Climb me if you can

March 21, 2011

Tree Climbing classes in Hong Kong

Reporter: Christine Tai Lai Chi

If you are bored with the wetland park and rope climbing nets have lost their appeal, consider taking a trip to the countryside where you can breathe in fresh air while getting strong and nimble. Consider tree climbing.

Tree climbers need to do sufficient warm-up exercises, especially for their arms. This sport requires a lot of forearm and wrist strength. Once the tree climbers have warmed up, they throw a rope onto a tree and knot it. Finally, they can start climbing with the help of different tools like safety belts and goggles. Equipment used in tree climbing resembles those used for climbing rocks but is made from different materials, and can be borrowed from Tree Climbing Hong Kong, a learning centre at Sheung Shui.

These days, tree climbing classes are not just for horticultural professionals. They are also a leisure activity for all ages. Classes usually last for half a day or even longer. Beginners are usually taught the basic skills of self protection, knotting and climbing.

Li Kwok-man, a climbing specialist with years of tree climbing experience, has taught tree climbing since 2008. “Learners always feel it’s dangerous at the beginning, being afraid of falling from high trees,” Li says the students find it easier after getting used to the protective equipment and safety measures. After a few hours, they are able to walk along the branches.

Li strongly recommends the activity to teenagers who can challenge themselves through this sport. “Climbing trees makes people become more confident,” Li says. “When people climb up high on the tree, they feel like they can conquer nature.”

Li says it is also a good and fun way to get in touch with nature. “As trees are alive, the feeling after climbing trees is totally different from climbing rocks.”

Tree climbing can even become a career, Li adds, but frequent exercise, practice and experience are required to pass the certified examinations.

If all this has got you interested, then just one gentle reminder – not every tree can be climbed! When you reach an advanced level, you will learn about taxonomy, biology and structures of trees, so you can pick the best “climbing partner”. Then you can climb hard, play hard in a safer way.

Tree climbing classes are often open to the public. For more information, please visit http://www.treeclimbing.hk/

Sunbeam: Cantonese Opera’s Last Independent Theatre in HK

December 21, 2010

Reporters: Victor Chan, Melanie Leung, Nia Tam, Jasmine Wong

For nearly four decades, Sunbeam Theatre in North Point has been synonymous with Cantonese Opera.

That could come to an end, however. There are mutterings that the theatre will close down in 2012 and its future is still uncertain. The potential closure of Sunbeam Theatre has stirred up debate among those in the Cantonese Opera field.

Sunbeam was founded in 1972 by a group of Shanghai emigrants. In 1988, the Hong Kong United Arts Entertainment Company Ltd took it over and has been operating the business ever since.

The theatre is a venue designated specifically for Cantonese Opera performances. It has a grand auditorium with 1044 seats and a mini stage with 340 seats.

All those involved in Hong Kong’s Cantonese Opera industry will have passed through Sunbeam Theatre. Each have their own feelings and stories about a venue that is inextricably bound to Hong Kong’s history in Cantonese Opera.

Chan Kim-sing and Nam Fung, the renowned Cantonese opera artistes, both described Sunbeam Theatre as their birthplace. The theatre has witnessed the crucial moments in the development of their careers. They think its possible closure would be a great pity for the history of Cantonese opera in Hong Kong.

With their roots in traditional Chinese cultural values, the artistes in the field have strong emotional ties to the spirit of “art inheritance”. They greatly cherish and respect their relationship with instructors and masters.

In fact, many present artistes received guidance on the stages of the Sunbeam Theatre. For instance, Franco Yuen Siu-fai had helped his master, the renowned Mak Ping-wing, on the stage there. He cherishes the memories of being with his master on the stage.

The atmosphere in the auditorium is quite different from that found in other public performing venues. Members of the audience may pay a surprise visit to their idols backstage or in their dressing rooms. They are allowed to eat snacks they while watching the show, conveniently purchased from the Sunbeam tuck shop. This can be regarded as the culture of the Sunbeam Theatre.

Opera troupes appreciate the many advantages that Sunbeam offers. One is its convenient booking procedure. The veteran troupe manager and producer Lam Hak-fai recounted his experiences of reserving time-slots for performances. Sunbeam operates on a first-come, first-served basis, while the scoring system used in booking government venues is inefficient and lacks transparency.

