香港: A Reflection

Okay, so I lied--I have one more post about our trip to Hong Kong. This really is the last one though, I promise!

I realized that while I have been relating everything we did in Hong Kong, I haven't really actually talked about my personal experience, about what it felt like to be in Hong Kong, and there's so much to say, hence this final post. Think of it as the epilogue to our adventures. Hehe.

Versus Taiwan

View of Taipei from Taipei 101: mountains, greenery, and city

Going from Taiwan to Hong Kong and back to Taiwan again is like a bit of a jolt because of the differences between the two. Now obviously it's a bit silly to compare a little region to a whole country and as I've mostly only been in Taipei and Taichung, those will be my points of reference for comparison. Taiwan and Hong Kong are not entirely different and there are some similarities between the two. For one, both Taiwan and Hong Kong use Traditional Chinese characters for writing as opposed to the simplified characters used in Mainland China (just one more reason to love Hong Kong!). Between Taipei and Taichung, Hong Kong would have to be more similar to Taipei, since both are more metropolitan, with more of a global influence. Like Taipei, Hong Kong has a fair mix of the rural and urban: despite the both of them being metropolitan areas, you can still find a lot of wildlife and greenery amidst the city life. Also the subway in both Taipei and Hong Kong (called MRT (for Mass Rapid Transit) in Taipei and MTR (for Mass Transit Railway) in Hong Kong--confusing isn't it?) are both efficient and convenient (and a lot smoother than New York City subways!). And despite its busy city life, Hong Kong still manages to be as clean and litter-free (both indoors and out mind you) as Taiwan.

View of Hong Kong from the Peak: harbour, mountains, and skyscrapers

In terms of the actual feel of the city however, I would have to say that the Hong Kong vibe is a lot closer to that of New York City's what with the bustling city that never sleeps sort of lifestyle and the busy streets and city set-up. There is even a large shopping center in Causeway Bay named Times Square after the one in New York City. As I mentioned in a previous post however, it's not quite the same (but can there be two cities that are exactly the same?). Plus while there were some areas of Hong Kong that sort of reminded me of some areas of New York City, I wouldn't say that being in Hong Kong is like being in New York. Hong Kong struck me as being quite technologically advanced, what with the moving walkways, computer internet access in the MTRs, the coordinated Symphony of Lights show. I guess in that way, it made it feel a lot faster than New York City.

Hong Kong: Asia's World City (香港 亞洲國際都會)

As I mentioned Hong Kong is deemed "Asia's World City," and, according to the official website, that entails:

• Non-stop intensity 
• Fascinating contrasts between East and West, urban and natural, modern and ancient
• Compact variety in the diversity of experiences offered to visitors and in the ease and speed with which visitors can get around
• Distinct trendiness by adopting and adapting global trends to create a uniquely Hong Kong style in both products and experiences

I think that these points pretty much encapsulate my experience in Hong Kong: intense, fascinating, efficient, and trendy. Perhaps it was the novelty of being in a new place, but I definitely found Hong Kong very intense and exciting, not in an overly stimulated way, but in a can't-wait-to-get-out-there-and-explore kind of way. The contrasts were something that both surprised and fascinated me. I guess I was expecting Hong Kong to be entirely city-like and more similar to New York City with its concrete jungle, but there was a lot more greenery and natural areas than I expected. And while I expected a certain mixture of East and West, I was slightly surprised by how much global influence there was in Hong Kong, either in the people or the businesses or even the street names. 

