By Khadija Azhar and Luisa Wan
Though we were well-aware of Dr. Otto Heim’s reputation as a passionate educator, it was only when we worked with him as teaching assistants that we truly understood the depth of his commitment to the craft. In the past few semesters, we not only had literal front-row seats to Dr. Heim’s fascinating lectures b...
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By Jisu Bang
Happy Lunar New Year! For those reading this, I wish you all the best for the Year of the Dragon. During this time of year, millions of people around the world get excited for one of the biggest annual festivals – the Lunar New Year. But how much do we actually know about the Lunar New Year? For example, what does...
by Ruyu Yan
In Martin Buber’s way of thinking, the minimal unit to discuss human existence is two: One steps into being in one’s relation to another. The presence of others is essential to our experience of the world. In one’s awareness, the existence of other persons is accompanied by a sense of distance: between oneself and the...
by Jisu Bang
It is that time, again, when we find ourselves approaching the end of the current year and eagerly anticipating the arrival of the next. Now is therefore an opportune moment for self-reflection and the setting of new goals and resolutions.
The story I want to tell takes us back to last September. It was a typical Sunday nigh...
Rajesh Panhathodi is a soon-to-be MPhil graduate in the School of English. His research focuses on the depictions of transnational migration from India to the Middle East in cartoons/comics. In his recently-submitted thesis, Rajesh explores the themes of transnationalism, identity, and the complex interplay of emotions within the context of co...
Last month, the Coalition of English Departments in Asia (COEDA) held its sixth annual conference at the University of Hong Kong. This intellectual collaboration brought together faculty members and graduate students from English departments of top universities in East Asia, including Seoul National University, National University of Singapore...
Jisu Bang is a second-year MPhil candidate in the School of English, whose research interests lie in legal interpretation, the First Amendment, and the philosophy of rights. Jisu explores the textual ambiguity that arises from interpretations of legal terms. Currently, his project centers around the legal conflict between religious freedom and...
by Jisu Bang and Tingcong Lin
Could you tell us about your area of research?
I am currently working on the history of linguistics in relation to Aryan, and the impact of linguistics on India. Although I’m not an India specialist, I think it’s actually the most fascinating country in the world to study this topic. Linguistics – thinking...
by Shameera Nair Lin
Before starting my first year as an MPhil candidate, I made an active vow to myself, where I sought to document as many memories as possible. When I made such a promise, of course, I had no idea any of these photos would be seen by an audience beyond my Instagram and Twitter followers. In a way, the very quotidian nature of...
by Tingcong Lin
The School regularly organizes professionalization workshops, in which faculty members are invited to give talks on career-enhancement skills for postgraduate students. On May 10th, 2023, Dr. Anjuli Gunaratne was invited to give a talk on “Applying to and presenting at conferences.” Dr. Gunaratne has extensive experience of ...
Felix Chow is a first-year MPhil candidate in the School of English, whose project is an attempt at negotiating contemporary Hong Kong poetics. Apart from his work as a graduate researcher, Felix is a prolific presence on the Hong Kong poetry scene, where he assists in co-organising the monthly poetry event “OutLoud” alongside publishing p...
Reflections at Cloud Gate (aka the Bean) in Chicago
by Luisa Wan
As I was scrambling to put together my paper for the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association, I made a casual promise to my friend and the amazing editor of this magazine, Shameera Nair Lin, that I would come back with a reflection for them.&...
Dr. Sinead Kwok's office desk.Photo credit: Dr. Sinead Kwok
by Jisu Bang and Tingcong Lin
Sinead Kwok is an early career researcher whose research interests lie in the philosophy of language and communication, the history of linguistics, semiology and semiotics, as well as translation. After obtaining a PhD, which explores Western translatio...
Photo credit: Shameera Nair Lin
by Shameera Nair Lin
The story begins in the early nineties when my parents met at a hash run. A colonial-era tradition originating in Kuala Lumpur all the way back to the 1930s – which perhaps makes my current work as a postcolonial literary researcher even more crucial – hashing is a derivative of hare &...
by Tingcong Lin
The School of English research seminar series is a significant event for the School, an occasion when faculty and research postgraduate students gather to share and discuss their work, and sometimes to hear invited speakers (https://english.hku.hk/event/Seminar_Series/2022-2023/First_Semester). In the postgraduat...
