Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Tongue of Another
I pick up here where I left off from “A Friend of Two,” posted in late August. I had just arrived here and found myself struggling with the lack of English. Honestly, I knew it was to be expected, and honestly, I know I should have tried to pick up some more basic Cantonese before I left.
But as it became readily apparent—I didn’t.
To this effect, I enrolled in Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1, which has, in the first five classes, served to localize my speech more than it had been before. Being an unstandardized, not completely written language, there is debate over how many tones Cantonese does (or should) have.
For those who don’t know much about the Chinese languages (called dialects), they are tonal, which in short means that same syllables pronounced with different pitches in tone (not all of which steady) have the potential to change their meaning.
Having gone to Chinese school (teaching Mandarin) when I was little, I was used to being told about the four tones in Mandarin, five including the neutral tone. With English being the language of my household, I learned the language an auxiliary language (contrary to popular opinion), and had not been able to pronounce understandably until just a few years ago. Now, in words that I know, I can pronounce the tones properly, albeit with an American accent.
In Cantonese, the debate over how many tones exist ranges from as low as six to as high as eleven or twelve, depending on your source. In the Hong Kong variety of Cantonese, there had historically been seven tones, but two consolidated with the recent “lazy generation.” So in my class, we are being taught with six tones, which usually appear as superscript numerals immediately following the syllable that they modify.
Explained in words, the first tone is high, the second is high rising, the third medium, the fourth medium falling, the fifth low falling then rising, and the sixth the lowest. For the vowels and consonant sounds, we use the Jyutping system, which the book claims was chosen for its resemblance to the International Phonetic Alphabet (though I know it could be closer).
So my goal in learning Cantonese, other than for the sake of learning Cantonese, is so that I can get around places earlier and apply such skills to a future professional career.
But like I mention time and time again, my classes here are in English (with varying levels of quality). This would imply that the local students and the Mainland Chinese students speak scholarly English to be able to read scholarly articles and to understand lectures in their entirety.
This leads me into the way that I’ve seen local students function as a reflection of their education. As my cousin told me, the education system, heavily influenced by the British, “teaches them to take orders, but doesn’t promote critical thought.” My mother, who spent part of her childhood in Hong Kong, told me how though they had English classes, they were not effective in method or end result. And according to my own research, Hong Kong schools only teach English to students based on vocational needs.
But this isn’t about English. Locals speak mostly Cantonese to each other here and most can work with Mandarin. However, with English as a co-official language, one would expect the system to make more of an effort to teach English. With Hong Kong seeing itself as “Asia’s world city,” English competence is one way that it keeps its competitiveness—a trait that it’s not maintaining, if it had it in the first place.
The University of Hong Kong purportedly uses English as the medium of communication for all classes (expect foreign language), so it would make sense that the students are competent in English in a scholarly capacity—which brings me back to what my Hong Kong University buddy, a local student, told me.
Apparently, when I called her the morning that she gave me the tour, she said that she was so nervous to be speaking English to me. Don’t get me wrong—I think that she’s a great person and I remain grateful she gave me that tour, but a student shouldn’t be frightened to speak in the language that they’re being instructed in.
Though she represents just one student out of the 20,000 here, thinking that a lot of local students doubt their own English competency helps explain a lot of things. For one thing, local students focus a lot on face, which is based on the Chinese emphasis on harmony in relationships over individuality and non-conformity. This means that if you say “Hi” to a local, you will get a “Hi” back, and little more. I have experienced this on multiple occasions when I attempted to break the ice with my floormates in my hall.
Needless to say all but like two practically gave the cold shoulder, as they did not know me yet, and did not feel comfortable enough with me to be open, which I feel is perfectly understandable. But a friend of mine, who speaks Cantonese (among other languages), finds that the local students warm up to him faster, which, needless to say, is in all likelihood because there is less of a perceivable language barrier.
