Month: June 2012

Some members of my group woke up early Saturday morning for our interview with Samuel Chan, a famous Geography tutor in Hong Kong, and part owner of an education centre that is very popular here. He’s also on the Board of Directors of an elementary school in Tseung Kwan O, so we were able to interview him in one of the rooms of the school that day. Even though Samuel Chan was Katrina’s contact, I ended up interviewing him. My Cantonese is decent, but we had prepared the interview questions in English and when Samuel told us that he would be able to give us more comprehensive answers in Cantonese, I felt nervous for a moment to conduct an interview in Cantonese. Reminded me of how we heard last week of dialects as a very localized product of people who live in the same region and have the same type of speech and behavior. It was my first (that I can reflect on, at least) moment of hesitation and almost a misplacement kind of feeling while in Hong Kong. The interview went well though, even though the air conditioning was really loud in the room. I learned a lot from Samuel. There were so many things about Hong Kong’s education system that I had always perceived to be fact and I guess are all now misconceptions. I was also surprised to learn that private schools are not similar to private schools in Vancouver. It changes how we write our paper because we had originally thought that Hong Kong people chose or preferred private schools in Vancouver because they liked private schools in Hong Kong. I always presumed that Hong Kong schools that I hear about a lot in Vancouver must all be private schools, but as it turns out they’re all government subsidized schools. It’s a much more complicated system, but I guess that’s required because of the huge population of students. It must be hard to control people by neighbourhood as we do in Vancouver’s public school system.

I had Father’s Day dinner with my family on Sunday and then we had our last class lecture on Monday with Dr. Lee Ho Yin. His lecture was very interesting! His powerpoint slides were amazing, even though I see a fair share of snazzy presentations in business school. It’s too bad there was a typhoon warning so we couldn’t go see the places in Wan Chai that Dr. Lee was talking about in his slides. I’m glad Adrian got his slides and shared them with us, maybe I’ll be able to visit the sites he mentioned (in Wan Chai and in Singapore!) after the course is over.

The rest of the week was crammed with transcriptions, translations, research, essay outlining, essay drafting, video editing, and title composing. There was so much that had to be done in SO LITTLE TIME! Our group worked quite well together though, the workload was split between the video and the paper. It was unfortunate that more of us weren’t able to help with the video editing, but it was not a time for the people with no experience to be learning. We already had technical difficulties and it would’ve delayed progress much more if Ewout and Alan were trying to teach us and also ask for our opinion and input for every little thing. We trusted them with the footage and photos of the Yip family (which I had to ask for every day until we finally got them on Thursday!!!) and everything turned out quite well! Likewise, we were entrusted with the research paper, and I hope we didn’t let them down. We did a lot of research (we almost read David Ley’s entire Millionaire Migrants book, which I brought over from Vancouver because I had checked the book out, but I didn’t realize that the due date was late June – Peggy will be bringing it back to Vancouver for me) and there is definitely support for education as a major motivating factor for families who move from Hong Kong to Vancouver. It was an insane experience to live through with people who you were completely unfamiliar with only five weeks ago. Hong Kong was where our group really bonded and had opportunities to spend good and not so good times together, creating lasting memories to each other and to Hong Kong the city. I was exposed to working with more people of different personalities and working styles, and it was an eye opener for me. When we finally presented our project to the class and guests (one of whom was Jerri, a friend of mine from Vancouver; what a crazy coincidence!) it was a very gratifying moment. I also really enjoyed watching the other group’s video. I was always curious about the content of their interviews and it was an intriguing video discussing the definitions of heritage and how people perceive it to be best preserved in Hong Kong and Vancouver, comparatively. We also had a very nice group lunch at Pokka Café afterwards, since Henry needed to fly to Calgary in the late afternoon.

I’m so glad that I took this course this summer. I learned so much more about the topic and honestly, about myself, in the past five weeks than I could ever possibly absorb in a classroom in UBC. This exchange has helped me mature; I’ve grown more independent, responsible, and maybe a little bit neater as well! I’ve never lived in a dorm before, and staying at S.K.Y. Lee was a very new experience, probably the only ‘culture shock’ I suffered from overall. My respect for Henry as a professor is also immense. There is no other person who could have prepped and then brought a class overseas and maintain such a casual and relaxed learning environment with such an intensive project assignment. Wendy also has been a superstar. I don’t know how she can be so organized and give such great advice, all the while sharing her kind and generous smiles. This class will never be forgotten. Thank you!