Another advantage of Sunbeam is its excellent location. Situated right next to the North Point MTR stations and with bus stations nearby, it is especially convenient for the elderly to get to. The same cannot be said for many government venues such as Tsuen Wan Town Hall, which is far from the railway station; or Ko Shan Theatre, where visitors have to trudge up a hill. Having been in and out of Sunbeam for close to three decades now, Lam describes the theatre as his old friend.

While the majority of the artistes believe that the closure of Sunbeam will be an enormous loss to Cantonese Opera, Marilyn To Wai Sau-ming, an experienced troupe owner and manager, believes the importance of Sunbeam is declining.

With the government providing more venue slots for Chinese opera performances in public venues, the need for Sunbeam is not as high as it was. Rental increases for the operator also leads to higher costs for using Sunbeam’s stages. To says a preservation of the theatre would be for historical rather than practical reasons.

Boosting the Best or Perpetuating Privilege?

March 21, 2011

Does DSS system make it harder for poorer students to enter Hong Kong’s elite schools?

Reporters: John Yip Tsz Wah, Raymond Tse Tsz Ho

Imagine a school entrance interview. The school is prestigious, it can take its pick of the best students from across Hong Kong. The competition is fierce. The interviewees are asked to introduce themselves in English, they are asked about their extra-curricular interests, their travel experiences. A student from a wealthy family has many experiences to draw upon. Another student from a lower-income background struggles to find something to say.

This scenario is offered by Professor Thomas Tse Kwan-choi of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Tse has studied the impact of the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) on equality in access to education and social mobility. He believes the DSS amounts to the “quasi-marketisation” and increasing privatisation of Hong Kong’s education system; a trend that will perpetuate the advantages of those with wealth and cultural capital.

However, despite the perception that fees have made DSS schools exclusive clubs for the rich, the Director of Audit’s Report of October 2010 shows that not all DSS schools are expensive. The actual fees charged by DSS secondary schools ranged from zero to HK$110,000 in the school year 2009/2010.

What is more, as a condition of receiving government funding, DSS schools must reserve at least 10 per cent of their income from school fees for remission schemes for poorer students. The eligibility benchmarks for these schemes have to be equally favourable to those set by the government for student financial assistance schemes, such as the Textbook Assistance Scheme and Student Travel Subsidy.

Some schools set aside more than the minimum 10 per cent. For instance, St. Paul’s Co-educational College (SPCC), a former aided school that joined the DSS in 2002 says it does not set any limits on the number of students who can get fee remissions.

According to the school’s principal Anissa Chan Wong Lai-kuen, students can receive subsidies as long as they are eligible. Each year, they use about 20 per cent of the fee income for fee remission. In 2009-2010, 239 or around 20 per cent of students benefited from the scheme. Of those, around two-thirds received grants for the total school fee of HK$52,000.

SPCC students who qualify for the fee remission scheme can also enjoy grants for paid optional learning programmes. For example, if a student gets a full fee remission and is nominated by a teacher to join an overseas learning program, they will not have to pay. “Once you are in, we guarantee that school fees will not be an obstacle for you to survive in our school,” says Chan.

To further encourage poor students to apply to the school, Chan explains that around five per cent of places are reserved for these students each year. The school invites principals of primary schools to promote this scheme to poor but outstanding students. Students admitted through this scheme will not have to pay any school fees.

Although remission schemes exist, many parents are unaware of them. Some DSS schools may actively promote their schemes, but some parents are still scared off by the thought of fees. Bonnie Cheung Yuk-fong, a mother of a primary five pupil is one of them. Her family earns around HK$10,000 a month and she has never considered choosing a DSS secondary school for her daughter because she would not be able to afford the school fees of a typical DSS secondary school.

“I don’t know if DSS secondary schools are offering school fee remission. I never search for the information,” she says. “Even if I know that some DSS secondary schools do have a school fee remission scheme, I am not sure whether I am eligible for it.”

When a Talent is Neglected

March 21, 2011

Do Hong Kong’s gifted children get enough resources to fulfil their potential?

Reporters: Dora Chiu Wai Yan and Lotus Lau Hiu Yan

When Tommy Chau Chun-wang was three, he showed talent that differentiated him from his peers. Looking out of the bus window, he could read all the words on the signs outside even though no one had taught him to read. His father, Chau Hoi-yip, discovered Tommy had a passion for science and maths. He took Tommy to take an IQ test when he was in primary one, and found his son has an IQ of 135 or above.