So in their not responding to my friendly efforts in attempt to save face, they’ve actually lost face in my consciousness (and most exchange students’ sub-consciousness) as they isolate themselves from the exchange students (possibly as well as the Mainland Chinese).
And I’m not trying to be an English imperialist in the opinion. I believe everyone is entitled to the language of his or her choice, with the thought that one should be open when going abroad, especially to a non-English country. So I failed; I assumed that just because English is the language of instruction that English is something most everyone is competent in.
And to this effect, I am attempting the learn Cantonese. A month (one quarter) into my program, I find that by itself, my Cantonese has not improved, which to the contrary my Italian developed rapidly during my two weeks there last summer. This morning, as an example, I asked the minibus to stop in Cantonese, which, while understood, had a highly apparent accent, which even I myself could hear. So I’ve resigned myself to the primary goal of being understood in Cantonese.
But even if I’m understood and I can understand, I face a second dilemma—a dilemma that could be readily solved by speaking English. Since I look like a local despite being rooted 7,000 miles away, a lot of service workers think I’m stupid or slow when I speak to them in Cantonese. The little that I know is slow and heavily accented. When I speak English though, I get great service and people who think that I’m highly educated. In all likelihood, I probably get charged higher prices as well.
So I guess there’s just no winning. A friend of mine here, a Scottish exchange student who doesn’t look like a local, manages to ask the minibus to stop as well. She told me that when she does so, she get stares from both sides of the aisle. The locals look at her for having a funny accent with little appreciation for her efforts to learn the local tongue, and the tourists and ex-pats look at her, wondering what she just said.
So what can be done?
Well, for me, as I’ve said, I hang out mostly with exchange students. Scratch that—only with exchange students. It’s not my choice, as going abroad is, in my opinion, to branch out, especially into the host culture.
As for my Hong Kong University buddy, she informed me that she, as well as many other local students don’t attend lecture, opting just for tutorial (or section), which are often taught in Cantonese if everyone is competent. She told be that the professors speaking English are hard to understand.
So a few weeks ago, at my faculty’s orientation for registering for classes, I raised my hand with a question about tutorials: “My HKU buddy told me that some tutorials are conducted in Cantonese. So how easy would it be to switch tutorials if I need to get out of a Cantonese-language one?”
And the answer, “Well they aren’t supposed to be speaking Cantonese, so if it is in Cantonese and the tutor refuses to teach in English, tell us and we’ll get everything straightened out.”
Alrighty then.
But as it became readily apparent—I didn’t.
To this effect, I enrolled in Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1, which has, in the first five classes, served to localize my speech more than it had been before. Being an unstandardized, not completely written language, there is debate over how many tones Cantonese does (or should) have.
For those who don’t know much about the Chinese languages (called dialects), they are tonal, which in short means that same syllables pronounced with different pitches in tone (not all of which steady) have the potential to change their meaning.
Having gone to Chinese school (teaching Mandarin) when I was little, I was used to being told about the four tones in Mandarin, five including the neutral tone. With English being the language of my household, I learned the language an auxiliary language (contrary to popular opinion), and had not been able to pronounce understandably until just a few years ago. Now, in words that I know, I can pronounce the tones properly, albeit with an American accent.
In Cantonese, the debate over how many tones exist ranges from as low as six to as high as eleven or twelve, depending on your source. In the Hong Kong variety of Cantonese, there had historically been seven tones, but two consolidated with the recent “lazy generation.” So in my class, we are being taught with six tones, which usually appear as superscript numerals immediately following the syllable that they modify.
Explained in words, the first tone is high, the second is high rising, the third medium, the fourth medium falling, the fifth low falling then rising, and the sixth the lowest. For the vowels and consonant sounds, we use the Jyutping system, which the book claims was chosen for its resemblance to the International Phonetic Alphabet (though I know it could be closer).
So my goal in learning Cantonese, other than for the sake of learning Cantonese, is so that I can get around places earlier and apply such skills to a future professional career.