This week was so packed! Every single day has been extremely long, especially since a lot of us are still fighting jetlag. I didn’t really have jet lag, I just ended up living through really long days because I would wake up unnaturally early (for me). Alyssa, Alan, Christine, Abby, and I were all on the same flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong, and Wendy, Ben, and Joanna arrived a day or two before us so I’ve had lots of company in Hong Kong. Henry arrived on Sunday and then we all went to Tsim Sha Tsui and walked around (it was really really hot) and even found Chungking Mansion.

Hong Kong doesn’t feel very foreign to me. It’s been pretty easy for me to communicate with people and understand conversations around me. I think partly the reason is that I was back quite recently (in December), so I can still remember places that I went to last time I was here, and things haven’t changed since then. Most of my relatives come back somewhat frequently, but if someone who hasn’t been to Hong Kong for over 5 years came back, they would probably find that a lot of things have changed. There are always new shopping centres and new trendy areas and restaurants in Hong Kong. It’s always changing. I definitely don’t feel the culture shock that we’ve been talking about in Vancouver, but that’s to be expected. My mom was born here, after all.

We had class with Paavo on Monday, which started with a walking tour of Sheung Wan, and we also met John Carroll, who says that he leads a U of T exchange program. I think my friend was in it before. It seems like HKU has a lot of summer exchange programs with other universities. It would be really cool if UBC had more of these things. I guess our summer school makes it difficult though. HKU students don’t have summer courses that count for credit like us, so most of them are off campus during the summer months. Peggy and I left the lecture early because she needed to apply for her HKID renewal and I knew the way to the Immigration Office because I went back in December. We still weren’t quite used to the directions to get out of HKU and find the bus stop so we were very rushed in the end and had to run to the building because we were late to her appointment. While we were there, we missed Roger Chan’s lecture too. He was supposed to lecture us on Tuesday but rescheduled.

Some other highlights of our week are the Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Shatin, which is a city in the New Territories, where most of my relatives in Hong Kong live. We also went to Hong Kong Housing Authority offices in Ho Man Tin (next to Ho Man Tin Estates) and saw an interesting exhibit on public housing projects in Hong Kong, especially with models of apartments and complexes in the New Territories. They also had a mini-exhibit on the changing doors and washrooms of the public housing units that are designed by the HKHA’s architects. One of the architects for HKHA also showed us the changing building forms (for periodically different purposes) for public housing projects. I never realized how the shape of a building could either facilitate or inhibit communication and ‘neighbourly’ habits. Especially in a city like Hong Kong, I can see how the building design would be so important and can be an effective way of observing social norms. The next day, we went to the Urban Renewal Authority in Sheung Wan. We heard from a very interesting presenter, Michael Ma, who showed us a lot of the URA’s initiatives in preserving cultural landmarks (but beyond the façade, and more towards the purpose and the understanding of the history of a place or a region or a building). Someone named Wilfred also brought my group and Henry and Wendy to the Central Oasis after the presentation, because the other group was going to interview Michael for their documentary. We went to the escalators that are iconic in Tony Leung and Faye Wong’s part of Chungking Mansion and saw hawker stands that were in the old style as well as in the new style designed by the architect with us at the URA room (I forgot his name…maybe it was Edward?). It was a nice walk around the area because locals own the hawker stalls and they sell a diverse variety of items, from incense to records to fruits, and it was quite lively. But our group was in a hurry to get back to HKU for our own interview with Hayne that day. We ended up having a pretty good interview with Hayne back at school and we went for a late lunch at Triple O’s in Pacific Place in Admiralty. Everyone was satisfied with the taste of Vancouver, and we even met the owner of the Triple O’s chain in Asia! It’s amazing what a small act (taking a photo of the Triple O’s sign) can tell a person about a complete stranger. I guess there are some really defining characteristics of Vancouverites after all!