Photo credit: Jisu Bang
by Jisu Bang
Fiery speech, loud and hearty chants, stringent seniority system, a-week-long orientation for first year students, excessive demands for hall activities contributions. These features of HKU hall life often seem to intimidate non-local students who “reside” in halls provided by HKU, but who don’t per...
Photo: Jeremy Yap/Unsplash
by Jisu Bang
In the past few years, a dramatic shift has occurred in the global film industry. Instead of Hollywood movies, many notable Korean films have become what we might label ‘mainstream’. Consider Parasite, receiving four different awards at the 2019 Academy Awards. It could be argued that Korean motio...
by Shameera Nair Lin & Tingcong Lin
1. Tell us more about your work at HKU.
I’m a full-time lecturer at HKU, so I’m teaching four courses this year, including a capstone course (“Imaginary Geographies: The Art of Writing Place,” “Imagining Asia,” “World Literature” and the MAES Capstone). While I am...
by Jisu Bang
David Edmonds is a sociolinguist, specializing in social interaction and interpersonal communication. He currently focuses on healthcare communication, with a special focus on interactions between doctors and patients in different medical settings. David obtained his PhD from CUHK in 2020, after receiving his MSc and BSc from V...
Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash
by Stephanie Ng
“You must have the best self-care routine,” my friend remarked upon learning that I was pursuing a PhD in the field of psychology.
This is a common assumption: the idea that our professions seamlessly translate into practical skills in daily life. Doctors are expected to be in excellen...
By Wan Lok Yee Luisa
Meme-worthy brother-sister dynamic
In particularly stressful times, just encountering a shop cat in the neighbourhood is enough to make my day. For many, spotting shop cats, or snapping a picture of them doing something silly, has become a way to keep spirits up in Hong Kong these days. In the myriad of Facebook communit...
By Lok Hang Vincent Chu
Nearing the turn of the millennium, Hong Kong cinema saw an exodus of talent, one stream moving northwards to the Chinese market and another moving across the Pacific Ocean to Hollywood. It marked the end of three glorious decades when the local movie industry was known as the Hollywood of the Far East.
Despite co...
By Khadija Azhar
I don’t enjoy being visible. The vulnerability in being seen, in taking up space among other people, feels unnerving. My friends think that’s irrational, and I agree; strangers on the streets have places to be, and things to do. They’re probably not looking at me.
Funnily enough though, it’s not the fact of being loo...
By Khadija Azhar, Lok Hang Vincent Chu, and Rajesh Panhathodi
Sanaz Fotouhi was born in Iran soon after the revolution, during the Iran-Iraq war. Her father’s job as a banker took her and her family to many countries before she landed in Australia. Sanaz holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong. The...
By Lok Hang Vincent Chu
‘All animals are equal but some…’ we know how that quote goes. Opportunities for theatre participation have never been equal in Hong Kong, but such privileges have been made clearer during lockdowns. Just as we have moved meetings and work online, theatre groups have also migrated their performances online and cond...
By Anneliese Ng and Tingcong Lin
We are happy to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Jessica Valdez, about the Nineteenth-Century Research Cluster she established, her interest in interdisciplinary research, and her memorable experiences at the School of English, HKU.
Jessica founded the Nineteenth-Century Research Cluster in 2020 to encou...
By Khadija Azhar, Lok Hang Vincent Chu, and Rajesh Panhathodi
Hanwool Choe is a discourse analyst who focuses on digital discourse, multimodal interaction, food discourse, and life stories. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Georgetown University in Washington D.C., U.S.A. in 2020. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship (2013-2015) and...
By Tingcong Lin
Last summer, I participated in the 2021 HKU Summer Research Programme and was awarded a conditional offer for the HKU Presidential PhD Scholarship at the end of it. I would like to share my experience for the Alumni Magazine.
After selection and enrollment, the Programme provided the participants with eight weeks of intense r...
By Khadija Azhar, Lok Hang Vincent Chu, and Rajesh Panhathodi
Adam Jaworski obtained his MA (1979), PhD (1985), and DPhil (1991) in English sociolinguistics from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, where he taught as Assistant Professor until 1991. Between 1991–1992 he was Lecturer at the Department of Applied Linguistics at Birkbeck, Univer...