Going off of that last point, I was surprised by the amount of international visitors in Hong Kong, mostly Caucasians (remember the community of Caucasians comment?) and Southeast Asians. I don't know if it was because it was summer and so there were a lot of people there on vacation or if they actually lived there. It seems that there is large community of Indians living and working in Hong Kong, but I'm not so sure about others. While the Southeast Asians seemed more like they were in Hong Kong vacationing, visiting, and touring, the Caucasians seemed very much at home and at ease like they gathered in bars on a daily basis. A lot of them were in suits though so perhaps they were in Hong Kong on business. It was interesting to me because they were all in this kind of rich neighborhood, hanging out in bars and restaurants that I'm pretty sure were owned or run by Caucasians, mostly in the company of other white people. I hope I'm not coming off as judgmental because I understand being abroad and wanting to be in the company with people who speak the same language or share the same culture but it was almost like this bubble they had created for themselves. Furthering this contrast was the fact that we were mostly passing by this area on the moving walkway--along with a bunch of other Asians, all of us just passing by without entering the bubble.

I guess in part due to the large amount of Caucasian visitors and in part due to Hong Kong's history of being a British colony is why there is such a large English presence in Hong Kong (probably more so due to the latter than the former). A lot of places have names in both Chinese and English (and sometimes the Chinese name is just a transliteration of the English) and a lot of Hong Kongers speak Mandarin and English in addition to Cantonese (but maybe less English in some of the more traditional restaurants and establishments). The train announcements are also trilingual: in Cantonese, English (with a British accent), and Mandarin (with a Taiwanese accent I think). 

On that note, I've never been spoken to in so many different languages before. I've mentioned that on Korean Air (and in Korea in general) I was spoken to in Korean, while on EVA Air (and here in Taiwan) I was spoken to in Mandarin. Being Asian means the locals don't really think twice about what language you might speak. But in Hong Kong, I have been spoken to in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. I think they usually start off in Cantonese but sometimes when they hear me speaking with my roommates in English they might use English too. But as my roommates also throw in a fair amount of Mandarin in their English, sometimes people will speak to us in Mandarin. But in Korea, sometimes people who start off speaking to me in English would continue to use English even if I've responded in Korean, whereas in Hong Kong they usually switch over to Cantonese if I do (or perhaps that is just a testament of how terrible my Korean is).

Cantonese versus Mandarin

I often have non-Chinese friends ask me if there is a difference between written Cantonese and written Mandarin. Both yes and no. No in that there is a Standard Chinese writing system that allows you to understand the writing despite what dialect of Chinese you speak, but yes in that if you were to transcribe spoken Mandarin and spoken Cantonese and compare the two, you would see a lot of differences. For one thing, sometimes the grammar and word order is a little different between the two and for another, there are certain words and phrases (sometimes even characters) that are specific to one dialect or the other. Here is a nice video from YouTubers, Off the Great Wall, which talks a little about the difference between Cantonese and Mandarin:

I think in the case of reading spoken Mandarin versus Cantonese, Cantonese speakers are at an advantage over Mandarin speakers, since Standard Chinese is based off of Mandarin and so spoken Mandarin would still make sense to a Cantonese speaker even if it's not colloquial. So would you actually see any written Cantonese? Well for more formal settings (newspapers, business), you would probably use Standard Chinese but for more informal settings (writing a letter, on advertisements, blogging), you would be more likely to see written Cantonese. It's also a personal preference as I have seen some Hong Kong celebrities on Instagram writing in Standard Chinese, while others write in written Cantonese (while the Hong Kong fans usually comment in written Cantonese). Also because I'm so nice (okay I'm interested too), I kept a lookout of examples of written Cantonese to show you all.

I actually didn't manage to get a picture so I had to find this on Google

望右/左 (mong6 jau6/zo2) - Look right/left
I don't actually know if the use of 望 to mean "look" is exclusively Cantonese, but I have never heard it being used that way in Mandarin (correct me if I'm wrong!), but it was interesting that it was written that way on the streets.


的士 (dik1 si6*2) - Taxi

Another picture that I had to find off Google

If you were expecting the yellow taxis of New York City (although some of them are green now) or even Taiwan, I'm letting you know right now that taxis in Hong Kong are red and white so if you are in need of a taxi, don't go looking for a yellow cab to hail down.
I know for sure that 的士 is an exclusively Cantonese word for "taxi" because the Cantonese pronunciation is in fact based off of the English and if you were to read it in Mandarin (dí shì), it sounds nothing like the English word, "taxi".