But like I mention time and time again, my classes here are in English (with varying levels of quality). This would imply that the local students and the Mainland Chinese students speak scholarly English to be able to read scholarly articles and to understand lectures in their entirety.
This leads me into the way that I’ve seen local students function as a reflection of their education. As my cousin told me, the education system, heavily influenced by the British, “teaches them to take orders, but doesn’t promote critical thought.” My mother, who spent part of her childhood in Hong Kong, told me how though they had English classes, they were not effective in method or end result. And according to my own research, Hong Kong schools only teach English to students based on vocational needs.
But this isn’t about English. Locals speak mostly Cantonese to each other here and most can work with Mandarin. However, with English as a co-official language, one would expect the system to make more of an effort to teach English. With Hong Kong seeing itself as “Asia’s world city,” English competence is one way that it keeps its competitiveness—a trait that it’s not maintaining, if it had it in the first place.
The University of Hong Kong purportedly uses English as the medium of communication for all classes (expect foreign language), so it would make sense that the students are competent in English in a scholarly capacity—which brings me back to what my Hong Kong University buddy, a local student, told me.
Apparently, when I called her the morning that she gave me the tour, she said that she was so nervous to be speaking English to me. Don’t get me wrong—I think that she’s a great person and I remain grateful she gave me that tour, but a student shouldn’t be frightened to speak in the language that they’re being instructed in.
Though she represents just one student out of the 20,000 here, thinking that a lot of local students doubt their own English competency helps explain a lot of things. For one thing, local students focus a lot on face, which is based on the Chinese emphasis on harmony in relationships over individuality and non-conformity. This means that if you say “Hi” to a local, you will get a “Hi” back, and little more. I have experienced this on multiple occasions when I attempted to break the ice with my floormates in my hall.
Needless to say all but like two practically gave the cold shoulder, as they did not know me yet, and did not feel comfortable enough with me to be open, which I feel is perfectly understandable. But a friend of mine, who speaks Cantonese (among other languages), finds that the local students warm up to him faster, which, needless to say, is in all likelihood because there is less of a perceivable language barrier.
So in their not responding to my friendly efforts in attempt to save face, they’ve actually lost face in my consciousness (and most exchange students’ sub-consciousness) as they isolate themselves from the exchange students (possibly as well as the Mainland Chinese).
And I’m not trying to be an English imperialist in the opinion. I believe everyone is entitled to the language of his or her choice, with the thought that one should be open when going abroad, especially to a non-English country. So I failed; I assumed that just because English is the language of instruction that English is something most everyone is competent in.
And to this effect, I am attempting the learn Cantonese. A month (one quarter) into my program, I find that by itself, my Cantonese has not improved, which to the contrary my Italian developed rapidly during my two weeks there last summer. This morning, as an example, I asked the minibus to stop in Cantonese, which, while understood, had a highly apparent accent, which even I myself could hear. So I’ve resigned myself to the primary goal of being understood in Cantonese.
But even if I’m understood and I can understand, I face a second dilemma—a dilemma that could be readily solved by speaking English. Since I look like a local despite being rooted 7,000 miles away, a lot of service workers think I’m stupid or slow when I speak to them in Cantonese. The little that I know is slow and heavily accented. When I speak English though, I get great service and people who think that I’m highly educated. In all likelihood, I probably get charged higher prices as well.
So I guess there’s just no winning. A friend of mine here, a Scottish exchange student who doesn’t look like a local, manages to ask the minibus to stop as well. She told me that when she does so, she get stares from both sides of the aisle. The locals look at her for having a funny accent with little appreciation for her efforts to learn the local tongue, and the tourists and ex-pats look at her, wondering what she just said.
So what can be done?
Well, for me, as I’ve said, I hang out mostly with exchange students. Scratch that—only with exchange students. It’s not my choice, as going abroad is, in my opinion, to branch out, especially into the host culture.
