EIL Intercultural Learning

Tuesday, 11th August, 2009.

After an exhausting day and a half of travelling, we finally arrived in Hong Kong. The first thing that hits you when you walk outside is the heat and humidity. It was 6 o'clock in the evening, but still very hot and though it was only about ten steps from the airport, we were all relieved to get onto the air conditioned bus!

It took about an hour to get to the hotel and we all forgot how tired we were as we looked out the windows, amazed at how tall the buildings were and at how the city just seemed to go on forever. As we arrived in the city centre it was getting dark and the neon lights were coming to life for the evening, the streets still teeming with people. Hong Kong never seems to close for the night, with most shops and markets staying open until at least midnight.

We got to our hotel, checked in and immediately went down to meet the Hong Kong delegates for dinner. Out first meal was great - there were about  nine dishes to choose from and we got our first chance to use chopsticks. The Hong Kong delegates had great fun watching us try to use them! In China, it is common for there to be several dishes at a meal and for everybody to share them, something which suited us very well as we got to try a bit of everything.

After dinner we went for a walk around the hotel to get to know the area. It was about 11 o'clock, but still very hot and you could comfortably walk around in shorts and t-shirt. We visited Sai Young Choi Street, a main shopping street, and the Lady Street market, where you can buy counterfeit clothes, shoes, watches and bags very cheaply. Shoppers are encouraged to haggle, and while I found this a bit strange at the beginning, I got into it by the end of the trip.

Wednesday, 12th August, 2009.

I was a bit jet-lagged and had a bad night's sleep, but this didn't matter as we started our first full day in Hong Kong. In the morning we visited the Hong Kong Museum of History which was very interesting. It traced the history of Hong Kong from the pre-historic period through the city's development as a British colony, right up to the Handover to China in 1997. It also detailed many aspects of Chinese culture and we were lucky to have the Hong Kong delegates there to explain everything to us.

After this we returned to the hotel for the Welcome Lunch. We all dressed up and went to the hotel ballroom where there were some speeches and presentations followed by a buffet lunch. Even though it was a simple ceremony, it was interesting how formal it was compared to similar situations in Ireland.

We then left the hotel for Noah's Ark, a resort which had only opened a few months previously. We were told we would be 'sharing camp', but it turned out that what thay call a campsite is what we call a hostel! Our rooms were on the top of the Ark and the 'deck' was our balcony. We had dinner in the resort, which included cow tongue among the choices. We all tried it, but I don't think many of us will be rushing back for more any time soon! That night we played some games outside and then returned to the hostel where we had a small party in one of the rooms and played cards and other games. These were great fun with a big group and helped us all to get to know each other. 

That night there was a huge storm by Irish standards, but which didn't excite the Hong Kong delegates at all. It was ironic that there was a storm the night we stayed in Noah's Ark, but we all survived!

Thursday, 13th August, 2009.

After a better night's sleep, we got up and spent the morning in the resort. There were interactive exhibits which took us back to when we were kids and we also watched some films in 4D on the story of Noah's Ark and about global warming. We had another big meal for lunch - by this stage we were getting used to the chopsticks and even asking for them when they didn't give them to us - and left the resort for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Here we participated in a discussion on environmental sustainability. It was very interesting and made us all question everything we have been told about the environment - we learned about how much of the waste we recycle is shipped to China resulting in more carbon emissions than sending it to landfill, and that the batteries used in the Toyota Prius involve the mining of dangerous and rare chemicals. We then went on a tour of the campus to view what the university was doing to reduce its own carbon footprint.

It was a nice campus with a lovely view out over the sea as it was built into the hills. This is very common in Hong Kong because the whole territory is very mountaineous and the city has no room for expansion as its population continues to grow because the border with mainland China is set.  

We returned to our hotel in Kowloon and went our for dinner in a famous family-owned restaurant. Here we divided into groups and allowed the Hong Kong delegates to suggest food for us. As usual, they made great recommendations and we loved the food. We then went for a walk around the Temple Street market which contained many traditional Chinese crafts alongside more counterfeit clothes!