After the good news, came bad news. Chau called the Hong Kong Academy of Gifted Education (HKAGE) for help. He was upset by the response. “The academy said that there were no suitable programmes for kids as young as my son. It asked me to wait until my son went to secondary school,” Chau recalls, shaking his head, “His primary school could do nothing more than encourage him to join maths drilling class.”

Instead of waiting for the HKAGE, Chau sought help from other organisations. Tommy, now eight, attends fee-paying programmes in maths and science at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). “I love taking this kind of course as I like studying about DNA,” says Tommy, “It is more interesting than lessons in my school!”

Chau wants Tommy to switch to a school with better gifted education facilities but even more than that, he wants the government to establish a school for the gifted.

The term “gifted education” was first mentioned in Hong Kong in an Education Commission Report in 1990. The Fung Hon Chu Gifted Education Centre and the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education (HKAGE) were set up in 1995 and 2007 respectively. But formal programmes for gifted children were not introduced to the public at the HKAGE until September 2008.

Giftedness is notoriously difficult to define and it is hard to identify the gifted children who need extra training. Traditionally, it has been defined as a score of 130 or above in the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) IQ tests. However, the Education Bureau now encourages defining giftedness more broadly. Children who demonstrate exceptional achievement or potential in areas such as creativity, art, sports and leadership, are also considered gifted.

The Education Bureau aims high. It believes that nurturing multiple intelligences should be the mission of all schools. Gifted education should be made available to all students.

“Hong Kong is actually quite ambitious, but we have to refer to the resources we have available when we decide how large a student population we can serve,” says Chan Pui-tin, the chief curriculum development officer of gifted education under the Education Bureau.

The number of students in Hong Kong with an IQ of 130 or above is about two per cent of the student population. HKAGE, a partner of the Education Bureau, aims to serve that top two per cent, or about 20,000 students. But given the broader definition of giftedness adopted by the Education Bureau, the number of gifted learners should be much higher.

Stephen Tommis, the executive director of HKAGE, says that a gifted learner can waste up to 90 per cent of their learning time in conventional schools as they do not find the lessons challenging. “They are just bored and frustrated. They are not engaged and just stare out the window all day.”

The HKAGE is attempting to handle the surging need for gifted education. It offers 120 free off-site programmes for the best young brains in Hong Kong, as well as supporting services for teachers and parents. The HKAGE will spend about HK$3.5m on direct programme costs in the academic year 2010-11, which may increase to nearly HK$5 million in 2011-12.

It offers programmes like public speaking workshops and a mathematics Olympiad for students. Introductory courses on basic concepts of giftedness and skills for nurturing the gifted are offered to parents and teachers.

In the last round of tests and interviews, held in October last year, 1,200 students were admitted to membership of HKAGE. To date, nearly 4,000 students, amounting to only 20 per cent of the estimated number of gifted kids, have benefited from its free programmes.

From Office to Boxing Ring

March 21, 2011

How an office lady became Hong Kong’s first female Thai boxing coach

Reporter: Joyce Lee

It is a cold late afternoon and there are no students at Swish Club. Yolly Leung Pui-shan, Hong Kong’s first female Thai boxing coach, puts on a black sports jacket, drags a heater to her side and sinks into a sofa.

From there she surveys the 5,000-square-foot boxing club in Causeway Bay. She can be proud of what she sees – the first boxing club in Hong Kong to hold ladies-only classes. Huddled on the sofa, it would be easy to miss the grit and muscle that lies beneath her petite and girlish appearance.

Leung, who is now in her early thirties, did not pay much attention to Thai boxing at first. Like most people, she thought it was a violent sport which was not for girls. It was not until she left Hong Kong after secondary school to study for her A-Levels in Britain that she really came into contact with the sport.

While in London Leung met her boyfriend, and now husband, Antony Au Ting-piu who was a martial arts enthusiast. It was Au who encouraged her to exercise. Au, who is an owner and coach of Swish Club, joins in the conversation.

“Don’t think she has been this slim all along. She was a plump girl who never did any exercise when she was in the UK,” he says, pointing at his wife and business partner, who shoots back a mischievous smile. In London, Leung tagged along with Au to a Thai boxing gathering in a park, and after that she fell in love with the sport.