By Khadija Azhar
At the tail-end of what has been a particularly long winter in Hong Kong, there is an uncomfortable silence hanging over the city. Yesterday, stepping out into the heart of Central, I almost felt accosted by the pervasive stillness, disturbed only by the spattering of raindrops on the pavement. Threads of rain wove the city int...
By Anneliese Ng
*The interview was conducted during the 20/21 academic year
Formerly a student of the HKU-KCL joint PhD programme, Jackie is now an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of English. Having passed her PhD with flying colours in the summer of 2020, Jackie is now teaching on our MA programme. I talked to Jackie about her new...
By WU Tong
Sixteen years after his first science-fiction-like novel Never Let Me Go (2005) was published, Kazuo Ishiguro revisits the future to produce Klara and the Sun (2021). Many things have changed during those sixteen years; the bland monologue of his latest protagonist evokes a sense of familiarity, and soon, readers find something new i...
By Khadija Azhar, Lok Hang Vincent Chu, and Rajesh Panhathodi
Claire Gullander-Drolet earned her PhD in English from Brown University in 2019 and was a visiting assistant professor at Clark University during the 2019-2020 academic year. Her writings have appeared in The Journal of Transnational American Studies, Resilience: A Journal of the Env...
By Khadija Azhar, Lok Hang Vincent Chu, and Rajesh Panhathodi
Anjuli Gunaratne grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka and received her Ph.D. in English and the Interdisciplinary Humanities at Princeton University. She has held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Hong Kong’s Society of Fellows in the Humanities (2018-2020) and at Brown U...
By Midas Fridas
How should we understand the behavior of a (military) general who purposely orders his army to give up the geographical advantage of a defensive position (which effectively blocks the enemy troops from landing), and instead allows the full force of the foe to unload and assemble in an open field? Is it because the general has go...
by Shellie Audsley
Just as my little platter of succulents sat snuggly back into the box in which I carried it to the postgraduate office, I turned and saw—through the closing door—a white suitcase rolling quickly down the long aisle. Perhaps as heavy with books as my own tote, it belonged to a PhD student from another School, whom I surmis...
Dr Nicholas Luke joined the faculty of the School of English this year as an Assistant Professor. He holds a DPhil and an MSt in English Literature from The University of Oxford, and degrees in Law and Arts from the University of Queensland. His first book, published with the Cambridge University Press and titled Shakespearean Arrivals: The Birth o...
by Kwok Man Ka Sinead
Featuring conversations with Prof. Christopher Hutton, Dr. Adrian Pablé, Dr. Jaspal Singh, Jasper Wu and Nina Fang
Situated in the School of English at HKU is a strand of studies that has often slipped below the radar – integrationism (integrational linguistics). It is never easy to summarize this strand in one wo...
by Andy Hui, Gloria Dou
If you live in Hong Kong, Lamma Island is a place you have definitely heard of. With its nice scenery and easy trails, it’s a popular destination for hikers. Situated off the southwest of Hong Kong Island and occupying an area of 13.55km2, Lamma Island is home to 6000-7000 Hong Kongers, and is the fourth biggest island in...
K.S.
The following is based on an interview I had with a friend of mine. He has agreed to sharing his story here, on the premise that not even our closest friends can recognize it is him. Therefore, his name and many of the details have been altered to protect his privacy. But during the process of my writing, I altered everything through my cinem...
by Simon Whitaker
Participants at the close of proceedings on Saturday 5th October
HKU hosted the 2nd Conference of the Coalition of English Departments in Asia on October 4th-5th of this year, after the successful first conference in Seoul at Seoul National University in October of 2018. The aims of this coalition are various, involving all poss...
by Juan Zhong
A new series of professionalisation colloquia has been launched this year. For each, a member of the School or a visiting scholar will be invited to give a talk on professionalisation skills for postgraduate students. The first talk was given by Dr. Brian King, a critical sociolinguist from the School, who has a number of publications...
