Mainland students working in Hong Kong: “The Years of Booming” Encounter “The Years of Financial Tsunami”

During 2004 to 2005, the total number of mainland students entering the universities in Hong Kong increased 40%, reaching 1000 a year (said by CAO officers years ago, need to be further confirmed).  It was the start of “mainland students boom”.   Years passed.  Now most of these students have begun or will soon begin working in Hong Kong.  (More research on the accurate data.) 

During these years, Hong Kong’s economy hoisted gradually in the line of the rapid growth of mainland economy and the expansion of the world’s capital market. Job market, in that situation, prospected largely.  (Percentage of students got job.)   However, starting from the fall of 2008, financial tsunami broke out first in the United States, which said to be the most serious one in their history since the Great Depression in 1930s.  The serious impact of the crisis soon rippled around globally.  Impact on Hong Kong à Job market. 

A large number of mainland student are in the financial or financial-related sectors, especially in accounting firms and banks.  They just started their first job in the life and suddenly financial tsunami came and forced them to face potential or ‘already’ problem of unemployment and economic downturn.  For many of them, this is the first time they truly face a crisis. 

·      How is their situation right now?

·      Do they have any plan?  Will it change their original plan?  Different from most locals in the crisis, they are alone in Hong Kong and they have the choice to go back to mainland where is less impacted by tsunami.

·      Record the how 80’s generation would react in their first and the largest crisis in their life in this city.

Forms:

Map: distribution of origins of mainland students

Charts: data number

Photo: the students’ profile, their living surroundings

Sidebars: change of habit since financial tsunami

Audio: interviewers

Yau Kee Wooden Carts: “We don’t retire!”

by Liu Zhaoxin and Leo Chan

Yau Kee Wooden carts, run by the Lee Couple, is located on Boundary street in Sham SHui Po old district and has been in business for 50 years.  Aged 80 and 71, the couple still made about100 hand-made wooden carts per month, averagely 5 to 6 carts per day.  Asking when they want to retire and enjoy a easier life, they announced without hesitation that they don’t retire, for their clients, also for the carts are already a part of their life.    

http://hkstories.net/jmsc0007_09/Iris/Project3/

Assignment 4: Vox Pop Report

People in the Central — “Yudan or Siu Mai?”

Feb 16, 2009

by Liu Zhaoxin

Fish ball (called as “Yudan” in Cantonese) and Siu Mai are both very popular “street foods” in Hong Kong.  Fish balls are yellow in colour, usually made with cheaper meat, and are sold in bamboo skewer.  They can be either spicy or not.  Siu Mai is a kind of Cantonese dissert whose formal name is pork and mushroom dumpling.  The Siu Mai sold in food stalls is usually with yellow skin and the fish meat filling.   How would people found randomly in Central answer to the question —  

“ Do you like fish ball or Siu Mai?” 

Chu Ka Yee: "Fish ball"

Chu Ka Yee, a 10-year-old girl in the elementary school uniform: “Fish ball. Because it is more tasty.”  (Translated from Chinese)

Tim: “I like both.  But for fish balls, I’d like them to be in small size and be chewy.  For Siu Mai, I only prefer those with fish meat fillings” (Translated from Chinese).  This 26-year-old businessman was heading to SOHO in a hurry.   He refused to take photo.

Sophie: "it's a good night-out snack"

Three out of four foreigners we interviewed knew what are fish ball and siu mai and expressed their preference without hesitation.  Louis, a businessman sitting in ice-cream shop,  prefers Siu Mai because he does not like fish ball.  Gary, a father on the way to SOHO, likes Siu Mai because it looks tastier.  

Sophie, the girl in black, chose fish ball: “The texture is good.  And it’s good for a night-out, for mid-night or 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.”  

