Em.'s In & Outs

I have been pondering on this post for a bit now; trying to give out an impression of the cultural differences as I have interpreted it so far, but I find it very tricky as I do not want to make any generalizations or to 'Otherize' people... I'll give it a try, and Jenika, Steph, Yishin, Holly, Stian and others, feel free to object!

The clearest souvenir I have of the training at the Centre for Intercultural Learning is when we played a card game in which nobody was allowed to talk, but we were brought to switch from a table to another, without being able to communicate the rules of the game we were supposed to play (it ended up that everybody got different guidelines!). Applied to the African context, it was easy for me to relate to work-type differences - just think of the need to ''contextualize'' anything for 10 minutes before getting to the point... But here in Hong Kong it's a bit more subtle.

I have been working with two very nice local students on a presentation for a class and I was shocked to see how hard-working they both were. They did a lot of (book) research on our topic, to the extent where we had to cut down whole sections all together because the presentation was going to be 45 min instead of the required 15! I am not sure how that occurs or what was the best way of preventing this, but I guess due to lack of communications the presentation did end up being 45 min... With a 5 pages hand-out rather than 1 page. And with each of my partners presenting ove10 slides per sub-section, all filled with text (I had one slide per section with three bullets!). I think at first it was a little bit frustrating, but after a while I realized it was the point of an exchange; to get to know other ways of doing things. It was definitely a learning experience! And probably the first symptom of culture shock that I got!

There are other things that surprised me in the Land of the Cute! The first thing I found intriguing was the segregation in the dormitories. In addition to having all the international students in the best spots (the local students staying in the basement!!), there is very strict control of inter-gender movement in residence, which is unlike what I have gotten used to in Canada. Girls are allowed in the boys' dorm until midnight, whereas guys can only visit (after signing up) on the week-end, as long as they leave the door of the room open. It took me a little while to understand where that came from and accept it might not be an insensitive sexist treatment, but as Yishin pointed out it is certainly a means of protecting women's privacy in a society in which a girl's chastity and prudity before marriage is very valued (marriage is very valued too, more than I expected!). It could be other things too.

I also noticed that many Hongkies, but especially Singaporians, stick together in large groups of 15-20 people and are very hygiene conscious! Paper masks are for sell at the reception desk of our dorm, and one is expected to wear it if it has a vulgar cold! There is a lot of ''prevention'' advertising in public venues and transportation, advising against anything from the infantile break of intellectual property laws to the dangers associated with not holding the handrail in an escalator! Interesting! Mmmm! (That's another thing; people don't nod or make a guttural sound like in Chad to agree with someone, they just say, ''hum!'')

Even though most local students don't seem to listen to the Smiths (like all my best travel buddies, ironically), a lot of them are fully involved in the institution of karaoké! Entering one is like entering another world, where a group of 4-5 friends can gather around a set of mikes and sushi to sing Janis Joplin or the Backstreet Boys or other Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Thai or Korean singers without anybody disturbing! I am told a lot of University students spend their afternoons doing that; a good stress relief I am told, in a city where pressure is high (check that out if you're not convinced!).

My last point for this post is going to be the cultural games! Horse racing is huge here, but I (somehow!) happen to be more familiar with less-gambling-type, more social-type games! I learned how to play Chinese chess, and I have yet to understand Ma Jong, the most popular game here - it was actually the main plot of a 4h movie that was played on a bus I was in! I was also lucky enough to mingle with some locals at a bar in City One Plaza, a typical residential area in the New Territories (suburbs) with tall apartment buildings, car parks, grocery stores and the like. Besides realizing that the Chinese way of counting with the fingers is different, I found out nobody knows the 'rock-paper-scissor' game or the 'tumb-fight' or the '25 cent' drinking game (that's probably just a saddic Québec thing!), but they had the ''even-odd'' fingers clue game as well as a drinking game called Liars' Dice (which they also have in Pirats of the Carribean II so it's probably not from Hong Kong after all!) in which all players shake up deas secretly, and then everybody has to try to guess what digits showed up globally. Very interesting!

I can't really think of anything else, but this post may be updated from time to time as it unfolds...