Friday, 14th August, 2009.

First up this morning was a visit to Magic Kingdom, a YMCA-funded magic project in a government housing development. The YMCA is a very big charity in Hong Kong and is involved in many different projects, making it similar to the Vincent de Paul in Ireland. Here we were given a special magic performance by the founders of Magic Kingdom, who are very well known in China.  The show was brilliant fun and we were all called up as volunteers for the different tricks. At the end they showed us how to do some simple magic using a metal ring and a chain and we all spent the rest of the trip practising them.

This was our first time to visit Hong Kong Island, which is where most people picture when they think of Hong Kong. It is an island across Victoria Harbour from Kowloon (where our hotel was situated) and is where all the international insurance compnies and banks have their buildings, including HSBC which has its headquarters on the island. After the magic show, we went for another huge lunch of Dim Sum, or traditional Chinese food. We ate in a very famous restaurant which has featured in many films - but we got to skip the queue because we were 'delegates', which we all enjoyed!

The food was amazing. They kept bringing more and more dishes and we struggled to keep up with the choice available. My favourite dish here was a dumpling with meat and soup inside. The trick was to pick them up and put them into your mouth whole so it burst in your mouth, but it is very difficult no matter how good you are with chopsticks. There was soup all over the table as we each failed one after another!

We left the restaurant to get the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak. This is a tram built in the nineteenth century right to the top of Victoria Peak, a hill on Hong Kong Island with views across the whole city. The hill is very steep and there are grooves in the floor of the tram so that the people standing (including myself) don't fall back as it rattles its way up the Peak. In true Hong Kong stlye, the tram arrives right in the middle of a shopping centre built on the top of the Peak.

Some of us went up to the viewing deck on the roof of the shopping centre with excellent views of the city. It is only from here that you can appreciate just how big the city is and how densely packed it is. You can see blocks and blocks of apartments, all of which are about 40 stories high stretching for miles.

After dinner in a restaurant near our hotel we ventured north of Kowloon into the New Territories for a visit to a YMCA centre for the deaf. Here we learned about the day-to-day lives of deaf people and were then shown how to do the alphabet in sign language. We also learned how to sign 'Pretty Woman', which was great craic as we tried to keep up with the song!

From here we went to a YMCA-funded youth centre that opens through the night so that young people have somewhere to go to keep them off the streets. These teenagers, known as night drifters, are not homeless but don't want to return to their homes for various reasons - sometimes it is because the apartments they live in are so small that they never have their own space. In the centre they can learn music, dancing, hair and beauty and help to run a café in the hope that they will gain skills useful for the future. We spent some time on the bus driving around the area learning how to identify night drifters and seeing the work of the centre first-hand.

Saturday, 15th August, 2009.

This day was the hottest and sunniest of the trip, with the temperature in the mid-to-late 30s. We spent most of the day in Ocean Park, a theme park on Hong Kong Island - it's like a mix between Disneyland and Seaworld. The park is divided into two sections with a cable car over the hills between the two. The cable car gives you some lovely views out across Repulse Bay and Stanley as you go over the hills. We spent the morning going on the rollercoasters and visiting the aquariums and after lunch we went to see the four panda enclosures.

The heat was almost unbearable at times and we were all glad to get back to the hotel for a quick shower before dinner. We ate traditional Shanghai food in a restaurant in the upmarket Tsim Sha Shui area of Kowloon. Like with most meals we sat around a circular table and the food was placed in the centre which spun around.

After dinner we walked along the promenade by Victoria Harbour at the very south of Kowloon to look across at Hong Kong Island by night. We saw the Walk of Fame which had plaques for two of Hong Kong's most famous citizens, Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. There was also an Olympic torch from the Beijing Olympics torch relay and there was a benefit concert on for the victims of the recent typhoon in Taiwan.