士多啤梨 (si6 do1 be1 lei4*2) - Strawberry
If you couldn't tell from the jyupting, this is another one that is based off of the English pronunciation. When I was younger, I used to think that this was just the English pronunciation but with a Chinese accent--I didn't realize that this was actually how "strawberry" was pronounced in Cantonese (likewise cherry, which is 車厘子 ce1 lei4 zi2 is also the actual Cantonese and not English with a Chinese accent--although I guess that's technically what it is).

食好啲 (sik6 hou2 di1) - Eat better
This isn't an actual idiomatic phrase or expression but I took a picture of it because it captured two differences between Cantonese and Mandarin. The first is a difference in character usage. 食, which can be used to mean "to eat" in Cantonese is more commonly used in Mandarin as part of food related words: 食堂 (shítáng) for example is a cafeteria or dining hall, while 食物 (shíwù) means food. 食 in Cantonese is similar to how 吃 in Mandarin might be used, so for example, 食飯 in Cantonese and 吃飯 in Mandarin to mean "to eat" or 好食 in Cantonese and 好吃 in Mandarin to mean delicious.
The second difference I wanted to point out was the last character, 啲, which is an exclusively Cantonese character, usually added after an adjective such as with 好 (good) above as a modifier (similar to how -er is added at the end of adjectives to create adverbs such as faster, louder, fewer). The interesting thing about this character (and some other Cantonese specific characters) is that they don't exist in some input systems (my jyupting input does not in fact have this character and I had to write it out on Google Translate) and so sometimes Latin letters/simple romanizations are used instead, such as D in place of 啲.

香港 or 台灣?

"So do you like Hong Kong better or Taiwan?" I was asked by both my mother and one of my roommates. While I was not actively comparing the two, I have to admit, there were several points during my trip where I thought, "xyz is so much better in Hong Kong/Taiwan." For one thing having grown up in New York City Chinatown which is majority Cantonese people, I'm more accustomed to Cantonese dishes and really missed it while I was in Taiwan (and no I'm not just talking about 點心). I enjoy Taiwanese dishes, but admittedly it's a little hard to get authentic and cheap Cantonese food in Taiwan (I once ordered a 港式蝦較 at a night market in Taipei thinking it was the translucent shrimp dumplings, but it turns out that they were just normal dumplings with a shrimp-meat filling. Such disappointment). For another thing, having grown up hearing a lot more Cantonese than Mandarin (my Cantonese was a lot better than my Mandarin before I started formally learning Mandarin), I feel more familiar hearing Cantonese. Also and you can laugh at me for this statement, but Cantonese has to be my favorite language--there's just something about the way it sounds that I find really nice. I've heard people say that Cantonese sounds harsher than Mandarin, which really surprises me because I've always thought Mandarin sounded harsher. Another thing is that, like I mentioned above and in a previous post, Hong Kong has a very similar atmosphere to New York City, to the point that while I didn't think I was back home, I certainly didn't feel like I was in an unfamiliar place.

Thus far it looks like I prefer Hong Kong a lot more right? I guess for me, being in Hong Kong was a lot like being home without actually being at home and though I profess to love nature (I wanted to live in the mountains, then the forest when I was younger), I think that at heart I'm a city girl--or maybe what I need is that right mix of urban and natural. Yet at the same time, it's hard to compare when the time span I've been in Hong Kong was so short and going somewhere for fun and with friends is different than going somewhere to study or intern by yourself. I wondered to myself if I would have enjoyed Hong Kong so much had I gone by myself or had I been there to study (I did want to study there actually, but it was more logical for me to go to Taiwan to study because of CISLA and my language studies) or if it was the novelty of being in a new place that I enjoyed so much. Honestly I don't know, but I will say that being able to go to Hong Kong with my roommates and friends has been a fantastic experience. I really enjoyed everything that Hong Kong had to offer from the food to the sights to the culture and the people. Hopefully I get the chance to go back to Hong Kong (for longer than just a weekend please!) and explore further (although maybe not in the summer)!

