Saturday, August 27, 2011

Ching Chung Koon Temple and Symphony of Lights at Victoria Harbour


So we finally got a rest from the orientation craziness of the past few days yesterday, which means it was high time for some sightseeing! After meeting up with another exchange student from Sweden (who could speak Cantonese - great!), we took a light rail train a few stops to Ching Chung Koon Temple. The entrance doesn't really look like much - a small gate surrounded by high bushes - but you know there's something special about it when it's surrounded by skyscrapers and high rises.

First thing we notice is how quiet it is - this will make a nice place to get away and relax! So it is a Taoist temple,  which means there are some special buildings. There's a main hall where you bow and present an offering of incense - my friend said that it's a way to pay respect at the temple. There's also rooms and rooms full of small placards, about the size of bookmarks, with the photos and names of the deceased. People come here to present incense and offerings of food (oranges seem to be popular) to them. From classes I've taken at W&J, it also is customary to burn special paper money that the deceased can use in the afterlife (not REAL paper money - it's a special kind made exclusively for this purpose).

Favorite place
There's also room after room of special altars with gorgeous decorations, and a heavy scent of incense wafting through the air. Our favorite place was the rock garden featuring a waterfall and pagoda. The bonsai trees were also impressive - these aren't the small dinky ones they sell at the mall! They're about as thick as me around, haha. I read that this is a relatively new temple as well, dating only to around 1949.





Holy cow, this is ridiculous - in a good way!
After a few hours nap, it was nice to go to the big city - yes, Kowloon and Hong Kong Island! We went in the evening, partly because it's a lot cooler, and mostly because we went to see the Symphony of Lights, the Guinness Book of World Record's official largest permanent light show! The lights are installed at the top and side of buildings on either side of Central HK, and it was amazing to think how long it must have taken to synchronize the lights with the music. We stood with people from around the world taking in the grandness of it all, the lights reflecting on the water as the ferries went back and forth in the Harbour.

Orientation and Student Activity Carnival

Sorry for not writing, this week has been long with four days of orientation! I talked about the first one last time, but the day afterward the local first-year students (including my roommate!) came. These orientations lasted all day, from nearly 8:30am to 7pm or so. Unfortunately, I have to report that most of the orientation lectures were a bit ho-hum, which you could tell by looking around the room at the students with glazed looks in their eyes. Fortunately, during meals we were divided into groups within our hostels, so I had the chance to meet more people living on my floor, which was definitely NOT boring. Also, it was exciting to be in the auditorium with hundreds of students doing their hostel cheers (HALL B O YEAH!!!).

I tried to read it the best I could, haha.
This is when a bit of culture shock came in: this was my first time living in a place where people speak a language I barely understand at all. People are nice and translate what's going on, but I hate making them do that. I hate making them stop enjoying their conversation to cater to me. I'm determined to learn Cantonese; in fact, if you came to my room right now, you'll see all the flashcards I've made this afternoon, haha.

Also, sometimes it's difficult to order at the cafeteria, but I have a plan: I bring a little notepad so I can write down the Chinese names of the dishes! There's another thing, a cultural thing, that took me for surprise: washing your cups and silverware with tea before eating. I was sort of faked out a bit when I saw people pouring their tea, only for them to pour it into their bowl, then placing their cup and chopsticks in it. Afterward, they dumped this used tea into a large container. The look on my face must have been priceless: I never remembered reading anything about that in the guidebooks!!

Delicious fruit dessert after a long and hot day


Finally, we were all rewarded from sitting in the lectures with a student carnival, where we could sign up for clubs! I'm trying to sign up for too many because schoolwork comes first, plus I want time to travel off of campus. I signed up for SSA, which is a group that volunteers in the community with children and the elderly. I also signed up for the choir, and I'd like to find a sport club to join as well.
A DRAGON DANCE club, that's AWESOME!
...there must be over 50 clubs to join here.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Discovering the pleasures of Dim Sum

In other news, I hope to meet my roommate soon, and we had orientation today, where I met lots of Mainland and international exchange students. 
The Office of Mainland and International Programmes (OMIP) took us to the Chinese restaurant on campus, where we had absolutely delicious foods, including dim sum, which are well-known Cantonese dumplings. However, there are a variety of different ones: shrimp, chicken, all sorts of mouth-wateringly delicious things you can imagine can be packed into these succulent dumplings. I originally had dim sum for breakfast and thought it was amazing, so I was excited to find out that we were having it for lunch!


