relationships with a large number of individuals. My professor said that some people had trouble sleeping because maintaining good face with others was just so stressful.

He had the audience at attention I think. It’s funny how we’re always told about how Chinese people strive to maintain face, so far to the point where they might seem cold to those they don’t know. I think that because we’re told that, and because they tell themselves that as well, face is a topic that interests us because it is one of the most visible.

People were throwing questions at the professor left and right. He answered all of them logically and most of them definitively. The thing that I noticed, though, was that I could have answered all of the scenarios and situations that were being presented. What’s more was that understood all of the concepts being discussed so perfectly to the point where I could see them in action in everyday life—not just here in Hong Kong but also back home in California.

I guess I’m no real stranger to this world being discussed though. Last year at UCSD, I did take those two sociocultural linguistic anthropology classes that largely talked about the concept face, saving face, and creating face using language and linguistics as mediums for doing so.

I guess for me, this class of thirteen students was being a little too enthusiastic. Something smelled funny, so I decided to just throw out a statement to the professor to see how he and the class would treat it:

“So we keep talking about face in this really foreign way, like none of us do it, like it’s an exotic concept that none of us have seen before. But the thing is that I see this stuff happening every day.”

And I really had. To add on to that statement, I gave the class an account of how face still exists and always will exist. It had to deal with social convention and how I became mad because he failed to play his part and didn’t even try to mitigate the presence of the clear fact that he did what he did to put himself alone at an advantage. With social convention playing into (the creation and maintenance of) face, roughly termed guanxi in Chinese, my story had true relevance to the topic and possibly also showed how when we exoticize concepts, we lose track of their true importance and how close to home they actually exist.

My story began in Taiwan. One of the friends who I was traveling happened to start a chain of events that would lead to his production of bad guanxi and my current dislike of him.

We landed at Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and needed to get usable money out before leaving. In the airport, there were but two ATMs for us to use. I personally use my American HSBC account for financial matters overseas. Though the checking account has a small monthly charge, I get free use to all HSBC and Hang Seng Bank ATMs as well as favorable exchange rates (unlike those banks that adjust the rate to make a profit margin).

This friend happens to have a similar setup. He has a Hong Kong HSBC account (which does charge for ATMs outside of Hong Kong) as well as Bank of America. Since Bank of America has a sizeable stake in China Construction Bank (though they don’t fully own it as he implies), withdrawals at China Construction Bank ATMs are free.

Neither of the two ATMs at the airport belonged to any of the banks listed above. I sucked it up and pulled out money anyways. You know, when you need money, you’ll take it as you get it (and I would later find out that for the $100 USD that I withdrew in Taiwan dollars, I was only charged a total of $5 or $6 USD, so it was pennies on the dollar). My other friend pulled out money as well.

However, the first friend decided that he couldn’t eat the ATM fees, and borrowed several thousand Taiwan dollars from the second friend. His intentions were to find an HSBC and repay that money sooner rather than later.

It’s fine, right? We need to borrow money off of each other from time to time. It’s always done in good faith—physical contracts never cross our minds. It is assumed that everyone involved will be equitable. Since person A borrowed money off of person B, it is assumed that that money will be paid back in a timely manner, and since B did A a favor, it would also behoove A to pay that favor back to B in some way.

It was lost on my friend who borrowed money. As the days began passing and HSBC was nowhere to be found, my friend was still borrowing money on a whim and without thought to whom he was borrowing money from.  He still thought that we an HSBC popped up somewhere, he would withdraw the appropriate amount of Taiwan dollars and pay it back. By now though, we only had a few days left, and what good would it be to get Taiwan dollars right before leaving Taiwan?

What was worse was that he refused to pay it back in something useful, like Hong Kong dollars. So because of this, we forced him to use the ATM, because he was either going to pay up in TWD now, or HKD later. Reluctantly, he went to the closest ATM.

After that, though, he found that he used up his TWD and began borrowing again. Not wanting to subject himself to those ATM fees again, he agreed to pay the end sum back in HKD after much prodding and poking.