Intern Life and Student Life: Taipei vs. Taichung

So as I mentioned in the previous post, I have moved down from Taipei to Taichung for a summer internship. People are always impressed when I tell them about my internship, but actually the real credit goes to my home university of Connecticut College. You see Conn has what we call "Academic Centers" which are basically, according to the website, "centers for interdisciplinary scholarship, each with a different focus: international studies, the environment, arts and technology, public policy and community action, and the study of race and ethnicity." Basically, being a scholar of one of these centers consists of a senior integrative project (SIP) and a funded summer internship. The senior integrative project is basically an idea you come up with that ties together your major and your center and the summer internship is supposed to be related to your project idea. You apply to be part of a center first semester of your sophomore year and, if you get in, take center-specific classes second semester of your sophomore year. Senior year (after everybody has come back from their internship) is when you either do a senior thesis or complete an independent study.

For the internship, of course you have to find it yourself, but what the centers do is helps you with writing a resumé, personal statement, and cover letter if necessary after which they help you send it to your internship contacts.

As you can probably guess, I am a scholar of the center for international studies, aptly named the Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts, or CISLA.

As it is a center for international studies, CISLA requires that its scholars study a foreign language and complete their funded internship abroad in a country that speaks their studied language.  Since my major is ethnobotany and my language Mandarin, my project has to do with Traditional Chinese medicine and its usage and evolution under different East Asian cultures (namely that of Taiwan's and South Korea's) and alongside western medicine and new technology. As such, my internship is at 立夫中醫藥展示館 (the Lifu Museum of Chinese Medicine) at 中國醫藥大學 (China Medical University) in Taichung City, Taichung 台中 (not to be confused with the China Medical University in Mainland China), where I hope to learn more about Chinese medicine, its history, usage, and evolution.

Because the museum is part of a university, I actually get to live in a student dorm, which is pretty nice in terms of commute and cost. Of course I still have to pay for the room, but it is significantly cheaper than living in a hotel. Thus far, most of my duties consist of administrative duties: welcoming in visitors to the museum, picking up the phone, opening and closing the museum; I also have some translation duties when there are documents or events and I just recently finished helping with a multilingual audio guide for the museum. Also, the museum is trying to undergo a renewal process to be more visitor-friendly, more interactive with audiences, and more multi-lingual, which I have a rather big part in, in terms of brainstorming. Actually this past Thursday and Friday I was part of a bilingual museum tour to four museums in Taipei to help get ideas for how to better Lifu.

台中 Taichung versus 台北 Taipei

So after having lived in 台中市 Taichung City for about three weeks now, of course I'm bound to have noticed some differences compared to 台北市 Taipei City. First off, I would like to say that the life of an intern is a little different from that of a student's. For one thing, I work Mondays to Fridays from 9 am to 5 pm with a two-hour lunch break from 12 pm to 2 pm, meaning that I actually eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner as opposed to just breakfast/brunch and dinner, which I did back at NTU. Also as I don't really have assignments, projects, and studies to keep up on (although I really should continue to study Chinese), I now have free time in the evenings and on weekends. It's almost kind of a strange feeling, to still have to go to work but not have any assignments to do afterwards. Of course, there are some internship-related things that I still have to take care of sometimes after work (either for CISLA or for Lifu) but it's hardly the same as having to complete homework assignments or having to study for tests.