Leung says the boxing gatherings were casual, like the Tai Chi gatherings in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park. Six or seven people would come and practise the moves twice a month under the tutelage of a British amateur boxer. After a year of training at the gatherings, Leung found Thai boxing a good way to keep fit. Both boxing and exercise has since then turned into a habit. She says she now feels uncomfortable if she does not work up a sweat. Even on holidays and trips, she goes to the gym.

After she got her degree in finance and economics from City University London, Leung came back to Hong Kong in 2003 and worked in a telecommunications company for three and a half years.

However, her routine office job did not snuff out her passion for Thai boxing. She was an office lady by day and a part-time boxing coach assistant by night, working at Au’s Thai boxing gym, Swish Club. There, she discovered a demand for female coaches as it is considered more appropriate for a woman to guide female students.

Bored with her job and passionate about Thai boxing, Leung finally took the plunge and became a full-time coach when Au decided to start the first centre for ladies-only training in 2006.

It was not an easy decision; Leung struggled with it for six months. She was not confident that the new centre would be a success because Thai boxing was not as popular in Hong Kong as it is today. “If I did it full time, I would devote 100 per cent of my efforts to it. I was worried if I could manage it.”

She was also worried she would not be able to support her family because the income from teaching Thai boxing was not as stable as her office job. In the end, she decided that the combination of the support from her boyfriend and her family, her youth and the dead-end nature of her job made the risk worthwhile.

Green Message in a Bottle

March 21, 2011

Glass recycling finally gets going in Hong Kong

Reporters: Carmen Shih and Yvonne Yeung

Blue is for paper, yellow is for metals and brown is for plastics. Now there is a new colour for recycling bins – light green for glass bottles.

The new bins have been specially designed to receive empty condiment and drinks bottles as well as jam jars and other glass objects.

The first glass bins were introduced in January and they can be found alongside existing three-colour waste separation bins in six selected public rental housing estates in East Kowloon. They are part of a 12-month pilot programme to separate and recycle glass bottles collected from housing estates organised by the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) and the Housing Authority.

According to Alain Lam Kwok-lun, principal environmental protection officer of the EPD, the scheme is a good start for glass recycling in Hong Kong. “It would be best if glass could be locally produced, locally treated and locally used,” says Lam.

Although aluminium cans, paper and plastic bottles have been widely collected and recycled, there has been little interest in recycling glass in Hong Kong. This is because of the absence of a local glass manufacturing industry and the lack of a market for the used glass bottles.

In order to create a market and reliable outlet for recycled glass, the government funded the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to develop technology to produce eco-bricks from waste glass.

Eco-bricks are mainly made of fly ash, glass sand and recycled crushed stones. The glass sand replaces natural river sand as one of the raw materials. By using waste as a raw material, energy consumption can be reduced. The government’s goal is to reduce the territory’s energy consumption by 30 per cent.

And it is not just energy consumption that is a problem. Hong Kong’s landfills are filling up fast. Yet every day, the territory generates around 600 tonnes of waste glass bottles. In 2009, glass bottles accounted for four per cent of total solid waste. So the government needs to find ways to reduce the amount dumped into landfills.

The hope is to increase the recovery rate of all waste from 49 per cent to 55 per cent by 2015.

“After all, (waste reduction) is a subtraction,” Lam says, explaining why the government should take a leading role in expanding the market for waste glass.

An example is the government’s requirement that contractors use 100 per cent eco-bricks to win tenders for official projects. Eco-bricks have been used in various projects by the Highways Department, the Housing Authority, the EPD and local tertiary education institutions. “We have to encourage people to use or to buy eco-bricks at extra cost,” says Lam.

At present, there are two construction material companies producing eco-bricks and blocks. Besides eco-bricks production, waste glass bottles can also be washed and reused. Some hardware stores reuse them to hold solvents, while some condiment and sauce stores use them as containers for their products.

Waste glass bottles, which are usually seen as rubbish, can also be transformed and regenerated into pieces of artwork. In January this year, Green Glass Green, an initiative started by The Hong Kong Dumper Truck Driver Association, organised an exhibition at Oasis in Central, showing 47 pieces of glass artwork created by local secondary school students.

Through the Eyes of Hong Kong’s Mainland Students

December 23, 2010

Reporters: Piano Ho, Phyllis Lee, To Ting, Vinky Wong

We may study in the same lecture rooms, dine in the same canteens, and even sleep in the same hostel rooms. But many of us still have misunderstandings about, or more precisely, no understanding of mainland students in Hong Kong’s universities.