by John Scott Daly
Daniel Weston read English Language and Literature for his BA at the University of Oxford and obtained his MPhil and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge. Prior to taking up a position at HKU, he was employed at Birkbeck, University of London; Portsmouth University; and, latterly, at the Norwegian University of Sci...
by Dave Kenneth Cayado
I first visited the University of Hong Kong back in 2017 to meet some of the Filipino scholars who are already studying here. At that time, I was still a few months away from finishing my UG studies but the aspiring academic in me was already thinking of where I could do my postgraduate degree. Despite having a clear vision o...
by Scott Xuekun Liu
Longhu Shan (Mount Dragon and Tiger) is a popular place to hike and see Hong Kong’s beautiful scenery near the HKU campus. Zhengpeng Lou, in his 2018 feature article, introduced us to a trail he described as ‘treacherous’, where one can start from Longhu Shan to Mount High West to see the marvelous sunset and cloud sea. I ...
by Juan Zhong
The Seminar Series is of great significance for the School as it gathers visiting scholars and School members to share their latest research. Last month, MPhil students Natalie Mo and Anneliese Ng, and PhD candidate John Scott Daly, each gave a talk on their research. After the seminar, they kindly accepted this interview to share the...
by Monirul Huq
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
– T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915)
“Is it an extension of the Winter, or the beginning of Autumn, or by any chance a makeshift rainy season?” Clouds were slowly crawling over the tree tops ...
Interviewed by John Scott Daly
Professor Julia Kuehn has postgraduate degrees from the Universities of Oxford, Bonn and London, and also completed the Habilitation at the University of Bamberg. Her research interests lie in Victorian literature and culture, travel writing (related to China) and critical theory. She is currently Head of th...
by Natalie Mo
The sea witch had lied to her.
She had promised that by the third sunset, if the prince had not fallen in love with Ariela, she would turn into sea foam, returning to the ocean that birthed her. But when she cast herself in the sea, instead her borrowed legs had split into four, scales spreading across her skin like a disease. When A...
Interviewed by Eric Yin Liu
Could you please tell me about your academic background?
I did my PhD in New Zealand, where I focused on language use in sexuality education classrooms. I found a secondary school teacher who was willing to let me come into the classroom, record sessions and do ethnographic research. Before that, my Master’s dis...
by Wilson Chik
The space in room 7.45 is reconfigured: although the rectangular tables placed in a U-shape and used for seminars are present, now – right down the center – a passageway opens. For three days, this spatial configuration becomes an activated place, charged with different histories as participants and presenters from as far as Hawa...
Interviewed by Giulia Usai
After earning an M.A. and a Ph.D. from HKU, Carmen Tomfohrde has become part of the HKU Centre for the Humanities and Medicine. In this interview, she shares her experience as former HKU student, gives some advice to current MPhils and PhDs, and recounts the steps of her research and career path, which has ta...
by Anneliese Ng
I am very grateful for the travel support by the University Research Committee (URC), which enabled me to attend the Victorians Institute’s 2018 conference held in Asheville, North Carolina on November 9-10. At one stroke, three of my dreams came true: it was my first Victorian conference, my first conference outside Asia, and my ...
Interviewed by Andre Theng
Thursday afternoons are something of a special time at the School of English: it’s the one time a week we gather for our weekly seminar series where we get the opportunity to hear from School members and visiting scholars on their latest research. This year, we have Dr. Anya Adair in charge of putting these sessions tog...
Interviewed by Vincent Tse
Dr. Ricky Chan is Assistant Professor at the HKU School of English. He obtained a BA&BEd double degree and an MPhil from HKU, and another MPhil and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Here, he discusses his studies and research journey, shares his UK teaching experience and gives some advice to (potential) researc...
Interviewed by Nicky Runge
Could you tell me a little bit about your research? How did you start out, and how did you get where you are now?
I did my BA and MA at Uppsala University and obtained my PhD at Stockholm University in the Centre for Research on Bilingualism. This was also where I stayed and did research for my Postdoc. As for my r...
Interviewed by Simon Whitaker
Clara Dawson, Visiting Professor from the University of Manchester, discusses poetry as a window into the nineteenth century
What drew you to the poetry of the Long Nineteenth Century?
I think for our own culture poetry occupies a very marginal role, but in the nineteenth century it was hugely import...