As for my Hong Kong University buddy, she informed me that she, as well as many other local students don’t attend lecture, opting just for tutorial (or section), which are often taught in Cantonese if everyone is competent. She told be that the professors speaking English are hard to understand.
So a few weeks ago, at my faculty’s orientation for registering for classes, I raised my hand with a question about tutorials: “My HKU buddy told me that some tutorials are conducted in Cantonese. So how easy would it be to switch tutorials if I need to get out of a Cantonese-language one?”
And the answer, “Well they aren’t supposed to be speaking Cantonese, so if it is in Cantonese and the tutor refuses to teach in English, tell us and we’ll get everything straightened out.”
Alrighty then.
Monday, September 21, 2009
What Happens in Macau Stays in Macau, Part 1
(photographs posted most recent first)
And on a sidenote, I've now been here for a full month!
And on a sidenote, I've now been here for a full month!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Four More Stamps: Fabulous Macau
For the first time since I arrived here in Hong Kong, I left the Special Administrative Region to visit Macau, another SAR of the People’s Republic of China. With different immigration schemes and regulation, leaving Hong Kong got me one stamp in my passport, entering and leaving Macau got me two more, and my reentry into Hong Kong got me another large student stamp.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Shopping for Classes, Part 2
The add/drop period for class registration ended September 14. For the Faculty of Social Sciences, September 15 was when we had to turn in a signed finalization of those classes. Though I met both deadlines, making sure that classes will be approved for meeting requirements for general education and my majors and minor has been a little more difficult.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Two Tours and a Weekend
The weekend before last, we were offered two tours of the area: on Saturday was Kowloon and the New Territories; on Sunday was Hong Kong Island. Promoted through the Office of International Student Exchange (OISE) here on campus (the organization that gave us nifty university-branded tote bags as souvenirs), they were organized by a private company that, while good, failed to meet my expectations.
I’ve been on two main tours of this type prior to these: One was a day trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona from Las Vegas, Nevada, via bus, and the other was my two-week tour of China in which my family and I visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.
Day 1
Saturday, we were to be off at 9 a.m. One of the charter buses broke down before leaving, and as a result we didn’t get on the road until 10:30. Though the effects of this setback were not altogether noticeable, they compacted the day. They still took us to all the places on the schedule, giving us a little less time at each place to wander around and get a deeper feel.
The first stop was a bird garden near Mong Kok, a major shopping district in Kowloon. With the exception of a lively parrot, the birds were all small and in cages. Most of the birds were there for sale, along with cages and birdseed. What struck me the most about this bird garden, which I probably would never had visited had I not been directed there was its age—it was gracefully old, and not in the same way that any other building in Hong Kong would be old.
Their bathrooms had pooper stoopers. My mom’s friend, who happens to be a nurse, once told be that anatomically and physiologically speaking, pooper stoopers were more natural (and therefore better) for trying to osmoregulate, for they require the user to step over a hole in the ground and squat.
In my opinion, seeing the dampness of the ground (not sure if it was due to water), those pooper stoopers (a name of my own creation) were true germ spreaders. Beholding them reaffirmed my policy of not letting people put their shoes on my bed.
The Bird Garden was definitely worth going to, and after we walked around the surrounding streets, which had flower shops on them. They had roses along with many of the other standards, but what was in the most abundance were orchids, visible at every shop in every color.
After that was a viewing platform and visitors center for the Tsing Ma Bridge, which while not the most impressive of dual-level suspension bridges, was one of the first to link Lantau Island (home of the new airport and Hong Kong Disneyland) to the rest of Hong Kong. The top level is comprised of automobile traffic and the lower level, which is enclosed, is home to two lines of the MTR (Hong Kong’s subway system).
Also visible from the viewing platform was the Tin Kau Bridge, which, as a self-anchored suspension bridge (more accurately a cable-stayed bridge), I found much more visually appealing.
