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Science for All

Citizens connect to the world through science

by Doris Yu

Twice a month, Masee Fung, his teammates and other volunteers ride their bicycles along narrow tracks the width of a hand span to reach the small farmland site they rent in Yuen Long’s Ching Tam Village. Then the citizen scientists turn on their flashlights and find their way through to the shrubs where, according to a year-long observation study, they will find the most fireflies.

As they turn off their flashlights, the insects glow brighter and they start counting the fireflies and recording their species based on the knowledge they gained in a two-hour training session.

In the two-hour training conducted by Fung’s team, city dwellers learn about the colour, size and flashing pattern of four kinds of fireflies. Even without a relevant degree, ordinary people can be transformed into citizen scientists who are capable of helping to gather data. “Even ordinary citizens, kids and primary students can [distinguish species] as long as they can see and distinguish colours,” Fung says.

“Citizen science” refers to scientific research conducted by enthusiastic amateurs. Data collection, in the form of recording all encounters with specific livings organisms, is the most common activity for Hong Kong’s citizen scientists.

Unlike large-scale citizen science projects, such as Green Power’s Butterfly Surveyor project and the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society’s Hong Kong Sparrow Census, Fung’s team prefers to keep their research project low-profile. Doing less promotion and holding fewer activities mean they have fewer volunteers and less funding and data. But it also means the team can avoid attracting people who join for the wrong reasons – such as photographers who want to shoot fireflies and people who are just looking for a quiet place for a picnic.

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Citizen scientists identify the species of butterfly they have just observed

Fung is not concerned about how many volunteers he can get, what matters to him is whether they really appreciate nature and want to get involved in citizen science. His team’s main purpose is to learn about the habitat of fireflies and to create a firefly-friendly and biodiverse little corner in Hong Kong.

“Those who can really read our message will find us,” says Fung. “We do not have to sell it.”  So far, this low-key approach has managed to attract two volunteers who are truly passionate about learning, enjoying and contributing to firefly biodiversity in Hong Kong.

Like Fung’s volunteers, Lau Yun-kwan, a third year environmental science student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), finds that joining citizen science projects makes him more sensitive to natural surroundings.

Last summer, Lau volunteered to be one of Green Power’s 248 butterfly surveyors. Since 2008, the organisation has been recruiting and training citizen scientists to update its Hong Kong butterflies database.

After three months of lectures and field trips, Lau is more familiar with butterflies. He once spotted more than 30 Coliadinae butterflies, which may include very rare subspecies, on the CUHK campus. Much to his regret, they flew away in a few seconds, before he could verify them using his well-thumbed illustrated guide to Hong Kong butterflies.

DIYbio Hong Kong, a newly-established “community of DIY biologists”, wants to do more than concentrate on any one family or species. The group wants to record Hong Kong’s biodiversity by “barcoding” all species in its Hong Kong DNA Barcode Project.

The project’s organisers, some of whom are trained biologists, are inviting the whole community, especially students, to collect and transport samples of plants, insects or animals they have discovered to DIYbio’s community lab. Members will teach citizens how to extract DNA and process it through a polymerase chain reaction machine to undergo sequencing. Each sequence will generate a unique barcode for each organism.

The group’s founder, South African biologist Gert Grobler, hopes to inspire people to engage with nature.

“We want to get people in touch with nature,” says Grobler. “People catch Pokémons, [lead] virtual lives; they don’t know about the real lives.”

Through the process of learning about molecular biology and extracting and analyzing DNA, Grobler hopes citizen scientists will be inspired and motivated to conserve the natural world.

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Maria Li Lok-yee studies a specimen with a DIY BIO teammate.

Maria Li Lok-yee, the director and secretary of DIYbio says: “You need to take ownership of your environment, your surroundings, in order to love it and preserve it.”

However, the high cost of purchasing DNA-sequencing equipment makes it difficult to achieve the project’s goals.

Like many citizen science projects, DIYbio does not have sponsorship from big companies and institutions. Mike Yuen Chun-kwong, another core member of DIYbio and a retired science teacher, tries to keep research expenses down by either buying cheap copies of equipment components from the Chinese online retail platform Taobao, or seeking second-hand donations from local universities. Sometimes, the do-it-yourself biologists make plastic components using a 3D printer to build their own machines for experiments.

Inside Out

Meditation and mindfulness help people to heal themselves

By Chester Chan

Sze-chai is doing meditation in Plum Village.
Mak Sze-chai meditating in Plum Village. Photo courtesy of Mak Sze-chai.

Every Sunday, Mak Sze-chai, a first year anthropology student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), visits the Plum Village in Lantau Island for a whole day of meditation training, or Day of Mindfulness. Plum Village is a monastic community founded by the Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, but the Day of Mindfulness activities are open to people of all backgrounds and religions.

Far away from the city centre, the quiet environment calms whoever enters the site. As they walk through nature and practise mindfulness, participants try to slow down and observe the surroundings. When the bell rings, people start to concentrate on their breathing.