We got the Star Ferry at 8 o'clock, and were just on time to see the nightly light show put on by the skyscrapers along Victoria Harbour on both the Hong Kong Island and Kowloon sides. The show is synchronised to music and looks spectacular. You can see the neon logos of the companies that occupy the buildings - they are all familiar names like Canon, Philips, HSBC and Samsung. You can also see what is now the tallest building in the city, the International Financial Centre, as well as what will replace is as the tallest when it is finished!

Sunday, 16th August, 2009.

We started the day with a visit to the Golden Bauhinia, a monument to celebrate the Handover of Hong Kong back to China in 1997. This is a very important monument as it symbolises how Hong Kong is in a state of limbo at the moment. While it was officially returned to China in 1997, the Handover began a fifty-year transition period in which the city remains as a 'Special Administrative Region' within China - hence the city's official name, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, or HKSAR.

The city is therefore economically and politically separate from the rest of China in order to protect not only the international investment in this major world city, but also the liberties that Hong Kong's citizens enjoy by living in this little bit of the West in the heart of Asia. However, this will end in 2047 and the genuine answer is that nobody knows what will happen to Hong Kong after this. One clue is available in the fact that the flag of the People's Republic of China flies far higher and more prominently than the HKSAR flag at the Bauhinia - China is clearly letting the world know who's the boss.

When we left the Bauhinia we went for a ride on an old tram through the centre of Hong Kong Island and then got the bus to Stanley, a beach resort not too far from Ocean Park. This is an area very popular with Westerners, so we had trouble finding Chinese food and eventually settled on club sanwiches and burgers for lunch. It felt odd using a knife and fork again after getting used to chopsticks! We then went to the beach for a swim. I have never enjoyed swimming in the sea so much - it was so warm and we spent over an hour swimming around and jumping off a pontoon set up just off shore.

That evening was one of the most enjoyable parts of the exchange - the home visit. Along with Jacqueline and Joyce, I went to Mandy’s home for dinner. We got the metro from the hotel and then a minibus to her apartment in a complex in the New Territories. We were all amazed at how small all of the apartments are in Hong Kong. Space is so rare that only the very rich can afford houses. We had a delicious dinner in her home with her family and we got the opportunity to view and ask questions about ordinary home life in Hong Kong.

After breakfast we took the metro to a bus station to get a bus to the Giant Buddha statue in the mountains of the New Territories. Overall this was disappointing because the whole area was a bit of a tourist trap. While we had a nice vegetarian lunch in the traditional Buddhist restaurant, everything else was very commercial. The statue itself was only built in the 1990s and it had vending machines inside! Beside it there was a ‘street’ of gift shops and there was even a 7 Eleven convenience store.

From here we got another bus to Tai O fishing village. This is a village built on stilts on the coast, and is known as the ‘Venice of Hong Kong’! We went on a boat trip around the village and then out into the sea where we saw pink dolphins swimming in the wild. Later on we went for a walk around the village. It was very interesting to see a traditional fishing village so close to such a large modern city.

We spent the evening in a shopping centre where we had dinner and got the opportunity to do some shopping in the outlets. I tried Korean food for dinner, and had some sushi after, which was very different to the sushi I have tried in Ireland – we were simply given large pieces of completely raw salmon with no rice.

Tuesday, 18th August, 2009.

Our final activity was a visit to a secondary school in Kowloon. The students from the school gave us a presentation about the school system in Hong Kong and then we gave a short description of our education system. We split into groups and were given a tour of the school by the students. I was very impressed by the school - while overall the school was very similar to an Irish one, they had far better facilities, including a video conferencing room which allowed the students to communicate with other schools in mainland China.

After lunch we had the afternoon free to pack and prepare our performances for the Farewell Dinner. Some members of the group played the tin whistle and performed Irish dancing and I read out a poem in Irish. We finished the night with rousing renditions of the Fields of Athenry and the national anthem. It took about an hour to get out of the ballroom because of all the photos we had to take! Once the formalities were out of the way, we all went out to a bar near the hotel and then finished off a brilliant trip with a party in the hotel before getting up bright and early for another long journey home, tired but happy.