Hist 482 Journal #5

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!