When we got back to Hong Kong though, we found him negotiating the exchange rate for TWD to HKD, trying to pay as little as possible though he basically got a free service from my other friend and could be so courteous as to at least agree to a favorable rate.

And on a different issue, when the plane landed, we went to baggage claim to pick up his bag. Since he checked a bag in and I didn’t, he let me put my liquids in his bag so I would be able to bring them back with there being the limitations on such for carry-on luggage. I was glad that he let me, and I wanted to express my gratitude by taking his bag back for him, as we were taking different modes of transportation back to the dorms, mine being the faster.

Upon my offer, he became offended. His tone suggested that it was completely inappropriate for me to take his luggage back for him. Undoubtedly, he was paranoid about stuff getting stolen, but instead of politely declining my offer, he lashed out at me.

He wanted to know why I offered to take his suitcase back for him, and I explained that it was the appropriate thing to do and a nice gesture after he carried my stuff in it. He misunderstood this reciprocating of favors, and told me that I could take my stuff out now if I wanted. Since he didn’t understand my point in offering, I told him to forget it. This infuriated him, and he threw a fit.

Fine. His lack of ability to maintain face, by at least declining my offer politely, made me dislike him. Though initially this offense was subconscious, the fact that I’ve now consciously analyzed it hasn’t changed my opinions of him.

And the professor agreed that we were exoticizing such a fundamentally human concept, and a universal one at that. He said that sometimes it’s fun to approach a subject matter like that and see it from the outside. And I agreed, but then came the roll of hands that showed a new (mis)understanding and perhaps grounds to set the facts straight before heading out to outer space to look down on our blue planet.

People were most all surprised now that face wasn’t exclusively a Chinese concept, in short. They were surprised that they engage in these practices as well. The professor explained that the reason these concepts are so easy for westerners to understand was because these are universal concepts.

The lecture ended, and as the professor left the hall, one student asked for an extension on his project because he treated face as an exclusively Chinese concept.


The complexities have come as they’ve come. As I advance as a person though, my challenges increase at the same rate. Although I like to challenge myself (that in itself being a big part of the increase), I really don’t mind the complexities any more.

Now that I’m older, I find solace in intricacies; I delve into complexities and enjoy undoing what I’m given. If I remember correctly, you often get more out of the journey than the actual destination.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.  

As Stubborn as

A couple weeks ago now (sorry for the delay), I went to the second high-table dinner for Lee Hysan Hall. I didn’t really talk about the first one in a published post because, well, I didn’t have very savory opinion of it. But as a (re)cap, high-table dinners are when the entire hall (of a few hundred students) gather at Bay View Canteen downstairs (which is mediocre at best), dressed in suits and classy dresses, for what is supposed to be a classy occasion. And so sum up my thoughts on the first one—it’s not.

I figured that, okay, it wouldn’t be bad to go to the second one. They are only once a month, and with only three total, maybe it would be better to just attend and get it over with, because, you never know, right? There might be something you might miss and end up regretting not going. I’ve since this second high-table dinner retracted these feelings in their entirety.

It’s not like we’ve got much choice in attending though. Those students with legitimate reasons for being absent may report it to the building warden (who’s a teaching professor) and be excused. Those who miss without approval to do so must write a letter in an attempt to excuse themselves for their absence. Those who are chronically absent from these high-table dinners risk getting expulsion from the hall.

Some of my friends got excused ahead of time; some just skipped. I don’t think they wrote a letter of apology to anyone though, nor do I believe they were asked to, because as exchange students, we are definitely given a lot of leeway in mistakes and such. I’m guessing that if they miss the next one in the same fashion though, they may be asked to write a letter.

The routine of the event itself was the same as last time. Meet at a certain time (6:00 p.m.) at the common room but don't quite assemble until way later (6:51), at which point the elevators (two clunkers for the sixteen-story building) are completely full and you don’t get down there until 7:25 p.m., just in time to sit down for the dinner to begin at 7:30 p.m. (though neither time did it start until after 7:45).