From there it was on to the Wetlands Park in Hong Kong. It housed one of those kid-oriented conservation-focused museums. This one was particularly focused on swampland, demonstrating its benefits as a buffer to tidal waves and other inclement weather. Out in the park was a good place to take hikes around, but the blasting heat and humidity of the day inhibited any such desires.
For those who don’t know, the territory of Hong Kong SAR is only 25-40% developed. (And my hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, attempts to brag about its 30% open space!) The parts that haven’t been serve as wilderness and often as permanent open space. It’s really quite nice to have such open areas to relax so close to a massively crowded city.
This particular park that we went to sat on the northern border of Hong Kong (with mainland China). As such, you could see the major development of Shenzhen, which is quite visibly built up to that border.
From there, we went to a Taoist temple on the east side of Kowloon. Excluding myself, not having found out about this until after departure, they were providing people with this traditional fortune-telling mechanism. (I’d say game, but it’s not really considered such.) I never found out the name, but to do this, you have a whole bunch of sticks in a cylindrical cup and you shake it in the temple in front of the Taoist gods to find out your luck and or fate. When one falls out, which can take such time, they help you interpret what it means.
In the last stop of the day, we went to the Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill, another district of Kowloon. It had a major garden complex that, minus the tourists, would provide quaintness and serenity until one realized the giant skyscrapers in the background. Otherwise it was a really nice place. I think it was definitely a highlight of the trip.
I went to bed tired. The majority of the group was exhausted. It had been a good day, but the worst part was that some of us had to do it again the day after.
Day 2
These two tours, one day after another, were run by the same Black Castle Tour Company. With three tour buses each day, there were three tour guides. For Saturday, we went on the bus with the guide on summer vacation from PhD studies in the States. His English was quite terrible. Sunday, we decided to try a different tour guide. This time, we got a local woman who had better English and made an attempt at telling jokes. The content was good, the execution average, and the reaction dead. Oh well.
This day was set back a little later. Our first stop was a museum that opened at 10 a.m. on Sundays, so we got onto the buses at 9:30. On one hand, the buses didn’t break down, so we were on time. On the other hand, Starbucks on campus doesn’t open on Sundays, so I was coffee-less unfortunately that day. But that’s beside the point.
The museum we went to was that of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is frequently credited as the founding father of modern China. While interesting, the museum housed few authentic artifacts and the museum’s tour guide simply read off the story boards on the walls.
The next stop was Aberdeen, a fishing village (formerly full of pirates) on the south side of Hong Kong Island, about 10 minutes from my dorm by bus. There we went on boat tours of the bay in what we were told were Sampan (literally “three pieces” of wood), though ours were noticeably more posh than the examples on Wikipedia.
Like many other places in Hong Kong and China, the most notable part of this boat ride was the contrast between new and old that was presented to us. Right next to the large commercial fishing boats were smaller houseboats, that according to the tour guide were dying out as more people preferred living in the local high-rises.
Next was Repulse Bay. Other than being a really nice beach (not littered with trash like the nearby Deep Water Bay Beach), it was notable for its collection of Taoist and Buddhist sculptures, including a Buddha whose tummy has been blackened in the name of good luck.
After was Stanley. I had been to Stanley once before, though I didn’t blog about it. It’s a nice little town (with skyscrapers) on the south side of the island. It’s home to many ex-pats and Stanley Market, which reminds me so far the most of American Chinatowns of anything here.
My favorite parts of Stanley, though, are the Murray House and inhabiting Hong Kong Maritime Museum (which I have not visited) and two temples, one claiming to be the oldest building in Hong Kong and the other with a giant Guan Yin (a Taoist goddess turned Buddhist bodhisattva) statue that looks over the area.
From Stanley, we were off to the Naval Museum on the northeast side of the island. The buildings themselves were built by the British as a lookout for the colony. It had decent exhibitions of the naval history of the Ming and Qing dynasties (the last two) as well as decent views of Victoria Harbor.
With that we were taken back to the university. Not quite as tired as the day before, we went to bed to get up for classes
I’ve been on two main tours of this type prior to these: One was a day trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona from Las Vegas, Nevada, via bus, and the other was my two-week tour of China in which my family and I visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.