Interviewed by Jackie Militello
Harriet Hulme, of the HKU Society of Fellows in the Humanities, talks about her new book, Hong Kong, and her next project
Interviewer: Your forthcoming book, Ethics and the Aesthetics of Translation (UCL Press), sounds like an extension of your dissertation research. I'd be interested in hearing how you adap...
12-10-2018 : Aubade
by Gloria Dou
Attente à la fenêtre by Marcel Rieder
Sunlight through the window
pane, through the flora-embroidered
sheer curtain, upon the window
sill, upon the wooden
desk and chair, upon the
roses in the glass vase whose flamboyance
needs to be awakened by fresh
water, upon the sky blue
bedsheet and the visage
that just bids farewell to
nos...
interviewed by Sean P. Smith
Dr. Jaspal Singh joined the HKU School of English in August 2018 as an Assistant Professor of sociolinguistics. Here, he discusses how the field of sociolinguistics needs to focus more on the body, his research on hip hop and dance in India, and his reflections on how academic work can be discussed with research partici...
Anson Chan (BA HKU)
Email: ansonchan94@gmail.com
The School of English at HKU offers a diverse range of courses related to English linguistics and literature. The thing I like most about the undergraduate curriculum is that it recognises the importance of viewing English in a global and interdisciplinary context and provides multidisciplinary cours...
Edgar, Zhengpeng Luo
People often ask me: ‘What do you like most about studying in Hong Kong?’. My answer to this question is: undoubtedly the perfect integration of nature and the city. Coming from a remote area with endless mountain ranges in Southwest China, I have developed a keen interest in nature exploration since childhood. Before I cam...
Kelvin Wong
The airport express to Taipei city passed through a valley. The windows on both sides were filled with different shades of green. There were acacia trees, the only kind I recognised, with pinnate leaves, tipped with tiny yellow flowers. This species is commonly used for forestation and can easily be found in country parks and around res...
By Olivia Xu
I attended my first academic conference in Florence, Italy in May last year. It was the supernumerary NYU/Purdue University NAVSA/AVSA conference – NAVSA stands for North America Victorian Studies Association, the largest academic association of Victorian literature studies in North America. Due to its location in Florence, Italy, th...
by Sean P. Smith
Tonal languages are intimidating. Infinitesimal variations in sound can encode entirely different meanings, posing to the Indo-European native a puzzle about as inviting as the Cretan labyrinth. The imperfectly inflected vowel is always lurking just around the corner, threatening to devour the novice speaker in a feast of incompreh...
By Aaron Anfinson
Last summer, my partner and I were fortunate enough to receive funding to present on a recently published article. The conference, however, was to be my first presentation outside of an explicit disciplinary focus on sociolinguistics that I had just been starting to get acquainted with in the School of English. It was an inte...
By Giulia Usai
This month, we bid farewell to Kitty Mak, School of English office manager, who has recently accepted an offer as Senior Manager in Human Resources in the Faculty of Education. During the years spent working in the School office, she has collected many precious memories, made long-lasting friendships and efficiently coordinated th...
by John Scott Daly
Dr. des. Nicole Eberle is a temporary assistant professor with the School of English at HKU. She completed her PhD studies at The University of Zurich, in Switzerland. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, language variation and change, contact linguistics, lesser-known varieties of English, English varieties in t...
by Billy Poon
I first came across the Eurovision Song Contest back in 2010 when I was looking for new genres of music apart from the ones I used to listen to all the time. Ever since, I have been quite involved in the Eurovision fan community and various blogging platforms. Essentially, the Eurovision song contest is an annual competition with eac...
by Anneliese Ng
This semester saw a couple of new faces among our academic staff, one of which was Dr. Anya Adair.
Holding a BA & LLB from the University of Melbourne, and graduate degrees in English from Melbourne, Oxford and Yale, Dr. Adair researches medieval English literature, as well as pre-modern English law and legal culture. When...
following suit by wilson chik
Published on: February 15, 2018 < Back >
by Vincent Tse
“Long time no see” (好耐冇見; Cantonese pinyin: hou2 noi6 mou5 gin3) and “add oil” (加油; Cantonese pinyin: gaa1 jau2) have become well-known Chinglish terms, which are probably used comfortably and frequently among certain English-speaking communities around the world. To some people, terms like Chinglish, Hong Kong E...