So this time, the couple people I knew on the floor and I headed down independently of the floor. Each floor was assigned a few round tables, and each round table had specific students assigned to it. Wanting to sit with some of my friends, I ignored the table assignments with the full intention of moving if someone asked me to.

No one asked me to. This time around, actually, the table that I sat at was quite empty. This, I found out, was because much like myself, the local students all wanted to sit with (all) of each other at a few tables. They kicked out other students who weren’t their friends from their tables to make room. As such, the table I sat at became the table of rejected exchange students. This group included, among others, one floormate who relayed me her relations with the locals—and though her relationship with them didn’t get her a seat at the “friends” table, I still admire how she was able to reach out to them in a way that I failed.

I guess I should start by describing my relationship with them again. I know that I constantly keep referring to them as a group, but please know that I understand that they are individuals and that a few I’m quite friendly with.

I moved in my first day and I went up and down the halls to try to help me figure out the electrical sockets. The solution came in as simply as I’m not used to have power-cut switches out the outlets themselves (though now I think that it’s a very smart idea), but to help me come to this, I found a local in the common room who identified himself as Jason. He was friendly and helpful, and though we live on the same (male) side of the same floor, I’ve only seen him a handful of times since.

Also in the first week, I met a guy named 99 as in “nine-nine,” though if I had read his name out loud before proper introductions, I would have pronounced it as “ninety-nine.” He was really nice as well, but I’ve only seen him a few times as well. My neighbors towards the bathroom I say “hi” to every once in a while. It never goes far beyond that because whereas I tried many times to start conversation with them, they’ve never bothered to contribute anything to their conversations with me.

I’ve never been to a floor meeting, the first because I was sick, the second because I was out of town, and the third because I didn’t know. From what I’ve heard though, they’re conducted in Cantonese (though everyone should be able to competently speak English as HKU is an English-language university). So instead of switching to English when someone who doesn’t speak Cantonese attends the meeting, they instead have one student translate for them.

The last one, my exchange floormate was told that the meeting was being adjourned, but after he left, they started talking more about specific hall activities that they didn’t offer to him, just because they assumed his disinterest due to his lack of participation in the previous floor and hall events.

I understand that a big part of my not befriending them has to do something with a language barrier. I don’t speak good Cantonese and many of them are not comfortable in speaking English. The bigger obstruction though is that they treat relationships differently here. In the act of saving face, the way they go about it is to prefer not to make contact with those who they don’t know, and only after do they know someone do they open up. I wasn’t about to deal with that.

This floormate exchange student, though, did. She told me how she wanted to be involved in hall activities. She would knock on the local’s doors and get cold responses time and time again, until one day she flat out asked them why they exclude her.

Since then, they’ve invited her to all the activities. She and the locals socialize outside of the hall events as well. They get along with her so well, that the last time I talked to her, they were pondering over what Chinese name they should bestow upon her.

I admire what she’s done. Maybe I’m too stubborn to do what she did; maybe I just didn’t care to make friends with people who didn’t overtly care to make friends with me. In some ways I’ve failed, and in some ways I perceive it’s not my fault.

Back at UCSD, Eleanor Roosevelt College is the undergraduate residential college with the international focus. As such, International House, where many of the exchange students stay, is on our campus. I participate in their activities as I am encouraged to. I try dearly to make friends with them, and show them the America that I know and love—the California that I know and love.

Maybe what I expected was unreasonable. Maybe how it works here is just different. As much as I’ve gotten used to Hong Kong and made this where I feel at home overseas, this one aspect of friendship is just something I’m not sure I would ever get used to.

It’s okay though. I don’t need a Chinese name—I’ve already got one of those.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author. 

The Point of No Return

Two months in I stand; two months in I see. Like a ship halfway to its destination, I know I have so much behind me now and yet there’s so much in front of me as well. In a way it’s misleading. I don’t really want to go back at the moment. I look forward to my return, just not this December, not in two months. However, in no way am I home scot-free. My experience here still has the very real possibility of being a naufraga in the same way that I don’t know if I’ll still be alive tomorrow. It requires constant maintenance, and more often than not, it’s an uphill battle.