Day 1
Saturday, we were to be off at 9 a.m. One of the charter buses broke down before leaving, and as a result we didn’t get on the road until 10:30. Though the effects of this setback were not altogether noticeable, they compacted the day. They still took us to all the places on the schedule, giving us a little less time at each place to wander around and get a deeper feel.
The first stop was a bird garden near Mong Kok, a major shopping district in Kowloon. With the exception of a lively parrot, the birds were all small and in cages. Most of the birds were there for sale, along with cages and birdseed. What struck me the most about this bird garden, which I probably would never had visited had I not been directed there was its age—it was gracefully old, and not in the same way that any other building in Hong Kong would be old.
Their bathrooms had pooper stoopers. My mom’s friend, who happens to be a nurse, once told be that anatomically and physiologically speaking, pooper stoopers were more natural (and therefore better) for trying to osmoregulate, for they require the user to step over a hole in the ground and squat.
In my opinion, seeing the dampness of the ground (not sure if it was due to water), those pooper stoopers (a name of my own creation) were true germ spreaders. Beholding them reaffirmed my policy of not letting people put their shoes on my bed.
The Bird Garden was definitely worth going to, and after we walked around the surrounding streets, which had flower shops on them. They had roses along with many of the other standards, but what was in the most abundance were orchids, visible at every shop in every color.
After that was a viewing platform and visitors center for the Tsing Ma Bridge, which while not the most impressive of dual-level suspension bridges, was one of the first to link Lantau Island (home of the new airport and Hong Kong Disneyland) to the rest of Hong Kong. The top level is comprised of automobile traffic and the lower level, which is enclosed, is home to two lines of the MTR (Hong Kong’s subway system).
Also visible from the viewing platform was the Tin Kau Bridge, which, as a self-anchored suspension bridge (more accurately a cable-stayed bridge), I found much more visually appealing.
From there it was on to the Wetlands Park in Hong Kong. It housed one of those kid-oriented conservation-focused museums. This one was particularly focused on swampland, demonstrating its benefits as a buffer to tidal waves and other inclement weather. Out in the park was a good place to take hikes around, but the blasting heat and humidity of the day inhibited any such desires.
For those who don’t know, the territory of Hong Kong SAR is only 25-40% developed. (And my hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, attempts to brag about its 30% open space!) The parts that haven’t been serve as wilderness and often as permanent open space. It’s really quite nice to have such open areas to relax so close to a massively crowded city.
This particular park that we went to sat on the northern border of Hong Kong (with mainland China). As such, you could see the major development of Shenzhen, which is quite visibly built up to that border.
From there, we went to a Taoist temple on the east side of Kowloon. Excluding myself, not having found out about this until after departure, they were providing people with this traditional fortune-telling mechanism. (I’d say game, but it’s not really considered such.) I never found out the name, but to do this, you have a whole bunch of sticks in a cylindrical cup and you shake it in the temple in front of the Taoist gods to find out your luck and or fate. When one falls out, which can take such time, they help you interpret what it means.
In the last stop of the day, we went to the Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill, another district of Kowloon. It had a major garden complex that, minus the tourists, would provide quaintness and serenity until one realized the giant skyscrapers in the background. Otherwise it was a really nice place. I think it was definitely a highlight of the trip.
I went to bed tired. The majority of the group was exhausted. It had been a good day, but the worst part was that some of us had to do it again the day after.
Day 2
These two tours, one day after another, were run by the same Black Castle Tour Company. With three tour buses each day, there were three tour guides. For Saturday, we went on the bus with the guide on summer vacation from PhD studies in the States. His English was quite terrible. Sunday, we decided to try a different tour guide. This time, we got a local woman who had better English and made an attempt at telling jokes. The content was good, the execution average, and the reaction dead. Oh well.