Now in terms of life in the two cities:

• Weather
  Maybe because I am indoors for most of the day but I feel that the weather down here in Taichung is definitely not as hot and humid as it was in Taipei. Yes it is still bright, sunny, hot, and humid, but I don't think to the extent that Taipei was. Moreover, even at night Taipei still feels humid, while in Taichung it actually feels cooler at night. Also it doesn't feel as hot in the dorms here in Taichung--I don't even have to turn on the air conditioning sometimes whereas back in my NTU dorm I would turn on the A/C every day (in the summer).
• Food
  I had friends who told me that food in Taichung is cheaper than in Taipei, which I found a little hard to believe because food is already pretty cheap in Taipei (I pay NT$60 to NT$90 per meal--that is about US$2 to US$3), but it's actually true. I find that I spend about NT$30 to NT$70 per meal--that's about US$1 to US$2.33 per meal. Of course there are some expensive places too, especially for Western, Japanese, Korean food, some of which are comparable to the prices back in Taipei, but for the most part, meals are cheaper.
• Public Transportation
  I have yet to post about the joy that is the Taipei Mass Rail Transit (MRT), but trust me, the subway system is a wonderful, convenient, comfortable mode of transportation in Taipei--on time, clean, smooth, and efficient. Of course there are buses too, but I only took that once or twice when it was absolutely necessary. Here in Taichung, I find myself taking the bus often because well the bus system is a lot more extensive than the metro system. Actually taking the bus isn't too bad (although I still prefer subway any day) and you can still use the EasyCard that is used in Taipei, but best of all, if you travel a distance of less than eight kilometers, the ride is free! In fact I don't think I have had to pay for a single bus ride since I have been in Taichung.
• Mopeds
  I have never seen as much mopeds in my life as I have seen in Taiwan. Everywhere you go, you are bound to encounter a bunch of bikes and motorbikes alongside the cars on the streets. However, I have noticed a lot more mopeds here in Taichung than in Taipei. Furthermore many people just park their motorbikes on the (sometimes) already-narrow sidewalks, meaning that there is no walking room leaving people to walk out on the streets. Hence it is also not uncommon to see people riding their motorbikes on the sidewalks as well.
• Dormitory
  I guess I can't really judge the dorms on the basis of only two dorms, but I will say that the CMU dorm here is quite different from that of Shui Yuan's back at NTU. For one, the rooms here are a quad--in other words, four people to a room--and second, are very compact at that: the beds are high up, with the desk area beneath. Apparently, from what I have heard, this seems to be the norm for college dorms in Taiwan.
  
  Another difference between the dorms (and this one kind of bothers me) is that here, I have to take the trash out to the trash area on the first floor, whereas back at Shui Yuan there were trash rooms on every floor. Now this wouldn't bother me so much were it not for the mosquitoes and giant rats that I have seen down there--I even went back to my room with my trash once because I saw the rats on the stairwell. I also can't look out the windows because the windows are frosted, so not much natural light coming in, not that it will reach my desk under the bed, but still. Other than that, the dorm here isn't too bad. 

L: Shui Yuan Dormitory R: CMU dormitory

• Culture
  The last thing I want to talk about is the culture. Taichung in a way, still retains a bit of that more traditional culture, I guess from not having as much Western influence as Taipei. For one thing, there is a lot more people speaking Taiwanese here than there were in Taipei, especially a lot more kids speaking Taiwanese too and you can also hear a bit of that in the way they speak Mandarin. Also a lot of store owners and people in the street will just speak to students in Taiwanese as well and they will understand (even if they answer in Mandarin). Another thing is that there is much less English speaking here. Don't get me wrong, there are still people who speak fantastic English, but a lot of students and shop owners of smaller places might not be so fluent in English as you would find in Taipei. Also as Taichung is a little more steeped in tradition, you'll also find a lot more squatter toilets (even in department stores) in most places.

I really recommend coming to Taichung if you ever get the chance, just to experience a different side of Taiwan. I like being in Taichung and am glad for the different experience although I have to admit, sometimes I miss being in Taipei. Taichung feels smaller sometimes and to be honest, sometimes I'm not sure what there is to do around here (nor do locals of Taichung, it seems) and although I'm one for taking spontaneous trips on the bus to random stops (which I used to do with the metro back in Taipei) it's not as convenient or easy to find my way back as if I were taking the metro. Still it's nice to see this side of Taiwan. And being in Taichung means shorter commutes to other regions down south, which hopefully I have the chance to visit!