Getting settled in Hong Kong

I’ve now been in Asia for 3 months. After 1 month of backpacking between Singapore and Bangkok, I’ve spent 2 months on exchange at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. I’ll talk about some highlights from Hong Kong and being at HKUST so far, and the many things to come.

Touchdown

The days leading up to my arrival were pretty crazy. I spent about 15 hours traveling between Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand, before taking a really early flight down to Hong Kong.

I felt exhausted to my core. Despite this, I also felt invigorated and excited, for seeing this new place and knowing I would be here for a while. I couldn’t stop smiling on the flight over here. I couldn’t wait to jump out and explore the city.

There was a ton of exchange students arriving at the airport. Soon enough they loaded us into nice charter busses that took us directly to the University.

HKUST Exchange students gathered at the airport

The School

After some orientation activities and meeting a ton of random exchange students (many of which I would never see again throughout the semester), I got to explore the school and get settled into my classes.

The school campus is beautiful. It’s situated on a hill overlooking a bay with a series of islands. Many days have been cloudy, but on a bright sunny day a couple times a week, the views are breathtaking. I can feel the fresh breeze from the ocean blowing into the school, and get sweet views from my room

The courses have not been an overwhelming amount of work, as I was afraid of initially. I am taking 3 Electrical Engineering 4000-level classes and Mandarin Chinese 2nd level. The upper-level classes do not assign that much homework (once every 2-3 weeks), and Chinese is a lot of fun to learn (more on that later). On top of that, all the courses I’m taking will transfer back as pass/fail.

I’m excited I get the chance to take a course on Power Electronics. I personally find this field very exciting and Rice (currently) doesn’t offer any courses on this topic. The professor here is really cool and has a ton of real industry experience designing things. A lot of people don’t think about academics when studying abroad, but it many ways going abroad can even broaden what you learn.

Chinese and China

A major goal for me here was to get more exposure to Chinese culture and learn the language. I began taking first level Mandarin at Rice last semester, and am continuing here with the second level. The intro mandarin courses here at HKUST are much easier than at Rice. They don’t require writing or reading characters, only reading in Pinyin and learning grammar and vocabulary. Rice’s introductory Chinese classes require writing and reading characters.

As soon as I could after arriving in Hong Kong, I went to the Chinese visa office (in fact it was my first time going to the city). The process was really easy and straightforward. A week and a half later I was on a train to Shenzhen. I’ve since then taken a total of 5 weekend trips to China (my passport is now getting full of stamps) into Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Guilin.

Why Chinese?

I’ve always been interested in the Chinese language. How the characters look so foreign and different than western languages, and how different it also sounds. In addition, China’s economy is growing and is becoming a big influence in the world, I thought it would be incredibly useful to learn some Chinese given where the world is heading.

These were my intentions, and they were mostly extrinsic. I was interested in the language intrinsically, but at the same time, I don’t think I would learn a language purely because I found super interesting if it was only spoken on a small island in the middle of nowhere, and had very little real-world use.

However, as I started to learn more and more, I found it to be incredibly fun and exciting. It’s such an interesting language and the process is so much fun. I now feel even more motivated to study and learn. I love trying to spark up conversations with any random person I meet in China.

I see people reading Chinese characters and am incredibly impressed with it. I just stare in amazement in how they can recognize so many characters like that. It motivates me even more to get to a level like that.

I’ll probably write much more posts on my experience learning Chinese since it’s such a big part of my study abroad experience here.

The Country Parks

One of the great things of Hong Kong is the nature around everywhere. This entire place is made up of small islands that are full of adventure. I enjoy doing hikes around different parts of HK with friends and seeing great landscapes.

There’s still so many hikes and parts of Hong Kong I have yet to see. There are many other islands that I haven’t explored yet but hopefully will get to before I leave.

The City

Something crazy like 75% of Hong Kong is green (country parks and rural use). The government owns all of the land and only rents out a teeny 15% portion of it for city development and people to live in. with HK being such a global and international city, lots of people want to come here to look for work and live.

I love that there’s so many country parks and lots of greenery in HK to explore, but that also means that there is 7 million people squeezed into a small space.

The entire housing situation in HK is something I could talk about in another post, but for now, I’ll just say that HK is crowded. going into the city there are people everywhere. Subway stations are full, and so are downtown streets. It feels crowded and it can sometimes feel difficult to get fresh air and see the sky in the city.

View of the city from victoria peak (HK island side)

The food

I am a vegetarian, so I have to look around a bit in order to find suitable food, but so far I’ve been able to manage. HK has great food from all over the world and especially Asia.

Looking forward

I’m not even halfway done with my semester and I still have many things to look forward to and explore in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia.

I’ve noticed many exchange students travel to a country for a weekend to just “check it off” their list, and say they’ve been there. To me, this doesn’t seem particularly interesting. I’d rather spend my time in a place and get to know it more deeply, get to know the people and culture, rather than just scanning its’ capital superficially for photos to post on Instagram (which is also why I don’t have Instagram).

I still haven’t been to every part of Hong Kong, and have that to look forward to. The public transportation is exceptional in HK, but at the same time getting on the underground subway and on the bus it is difficult to really see where you are at and get a good feeling of a place. I know most of the popular MTR subway stations in Hong Kong by name but I can’t say I have even looked around in those areas much. I hope to change this throughout my time here and get a better feel of what the city is like.

I plan on going to San Francisco at the beginning of April for the Shell Eco-Marathon competition, and going to Japan for a week during Easter weekend. Other than that most of my trips will likely consist of places nearby in China or exploring around Hong Kong.

I’m also planning on learning more Chinese. I will probably return to China at least a handful more times to meet new friends and practice more. When the semester at Rice ends, many of my friends will come back home to Mainland China and I hope to have the opportunity to visit them at that time.

As for the summer, I still don’t have a confirmed internship or opportunity lined up. I’m in the interview stage of a Non-Profit in San Francisco known as D-Rev. I’m also trying to obtain funding for going to Peru and installing wind turbines in villages with WindAid. Another option would be coming back to China for 2 months and studying Chinese full-time in Beijing.

 

I don’t know what the summer or the future holds for me. But I can say that after traveling solo for a month around southeast Asia, and going to a completely foreign place, I feel ready and prepared to embrace any new environment I could end up in, for the rest of my life.