The total number of mainland undergraduates in Hong Kong’s eight higher education institutes has more than tripled from 1,284 in 2004 -2005 to 4,562 in 2009 – 2010.

Click here to see distribution of mainland students in Hong Kong

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Although local students tend to think of mainland students as one homogenous group, the group itself is highly diverse. As they come from different backgrounds and have different financial means, mainland students’ experience of university life in Hong Kong can be very different.

Varsity takes a look at the stories of two mainland undergraduates.

Feifei is currently studying Accounting at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She came to Hong Kong from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, in 2008. With the generous support of her parents, she not experienced any financial stress in her day to day living and leisure activities.

Feifei seldom cooks in her hostel. “When I have free time, I will go out and shop and find whatever to eat,” she says. Her favourite leisure activity is to shopping with her friends on weekends.

In her hostel room, she shows Varsity some of the things she bought on her shopping expeditions. There is a new netbook and iPad. She remarks that she has bought similar items. There is also a pricey handbag her mother bought for her, but which lies unused in her wardrobe.

Feifei’s life is Hong Kong is very different from that of Yinyun who came from Guangxi in 2008 and is now studying Economics in the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Yinyun uses an old laptop computer handed down from her father. She says she has used it for around five or six years.

For Yinyun, Hong Kong is an expensive city. She remembers that when she first arrived here, she was shocked when she saw the prices on the canteen menus on campus. “I used to joke and sigh that I would rather starve to death,” she says.

She said that although mainland students, commonly referred to as neidisheng or NDS may give local students the impression that they form a closed circle, mainland students themselves are a diverse group. Yinyun says it is easier for NDS with fluent Cantonese, for example those from Guangdong, to integrate with locals better.

But apart from language barrier, Yinyun says economic factors are increasingly leading to the differentiation between mainland students.

“In many aspects, such as entertainment and food consumption, mainland students from rich families share more common interests and hobbies with the locals,” she says. She adds that students from rich families were less affected by the culture shock NDS experience when they are confronted with Hong Kong society.

Paradise Lost in North Point: Kai Yuen Street

December 22, 2010

Reporters: Katherine Chan, Samuel Chan, Edith Liu, Beverly Yau

Before bulldozers moved in to demolish the tong lau or Chinese tenement buildings built in the post-war period in Wing Lee Street and Lee Tung Street, the affected residents put up a fight against redevelopment. Their cause won the sympathy of many Hong Kongers.

This is not the case for Kai Yuen Street in North Point. Redevelopment is now so widespread that perhaps the public and the media have lost interest.

Yet this once quiet and low-key street has a rich history.

The Kai Yuen Street neighbourhood was until recently a peaceful oasis..It is common to see chauffeurs smoking quietly next to parked Porsches and foreign domestic helpers pushing trolleys full of groceries. The street has always been populated with the rich and famous who wish to stay low-profile. Writer Eileen Chang and painter Zhang Da-qian were among those who fled China and found some peace living there.

The street was named after a magnificent mansion at the knoll. The mansion, Kai Yuen, was home for the family of Chan Wai-chow until it was demolished in the late 1960s. Chan Wai-chow was the brother of Chen Jitang who governed Guangdong province after the Kuomingtang’s Northern Expedition from 1929 to 1936. Chan built Kai Yuen 1938 after his brother’s downfall.

The apartments are known for their high ceilings and sky gardens. The neighbourhood is friendly and the security is good.

The steep and narrow road leading up to Bedford Garden segregates the street from the hustle and bustle of the main roads in North Point. Its inhabitants speak highly for the street’s quietness.

However, construction noise has disturbed the tranquillity of Kai Yuen Street since New World Development acquired the eastern part of the street, from Bedford Garden to Full Wealth Garden at the end of the street, in recent years.

Still, most of the residents Varsity spoke to believe it is worth putting up with the dust and noise for a good apartment in Kai Yuen Street.

The construction work is now flattening low-rise blocks and replacing them with several 30-storey buildings. The residents of lower Kai Yuen Street have all moved away.

Some residents of upper Kai Yuen Street do not want to entertain the idea of the same happening to the flats in their part of the street. They do not want to move. “You cannot find the apartments here anywhere else in Hong Kong,” one of the residents said.

To outsiders, Kai Yuen Street may be just another street being redeveloped. For the residents, the peace may have been disturbed, but street is still a haven of tranquillity for now.