This day was set back a little later. Our first stop was a museum that opened at 10 a.m. on Sundays, so we got onto the buses at 9:30. On one hand, the buses didn’t break down, so we were on time. On the other hand, Starbucks on campus doesn’t open on Sundays, so I was coffee-less unfortunately that day. But that’s beside the point.
The museum we went to was that of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is frequently credited as the founding father of modern China. While interesting, the museum housed few authentic artifacts and the museum’s tour guide simply read off the story boards on the walls.
The next stop was Aberdeen, a fishing village (formerly full of pirates) on the south side of Hong Kong Island, about 10 minutes from my dorm by bus. There we went on boat tours of the bay in what we were told were Sampan (literally “three pieces” of wood), though ours were noticeably more posh than the examples on Wikipedia.
Like many other places in Hong Kong and China, the most notable part of this boat ride was the contrast between new and old that was presented to us. Right next to the large commercial fishing boats were smaller houseboats, that according to the tour guide were dying out as more people preferred living in the local high-rises.
Next was Repulse Bay. Other than being a really nice beach (not littered with trash like the nearby Deep Water Bay Beach), it was notable for its collection of Taoist and Buddhist sculptures, including a Buddha whose tummy has been blackened in the name of good luck.
After was Stanley. I had been to Stanley once before, though I didn’t blog about it. It’s a nice little town (with skyscrapers) on the south side of the island. It’s home to many ex-pats and Stanley Market, which reminds me so far the most of American Chinatowns of anything here.
My favorite parts of Stanley, though, are the Murray House and inhabiting Hong Kong Maritime Museum (which I have not visited) and two temples, one claiming to be the oldest building in Hong Kong and the other with a giant Guan Yin (a Taoist goddess turned Buddhist bodhisattva) statue that looks over the area.
From Stanley, we were off to the Naval Museum on the northeast side of the island. The buildings themselves were built by the British as a lookout for the colony. It had decent exhibitions of the naval history of the Ming and Qing dynasties (the last two) as well as decent views of Victoria Harbor.
With that we were taken back to the university. Not quite as tired as the day before, we went to bed to get up for classes
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
City LIfe
Being here for two weeks, I have fallen into something of a routine. Living inconveniently far from campus, I find myself taking public transportation to school frequently. The buses that run by my hall are so-called minibuses (小巴) that seat sixteen, standing prohibited.
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Shopping for Classes, Part 1
At UCSD and, as far as I can figure, most American universities, enrollment works in a simple way: you sign up for classes months in advance, before the start of the term, and once the term starts, there is a certain period of time to alter your schedule.
Here at HKU, the university has scheduled out add/drop period for courses to coincide with the first two weeks of classes. This means that shopping for classes, in which we attend say ten classes to choose four or five of them, is a way of life. Though I was warned at the Hong Kong orientation at UCSD last May that this would be the case, actually experiencing it has been quite different.
I hope to sign up for five classes plus Cantonese, and planned to go to eleven classes to see which ones to choose. Out of those eleven, I have decided not to check out two of them. So far I have attended four, all of which I feel I want to take. Because I still have five classes to check out, this creates a problem I like the content of the courses and have become somewhat immune to professors’ individual teaching styles. Whoever it is, I still take extensive notes and attend most every lecture.
Here at HKU, the university has scheduled out add/drop period for courses to coincide with the first two weeks of classes. This means that shopping for classes, in which we attend say ten classes to choose four or five of them, is a way of life. Though I was warned at the Hong Kong orientation at UCSD last May that this would be the case, actually experiencing it has been quite different.
I hope to sign up for five classes plus Cantonese, and planned to go to eleven classes to see which ones to choose. Out of those eleven, I have decided not to check out two of them. So far I have attended four, all of which I feel I want to take. Because I still have five classes to check out, this creates a problem I like the content of the courses and have become somewhat immune to professors’ individual teaching styles. Whoever it is, I still take extensive notes and attend most every lecture.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
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!
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!
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