Feb 2, 2009

by Liu Zhaoxin

Fireworks in Backsea

Despite the shadow cast by the deepening global financial crisis, the heart of China, Beijing, celebrated the Chinese New Year of Ox loudly and brightly with tons of fireworks and firecrackers, bidding a farewell to the eventful Year of Rat.  Starting from the New Year Eve, the sky over Beijing was lit up by the world’s biggest uncoordinated fireworks display as firecrackers exploded throughout the city the whole night until the early morning the next day.

Lunar New Year is a traditional Chinese holiday and the largest celebration in the nation.

This year the sales volume of the fireworks in Beijing was reported up 37 percent from the previous year, with over 230,000 firework packages sold by a single Sunday, said Xinhua.  According to the merchants in Shi Ji Tan Fireworks Stall in the Xicheng District of Beijing, the price of fireworks this year was at the same level as the last year, ranging from 20RMB to 1000RMB with the most selling contributing by those 50 to 300RMB ones.   Averagely, purchasers spent around 500 to 1500RMB (equivalent to about 70 to 220 US dollars) on fireworks this year, with an apparent increase from last year.  Stunningly, 2268 tons of wrecks and orts of fireworks were cleaned up on the streets on the morning after the New Year Eve.

The Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, is the biggest holiday celebrated among Chinese people.  It is the time when families and friends get together to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new. 

Merchant at the stall said people spent more money buying fireworks this year than the last year.

With the global financial crisis bursting upon and escalating during the second half last year, the China’s economic outlook this year becomes growingly gloomy.  The annual growth of Chinese economy in 2008 was down to a seven-year low of 9 percent while the fourth quarter’s was as low as 6.8 percent.  Thousands of factories have closed in southeast coastline, seriously stricken by the sharp reduction of export.  Despite the year dampened by economic downturn, citizens in Beijing had not compromised their annual celebration.  Contrarily, they seemed more than happy to farewell the old year loudly and welcome a new year with bright and splendid pattern of fire. 

Plagiarism is not allowed in the HKU pursuant to the Regulation 5 of the University’s Regulations Governing Conduct at Examination.  In its definition, plagiarism is “the unacknowledged use, as one’s own, of work of another person, whether or not such work has been published.”   It consists of two parts: copying and the absence of proper acknowledgement.

1. Copying.

It means copying from the published works or the essays of other students without any acknowledgement. It may be noticeable that the source talking about here may be published in traditional text or on the Internet. The test of plagiarism by copying is whether the work will give an ordinary reader a reasonable impression that the work is the original work of the author when it is in fact a copy of the work of someone else.

2. absence of proper acknowledgement.

If one takes a passage from others’ work, he must obtain proper acknowledgement, i.e. put the copied passage in quotation or identify it by using proper indentation, to show to the readers that it is the work of another person, and provide the source. The source must be clearly provided immediately after the copied passages.

http://www.hku.hk/plagiarism/page2s.htm

One must aware that it may not be legal to post photos on a blog that one has downloaded from the Internet, even in a case the source is credited.  It is not only regarded with the proper acknowledgement, there is also a problem of copyright.  By copyright law, photo is a type of image that it belongs to the artist who created the artwork. Only they can give permission to reprint the work, and by law, it can only be used with permission.  The growing trends in content theft

Different image providers may have different rules on using the image by their viewers. For example, Google Images, one of the largest services offering images for viewing, although they provide location and access into the images, they does not grant any rights to use them for any purpose other viewing them on the web.  The viewers always need to read the fine print to see whether the copyright is reserved that permission is required before using.   http://images.google.com/help/faq_images.html#copyright 

With Flickr, which is more like a platform people use to upload and browse images, the attitude is even more oblique. At the bottom of each Flickr.com web-page, there is a “Copyright/IP Policy” link which takes you to a Yahoo page that states: “Yahoo! respects the intellectual property of others, and we ask our users to do the same.” http://info.yahoo.com/copyright/details.html Roughly, his policy is that one can use the image, with credit, as long as the link is to the image on flickr and not copied onto the site.  

All in all, the Bloggers before using any photo downloaded from the Internet always need to be sure whether the copyright is reserved that permission is required before using.

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