Breakfast
The long one is rice with a kind of gravy wrapped in a rice roll and bamboo leaves(?). There's also a pork ball, and the white one is like a pastry filled with a sweet jam of sorts. 
 Part of lunch
Shrimp and more yummy jam dumplings


In Chinese restaurants, food is served on a lazy susan, so everyone can help themselves
Sweet and sour chicken, some sort of green bean-type veggie, chicken in a sweet corn glaze, and crab and wintermelon soup.


Also learned about a Cantonese(?) custom: when someone pours you tea, you should tap two knuckles on the table twice. This stems from a story about an emperor who was traveling incognito with his followers. When the emperor went to pour tea for his officials, they wondered how they could thank him, as kowtowing would blow his cover. So the two knuckles symbolize legs bowing, from what I understand...more later!

Not all Chinese dialects are created equal...

So yesterday I met some students in my building and we talked in a mix of English and Mandarin, as they were from Mainland China. We all will need to learn to speak Cantonese! It's interesting how I hear some say that Cantonese and Mandarin are 'dialects,' when it seems most of the time the speaker of one can hardly understand the speaker of the other language. Even the writing is different; yes, they even use different Chinese characters!

OK, so some are similar, like the following, which means 'hello' in both C and M ('you good?')
你好
However, they are pronounced differently: C = Néih hóu      M = Nǐ hǎo


Thank you: C = 唔該. M̀h'gōi.   M = 谢谢。 Xièxiè.


To make matters more complicated, Hong Kong (as well as Taiwan) uses traditional characters, while the mainland uses simplified. 


Simplified  会   
 ...and not quite so simple  
did I mention they are pronounced differently, too?




Well, this should be fun!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Hong Kong money - and Shopping!

This is my first full day on campus, after sleeping off the jet lag and sore muscles from carrying my luggage yesterday. I met some other exchange students from the US, South Korea and Russia, and we went shopping at the Fu Tai Shopping Center, just a 10-minute walk from campus.

It was so awkward trying to shop because I had to constantly convert HK dollars into US - luckily I brought the pocket calculator that my mom bought me (thanks mom!)

Here are my 'treasures' from today's shopping:

There are plenty of American brands, and Japanese stores carrying household items, cosmetics, and candies are everywhere! Here are the receipts:


"Wow, all of that cost $85?" Well, remember that it's HK dollars. $1 US = $7.8 HK, so it all was really a little over $10 US. Lunch on campus is usually under $5 US - I'll show you later.

The shopping center was very modern, and the line at the supermarket reminded me of home, but not a fond memory (Walmart lines, *shudder*). There's also a bustling market next to the shopping center with Chinese medicines, live fish, and lots of nifty things, but that's for another day. Right now I'd just like to get settled in.

Orientation is on Monday, so I'll have more to talk about then. Bye for now!

Arrived in Hong Kong!

Hello everyone! So, I just arrived yesterday in Hong Kong to study for a semester at Lingnan Univerity. Lingnan is located in western Hong Kong, in a region called the New Territories. As you can see from the map, Hong Kong is not just a city but a Special Administrative Region of China. Lingnan is located in Tuen Men city.

After a 15-hour flight from Toronto, I arrived at the airport and realized that my two pieces of luggage, while under the weight limit, were extremely huge and difficult to move. I met some other exchange students there, then some Lingnan students came to pick us up, then whisked us away on a bus.

There were two things that were very notable on the way there: how beautiful the mountains are, and how many enormously high apartment high rises there are. I tried to look up at one when I was next to it and became a little dizzy...

I've never stayed in a dorm before, so I suppose I found my room a little small. But the Lingnan campus is a LOT bigger than W&J, and very beautiful, too (will post pics!). Lots of trees and shaded walkways, which is fantastic, because the humidity here takes your breath away.

I woke up at 6am today and went for a morning walk to explore the campus. I've met some more exchange students, from Mainland China and elsewhere, along the way. My Chinese professor will be happy to know that I've already been practicing my Mandarin Chinese with some students here, and I'm excited to learn Cantonese!


A view from the dorm...notice the construction into the beautiful hillside. :(