By Natalie Mo
When the prince finally tracked down the owner of the mysterious glass slipper, the whole kingdom rejoiced.
All except the king and queen, of course. They’d condoned the silly search, but never actually expected anything to come out of it. After all, what were the odds the shoe coul...
By Jackie Militello, 3rd year PhD candidate
This month we are introducing Harriet Hulme, from The Society of Fellows in the Humanities: "a prestigious new initiative that attracts exceptional, early-career, post-doctoral scholars from around the world to the University of Hong Kong." (You can read more about this new program here http://ar...
By Andre Joseph Theng
There is a new face in Professor Douglas Kerr’s former office, and he is none other than Assistant Professor Brandon Chua who recently joined the School this academic year. Originally from Singapore, he has spent time in the United Kingdom and more recently, in Australia before coming to Hong Kong.
Coming to Hong Kong has ...
By Collier Nogues, 3rd year PhD candidate
Elizabeth Ho
CN: Welcome to HKU’s School of English! In the talk you gave as part of our seminar series last year, I remember that you discussed the 150th anniversary map of Hong Kong that HSBC just installed in the floor of its atrium in Central, and the politics of that map as public space. The ta...
by Jasper Wu
I am informed that this article will be scheduled for January. So, first of all, welcome back! Hope we all had an enjoyable and relaxing winter holiday. Speaking of holiday entertainments for December 2017, the film Star Wars: The Last Jedi – the second episode in the recent trilogy and the eighth episode in the Star Wars saga, has ...
By Hao, Scarlett Tun
Thanks to the funding support from the ‘Pilot Scheme on International Experience for RPg Students’, I had the chance to participate in the 2017 Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Linguistic Institute this July. The LSA Linguistic Institute is a world-renowned linguistics summer school, which aims to provide advanced train...
by Sydney Wang
The Linguistic Society of America holds summer Linguistic Institutes every two years, which have become prestigious gatherings for linguistics students and scholars. As third year PhD students, Jackie Militello, Corey Huang and I will share our experience from this year’s, which was held over 4 weeks in July and August in Lexingto...
by Professor Chris Hutton
Today I’m speaking on behalf of the teaching and professoriate staff, as the longest serving academic staff member in the School of English. Franky has been part of the life of the Department and then the School for as long as I can remember. Indeed a yellowing letter in the department files records that Franky transfer...
Dear alumni, Dear friends,
I would like to let you know that I have taken early retirement from HKU from September 1, 2016. I meant to send this message earlier but thought I would wait till I have good news about retirement to report. Well, I can now let you know that retirement is absolutely brilliant! Though I wouldn't go so far as to say I sho...
By Kelvin Wong
When I was young, bauhinia was never really my favourite. Unlike banyan and camphor trees, bauhinias are thin and twisted—because, I thought, of the limited space of the city, just as those baby watermelons grown in boxes are misshapen.
And then six years ago, in late winter, this guy first had his heart broken. I was walking bac...
by Nicanor Guinto
Before heading to Copenhagen, I had no concept of what a winter/summer school looked like. My idea of an international academic gathering was limited only to conferences that I’d attended in the past. In my previous experience, these are normally gatherings where, as a ‘small potato’ researcher, you’re expected to rush th...
By Johnson CHAN Man Long
“Meow!” Chu Poh Poh heard a sound behind a stack of cardboards. She slowly moved, pushing the stack aside, and found a grey kitten lying down on all fours. The kitten’s fur was wet; it might have been hiding from the rain that was pouring a couple of minutes ago. Chu Poh Poh smiled. It had been a long time sinc...
by Pedro Lok
Considering that April is the ideal time to harvest tea leaves (as the fresh buds are still tight and give an optimum flavour and texture), I would like to share the delight of tea drinking. Tea drinking is considered cultured leisure. To be precise, the term “drinking” can be replaced by “savouring” which more vividly depicts...