Like I said, it’s been a really long week. After late lunch with Hayne, our group stayed around Admiralty until we went to a late buffet dinner at the Holiday Inn in Tsim Sha Tsui with my relatives, who were also going to bring us to the fruit market in Yau Ma Tei that late evening. It was a pretty good meal overall at Holiday Inn (the Holiday Inn in Hong Kong is definitely much fancier than what we have in Vancouver), there was even a sashimi bar and a mini Häagen-Dazs freezer. The fruit market was a good time. A lot of fruit that we take for granted in Vancouver is really expensive in Asia. All berries are basically luxury goods. After shopping around, we ended up purchasing a box of mangoes, a box of cherries, and two watermelons. The first time I came to the fruit market was in December, and I couldn’t believe that a fruit market could be so alive at night in Hong Kong. It gets busier as the night progresses, and the people are all very familiar with each other and it’s a place I could get lost in. There’s nothing to compare it to in Vancouver, except maybe the community in the Downtown Eastside, but in a completely different context and gathering purpose.

One more interview tomorrow and then crunch time!!!

This week we started working on our project as a group. It was really exciting to be able to schedule a lot of our interviews this week as it was our last week in Vancouver. Our group had a very busy schedule. Good thing that most interviews would only need between 3-4 people so that we could pick and choose ones that we could go to. I contacted people I knew in the education network in Vancouver, including ones I’ve met through S.U.C.C.E.S.S. such as Maggie Ip and Christine Brodie. Then, because Alyssa and I had gone to a private school and one of our math teachers attended St. George’s in the 80s, we wanted to interview him to ask him about the differences between the private schooling system as well as the student body then compared to now. (We were very intrigued by what Henry had said in class about private schools being for people who couldn’t do well or focus in public schools. That makes sense! That would be why you would need to pay tuition!) And lastly, we found our main characters, the Yip family. The Yip family has known my family for a long time and I remember when they had first moved to Vancouver 10 years ago. At first I had only tried to ask Phyllis or Fiona, the daughters, for an interview. But it became clear that to have the full story, it would be best to interview as many members of the family as possible. Thankfully, my mom helped to convince Mrs. Yip, and Phyllis helped me set up an interview with her dad, who was luckily in town because of Fiona’s recent graduation.

As a class, we also had a field trip on Monday. We met at the McDonald’s in Kerrisdale, when they happened to have some sort of one hour closure, which stuck us inside for a bit. After hearing about the neighbourhood’s history from Henry and Jessica, we took a tour along 41^st Avenue and saw buildings which had fake heritage wall murals and established dates of 1993 in an old-looking font and style. It was also surprising to notice the fake steam clock in Kerrisdale, in front of Shoppers Drug Mart, which I would normally just pass by without a glance. I never realized it was trying to resemble a steam clock, but knowing that it fooled Ewout and Sven made me laugh. The level of effort it seems that Kerrisdale’s planners or community tried to put into making the area seem important to Vancouver’s history was comedic. Maybe it would be more desirable to live in the community if it was a so-called heritage site? It was true that most buildings had an old English feeling (or as Henry would call it, Ye Oldy Englishy) to them. After the field trip, everyone came to my house to watch the Chungking Express. Because it was Katrina’s birthday, our group went to pick up two cakes from Kerrisdale cake shops and sneaked them into my house. My mom also picked up lunch for us and it was fun to eat with everyone again. The movie was disjointed for me because I ran in and out of the room multiple times, but it was a very homegrown movie out of Hong Kong. Many of the movie stars are superstars now, and it was cool to recognize Tony Leung and Faye Wong. I had never been to Chungking Mnasion before, but there was a sense that such an efficient operation (the drug smuggling plan) would only be possible in Hong Kong – at least at the time. the Hong Kong Chinese are known for their ability to find where money can be made, and accomplish just that.

While we had interviews in UBC, Chinatown, people’s houses, and LFA this week, our group also spent a day doing b-roll (facilitation training day) in Vancouver. I needed to attend a facilitation training workshop at S.U.C.C.E.S.S. but I heard from Alyssa and the rest of my group that they had a lot of fun and some pretty nice weather while filming around UBC, Burrard Inlet, and Stanley Park. They even went to the aquarium, because we all knew Calvin wanted to visit it.