I arrived August 21, confused, dazed, and fresh off a thirteen-hour flight without sleep. My passport was then used just a few times. Upon entering the country, I was given a student entry stamp on the page opposite my student visa. The square, black stamp looked to take up most of the page to my surprise. The airport gave false impressions of Hong Kong—not false as in better or worse, but false as in different. Getting off the train on Hong Kong Island, I was greeted with lots of noise, winding roads, and my first experience seeing traffic move on the left.

With time, I adjusted. The sweltering heat and humidity lessened slightly as my tolerance increased. The bus system that once confused me became manageable and I could successfully ask to get off the minibus in Cantonese—a skill than increased to requesting stops in specific locations. I found where the better food is and how to deal with copious amounts of rice.

I guess you could say that I’ve now plateaued culturally. While there still is room to grow, there will always be, and I will continue to progress, just slower. As I went from being nervous, I can now say I’m quite the opposite. Whereas at first I missed home and was counting down the days to go back, I find myself now trying to maximize the rest of my time here. I’ve lost count and already I want to do this again somewhere else next fall semester, money and time permitting, of course.

So where am I to go from here? I’ve not yet reached the top of the mountain, though I’ve been to the Peak twice. My finals schedule is starting to shape up, though I don’t care for it to end. With my eyes perpetually towards the future, I’ve decided to take the time to enjoy the present.

To this effect, I’ve begun a project that won’t be done until the end of the year. The idea hatched as I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art for my Introduction to the Arts of Asia class to research for a paper. The topic was hand scrolls, which have an aesthetic to them that requires observation beyond that of any western painting I’ve seen.

To read a hand scroll properly, you roll it open section by section, right to left. At several meters long, each tends to tell a story, accompanied often by deeper meaning. Many are accompanied with poetry, but the use of motifs and themes allow the artist to tell the story in an abstract fashion. By story, I mean journey, and there is usually a path in the scroll guiding the reader’s eyes through this journey.

For this art paper, we were to observe Qiu Ying’s 清明商河图 or “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” as it is usually translated. We were to compare this Ming Dynasty scroll to Zhang Zeduan’s original of the same name, which was painted during the Song Dynasty. I won’t get into the specifics, though it is clear that Qiu Ying’s is not merely a copy of Zhang Zeduan’s.

To aid my paper, I bought a scaled reprint of the hand scroll at the museum’s bookstore, realizing later that it was in postcard format—fifteen postcards to be exact. Later I realized that this painting, divided into sections by the creases into postcards, being a journey, could be parallel to my journey here.

So I decided to cut apart this scroll replica into the postcards that were on the reverse. Sending them all back to my home in California, I addressed them as such, and stamped them all. As a representation of my journey here in Hong Kong, I’m sending them off from fifteen different post boxes, noting the location and its significance, as well as the date and time at which I sent it.

When I get back home, hopefully all fifteen will have arrived. At that point, I’m going to reattach them back together. This scroll reprint, in postcard/booklet format will then show the journey to the city center of Kaifeng on the front and my journey to Hong Kong on the back.

There are now four weeks of instruction left, so with deadlines looming and a push for more travels to look forward to, I shall resume my studying.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

Shrimp on the Barbie

So as I mentioned earlier, most of my friends here are fellow exchange students as all but a few local students have been cold towards my attempts at friendship. That’s okay though because I have a great group of friends here.

I guess I figured that I’ve been using a lot of “we” recently rather than “I” I should talk about who this “we” really is.

I guess also that you could say it takes a certain personality to be an exchange student. It would seem on the surface that you would have to have an open mind and be prepared to reevaluate much of what you thought was given. You need to take the effort to appreciate the local environment rather than just breezing through it insisting on English only, experience instead of just seeing what’s to be seen.

This is what I thought, but as no arbitrary group of people is perfectly uniform in nature, Unfortunately, I currently hold it in my best interests to hold my tongue, as least in part, in regard to what I would like to say.

More to come after the fact.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.