Arrival in Hong Kong

Hi, my name is Suzanna and I’m studying Chinese in Hong Kong.

I’m also an aspiring Space Engineer and all around space geek… I really wanted to tell you ‘These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise… etc etc’, but actually I’m just in China, which was definitely fairly alien when I first got here – I couldn’t read the signs, understand the language or find my way around. All this is changing… I’m learning Chinese!

I’ve only been out here a few weeks so I’m going to try to cover the preparation, journey and university in this post for the benefit of those other students coming out soon here, and talk a little bit more about my classes and Hong Kong itself in a later entry. My strategy for this blog is to avoid giving information that is easy to find elsewhere, and provide opinion, impressions and helpful hints for future exchange students.

My journey here started with a vague idea to learn a foreign language while at university,  it was initially  just a hobby and something to balance the heavy maths in my course. I took an evening class in Mandarin as China has recently landed a probe on the moon. I then had the good fortune to meet Cleome and found out that there are these things called International Summer Schools, where you can travel abroad, study a different subject in the summer and it won’t cost a fortune (as you don’t have to pay tuition fees and many countries are cheaper than the UK). I have never been to Asia and only left Europe once, but I came away with a real excitement to do something completely out of my comfort zone – Hong Kong is a place I’d only ever seen in James Bond Films and I didn’t even know where it was on a map.

The administration to go away to a part of a Communist Country (which HK now is) is pretty fearsome, and I’d be lying to say there weren’t moments when I thought:  ‘What am I doing, this is crazy!’ Not being a natural optimist, I spent hours researching insurance, infectious diseases, travel documents, crime rates and visa procedures. I needn’t have bothered, it all has gone to plan, the university staff here are really friendly, and all is well (at least so far).

The flight out was pleasantly comfortable (I had visions of developing DVT in economy class or being arrested at immigration) and I managed to connect with other UK students flying on this flight, so we all arrived together and got a taxi together to the university – which was interesting, the taxi driver couldn’t shut the boot, so just tied it down with a cable and drove off (I was really glad to have a hard-sided suitcase for this) – this is perfectly normal behaviour here. During the flight I also got some great pictures of the plane’s flaps in action (only really of interest if you’re doing Aero I’m afraid) and it was great to see my normal uni course in action.

The first thing you notice when you step off the plane is the heat, it hits you like you’ve stepped into an oven. Luckily almost every building is air conditioned, so if you’ve got an ounce of self-preservation you don’t stand in the sun too much, but more about that later. The jet lag wasn’t too bad, but I got there a few days early before classes start so I had time to recover. On a Sunday night I had to join a group going into town for food, because the canteen shut early and so I made some new friends over my first Chinese meal in HK.

At CUHK (Chinese University of Hong Kong) we are all staying at Lee Woo Sing College, which is brand new, and very high tech, but also has only one lift for a 12 storey block and you take your own toilet paper to the loo – Things are different here!  The room is shared with my roomie from Australia – the room is really high quality and better than my Connaught one, but is shared between two people. It has a fridge and air con, which is necessary, as otherwise you get too hot. The wifi is a bit iffy so I’d recommend bringing a network cable. The room also has mosquito nets on the window which help keep the bugs out, which also appears essential as this is a jungle climate. The College has a pretty good canteen, where you choose what you want and they cook it for you – mostly it involves rice, but you can order western food but it is comparatively expensive and sometimes not quite what you were expecting, so best left for the day when you really need something familiar. Chopsticks are used in almost every meal here, so start practising!

When most people think of Hong Kong, they often imagine Cyberpunk cityscapes and concrete jungles. CUHK is not like this. It is literally built on the side of a small mountain with thick undergrowth interspersed with tower blocks. As a result, getting to class is like playing an 80s computer game, getting in a lift to go up and then walking to another lift to go down, this is done in order to avoid having to walk too far uphill. Since we’re in Monsoon season, the sun is either blazing brightly and it’s really hot, or it rains torrents and is often still really hot, so most people don’t walk very far and there is a bus to classes. On arrival at CUHK we were given umbrellas on arrival to protect us from both the sun and the rain. It no longer surprises me to see people with an umbrella open in blazing sunshine! The recommended walking route to class has three lift journeys of ten storeys each as part of it – it is really quite strange to someone from the UK. The views however are spectacular and we can see out over the harbour every day, which is beautiful. The campus is very green and covered in vegetation, which also means insects! Apparently there may be a Typhoon this week, which could be interesting… (Typhoon = Hurricane).

Everybody here is really friendly. There are many mainland Chinese students here as well as international students, which means some really interesting conversations and exposure to other cultures. The medical care seems good which the student visa covers (a friend got bitten and needed to get a prescription from the university doctor – this was free, someone else got their vaccinations done here no problem).

If anyone coming to CUHK has any burning questions please ask me, either on here or by my So’ton email and I’ll try to answer them – I still have nearly six more exciting weeks before returning to Soton and getting ready for freshers (I’m president of SUSF the Southampton Spaceflight Society – join it’s awesome, we send things to space!)

Til next time!

Suzanna