I’m really excited to go to Hong Kong tomorrow! Alyssa, Alan, and I are on the same flight.

We started the week off with a welcoming breakfast at the Go Global Lounge (which was a stunning circular theatre with beautiful a beautiful wooden ceiling and doors), meeting the HKU students Katrina and Calvin over a very Canadian Tim Hortons breakfast. It was nice to meet the two HKU students and I was really excited to learn that they were studying such different but interesting disciplines (Landscape Architecture, and Translation). After the breakfast, we met in the board room to talk about possible topics and themes for our group documentary projects. Ones I remember being interested in were Dora’s suggestion of the citizenship of money (why and when would it matter?) and the cultural clash of the real estate investors  and “normal, everyday” Hong Kong immigrants who came and sought after large lot sizes in Vancouver’s west side. Especially because I read Chinese newspaper and magazines often, I was intrigued to do more unveiling research and interviewing in the real estate field; Li Ka Shing and Lee Shau Kee are household names in my family, especially because Li Ka Shing is of Teochow descent, which is where my mom’s side of the family is from.

Afterwards, we all went to Tinseltown (International Village) for our Chinatown/Gastown/Japantown/Strathcona tour. Unfortunately it was drizzling that morning, so we did not get to go to Japantown and didn’t have enough time to go to Strathcona. Strathcona was a neighbourhood I was looking forward to touring most because of my childhood memories in Chinese school there, but there will always be opportunities for me to visit on my own. Instead, after walking down Keefer street and talking about the westernized Chinatown establishments such as Baobei and The Keefer, we all went to Phnom Penh on Georgia Street. I’m so glad we went because I have been craving food from that restaurant for a while. We also managed to drop in while it wasn’t busy, almost at 4pm. It was a funny moment walking into the restaurant and telling the server “16 people please”…

For the next two days, we discussed observations from the Chinatown tour and compared to readings from class. The topics also came up again and we found two areas of focus within our course title of “Identity in a Comparative Context”, looking at both Vancouver and Hong Kong’s cultural identity. Heritage as an abstract and undefined, as well as subjective, term was one major focus, and factors such as education which affect the migration patterns of the Hong Kong Chinese people was another interest of the class. We somehow split into two even groups, with Sven and Ewout splitting up (if they were both in one group, it would have been too stacked!) because of their level of film editing experience. Education was the group that I wanted to learn more about because it was something I witnessed in so many of my friends’ families. I wanted to find out what motivated people to move their family and wealth across a Pacific ocean and in some cases, maintain split families and then have a re-migration back to Hong Kong after children graduate from university overseas (a term coined 回流 in Cantonese). My other group members were the two HKU students, Calvin and Katrina, as well as Alyssa, Peggy, Ewout and Alan.

Our second field trip this week was to Richmond on Friday. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside Aberdeen so early (10am!) but after everyone gathered, we walked over to Parker Place and had delicious and cheap breakfast food. That was another first for me, I was surprised how busy the food court was at that time of day, and the people there weren’t only seniors, there were workers, young couples, and even families. Afterwards, we walked along No. 3 Road to Yaohan Centre. I noticed that much of the mall was still making an effort to retain the original Japanese ‘feel’, with T&T not renaming Osaka, and small Japanese painting shops. It was sad to find that the manga/bookstore was closed though! I remember looking at Doraemon comic books in there when I was much younger. I couldn’t shrug off the phantom emptiness of the mall, I kept wondering how stores were surviving while walking through the upper level retail. Overall, from visting the malls, I could see how Richmond housed a different Chinese crowd than Chinatown. It was a Benz and Lexus filled neighbourhood, with a much younger customer demographic. In a way though, it was more Chinese because many of Chinatown’s streets have been ‘invaded’, so to speak, by the young and hip Vancouver crowd. I visited Pender Street’s Fortune Soundclub recently and it holds a monthly hip hop karaoke event. DJs from Vancouver’s radio stations and many art and cultural geeks flock to the popular event. There is nothing in the club that reminds me that I’m in Chinatown.

Looking forward to more field trips!