By Billy Lok Ming Poon
People travel for different purposes. Some travel for work while others for leisure and relaxation. Whatever the purpose, traveling is indeed something to be excited about. You can escape from your normal routine and spend some time away from your familiar surroundings. This is one of the reasons I began my research on to...
by Jasper Wu
Anyone interested in Hong Kong culture and martial arts will most probably have heard of Bruce Lee. While Bruce Lee is the man who brought martial arts to big screens, there is another master who brought martial arts to novels—Dr. Louis Cha,[1] also known to his readers by his pen name, Jin Yong.
The works of Jin Yong have been, si...
by Olivia Xu
Dr. Nan Zhang is currently a visiting assistant professor in the School of English at HKU. She holds a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. Her research interests include global modernism, late nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and culture, ethics and literature, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory.
O...
By Aaron Anfinson
The streets of Glasgow, 60 second exposure
Throughout 2016 much of the world seemed to be reading off of an anti-globalisation and anti-immigration script. As a result, we have been experiencing the uncertainty of Brexit and the ‘American Carnage’ of a Donald Trump presidency. Additionally, an ultra-nationalist party is ...
By Vincent Wai Sum Tse
Hong Kong university students are expected do certain things in their university life. These are commonly known as “The Five Things in University” – studying, doing part-time jobs or internships, being an executive committee of a society, living in halls and dating.
I will not talk about all of them, but will focus on...
by Dr. Sanaz Fotouhi
Despite some resistance from my banker father to do a ‘practical’ degree—I am sure he is not the first or the last person to advise so—I decided adamantly that I wanted to study English Literature, to be a writer, and to teach literature at a university.
Without much choice as to where I was going—my expat parents...
By Lucy Liu Yang
I was planning my new year’s trip to Hokkaido, Japan, and came across a photo online while gathering information on Hokkaido. It was a photo of an anonymous Japanese girl, wearing a large down jacket with a snow-white cap, with wisps of black straight hair flying in the wind. She had a cute face smiling gently, moving about like...
by Nicanor L. Guinto
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
– Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)
I was nine when my mom left to work as a domestic helper here in Hong Kong. Back then, Hong Kong sounded so distant to me based on the stories of my aunts and uncles who had never been here, but had alway...
Johnson CHAN Man Long
“Once upon a time, before the invasion of the allies, before the ruling of the Qing emperors, or the Mongolian invaders, there was a beautiful Princess, who was the dearest sister of the Emperor.
“The Emperor was touring the South with his sister when suddenly they were attacked by local bandits. In the chaos, the Empero...
By Caitlin Vandertop
This autumn marks the end of an era, as Professor Douglas Kerr retires. Our own Caitlin Vandertop caught up with Professor Kerr for a conversation about what HKU means to him, and what his plans are now.
CV: When are you retiring?
DK: On the last day of 2016, after upwards of 37 years at HKU. First I was in the Departmen...
By Aaron Zhang
Grandpa said he would die at the end of the month.
He would die when the lights are out,
And all the old people in his village would die with him.
‘Quick, quick, strangle me with a rope. I can’t live with it.
Quick, quick, send me to the place where there is light.
Darkness is creeping into my body and chokes me from with...
By Sydney Jingtian Wang
Dr. Lisa Lim is an Associate Professor in the School of English at HKU. Her current research interests include the evolution and politics of New Englishes, in particular in contemporary multilingual contact ecologies in Asia, issues of language maintenance, shift, endangerment and revitalization in minority communities, and...
By Jackie Militello
I am just winding down my first stint in London, preparing to return to Hong Kong. For those of you unfamiliar, HKU has a program with King’s College London (KCL) for a joint PhD in the humanities/social sciences. (There is a similar program with Imperial College London for the Sciences.) The rough guidelines are that a stude...
By Scarlett Tun Hao
The School welcomed eight new postgrads in September, working on a range of linguistics and literature projects. The Alumni Magazine asked them to share a little about themselves, so we can all get to know them better. Below you’ll find their answers. Look for their contributions to the Magazine over the course of the coming...
By Jennifer Gresham
I.
yogas citta vritti nirodah
Patañjali, Yoga Sutras (c. 400 CE)
“Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of the mind.” (Trans. Edwin F. Bryant)
“Yoga is the cessation of movements in consciousness.” (Trans. B.K.S. Iyengar)
“Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an o...