“I like to breathe in first, then scan over my body. Once you feel there is something uncomfortable inside, stop and check what it is,” Mak says.

Mak’s mother, a meditation instructor, began taking her to Plum Village when she was just four. Her parents were divorced when she was a year old, so Mak grew up with her mother in a single-parent family. This left Mak with feelings of abandonment which cast a shadow over her childhood.

She still remembers when she was studying in secondary school in 2012 and her father suddenly told her he had secretly married another woman who was going to give birth to a son in a week’s time. Mak felt betrayed by her grandmother who had helped her father to keep the truth from her.

Mak’s childhood experiences caused her to fall into a deep depression and have low self-esteem, they affected her interpersonal relationships. So her mother took her to a meditation camp at Plum Village in France in 2002. She remembers how her mother saw her at the camp laughing again without any inhibition.

“Without mediation, I think I would have fallen apart,” Mak says. Since then, she has joined regular summer retreat camps in Plum Villages around the world. Back at home, visiting Plum Village every Sunday has become a part of her life no matter how busy she is.

Still, Mak faced pressure in adapting to the new environment at university earlier this year, dealing with orientation camps and assertive classmates. But she is coping and even wants to help other teenagers through practising mindfulness.

Mak’s mother, Christine Cheung Sze-kuen, is a meditation instructor for the Spiritual Education Project at the Institute of Educational Research at CUHK. While providing meditation training to parents, teachers and students, she has observed there is increasing pressure in Hong Kong society.

Cheung says students face tremendous pressure from public examinations and a lack confidence in their future. Young people tend to measure their own value by comparing themselves to others. They end up living in fear and fail to appreciate themselves and cope with adversity. A 2015 poll found that 53 per cent of secondary school students surveyed displayed mild or moderate symptoms of depression.

Outside school, teenagers also face pressures in society – Hong Kong is awash with consumerism, negative news, property hegemony and political strife. A study conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (now the Education University of Hong Kong) in 2015 found that nearly 60 per cent of young people aged between 18 and 24 suffered from anxiety or depression after the Umbrella Movement.

Without real connection with others, Cheung says youngsters can feel more helpless.

Participants practice mindfulness in Plum Village

“Everyone is like an isolated island. Everyone feels lonely even within the crowd.”

Cheung thinks that pressures from society, schools, family, peers and even the individual young person themselves are factors contributing to a series of suicides among young people since 2015.

Having noticed that students were suffering from an increasing workload, such as School-based Assessment after the education reform, Cheung worked with secondary schools to promote mental health. She has designed a 10-minute meditation session for the beginning of the school assembly. Students have to concentrate on their breathing before the bell rings at the end of the meditation and then listen to soft music.

Youngsters tend to have a short attention span which prevents them from practising hours of meditation. Yet a mindful pause is enough for them to have a break and “tidy up” their minds and emotions during their hectic lives.

Some universities in Hong Kong have also started to introduce and promote meditation, with plenty of students willing to try it out.

The Activist Journalist

Zhao Sile juggles her roles as a reporter and Chinese rights advocate

By Rammie Chui

Zhao Sile shows Varsity her documentary for Feminist Voices

Dozens of international and local journalists gathered in May this year to celebrate and recognise achievements in human rights reporting at the annual Hong Kong Human Rights Press Awards ceremony. When the grand prize for Chinese News and Features was announced, an elegantly dressed young woman walked onto the stage to receive the prize for her story, “The Fate of Chinese Rights NGOs”.

Zhao Sile, a 26-year-old mainland freelance journalist currently writing for the Hong Kong-based online news outlet, Initium Media, told the audience she felt ambivalent, to say the least, about her award.

“My stories are derived from others’ suffering,” she said.

Zhao, who has received three Human Rights Press Awards, has built her journalistic career on chronicling China’s human rights defenders and their suffering. But for her this is a calling, not a career choice.

She did not always plan to be a journalist. Zhao studied financial engineering at Nanjing University but she had a long-standing interest in journalism due to her daily exposure to Hong Kong television throughout her childhood. She was born and raised in Guangzhou and was greatly influenced by Hong Kong culture.

Zhao watched TVB every day throughout her youth and admired the journalists and broadcasters who were able to disseminate news and information to large audiences. When she was around 10 years old, Zhao began to notice the differences between the Hong Kong society she saw on the screen and the mainland society in which she lived.

By the time she entered her third year at university and had been on an exchange programme in Taiwan, the differences between mainland culture and the outside world had become even clearer to her. She had been approached to write for the now defunct iSun Affairs magazine after an editor noticed some articles she had written about the chopping down of Nanjing’s historic plane trees to make way for a new subway line in 2011.

In Taiwan, she began reporting on the 2012 presidential election for iSun Affairs, the Hong Kong-based politics weekly set up by émigré mainland journalists, while she was on a semester exchange. It was a door-opening and eye-opening experience and she even managed to interview the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou and attend an international press conference held by his challenger Tsai Ing-wen.

“I thought this society was miraculous. I, as a mainland student who had stumbled into political reporting and social observation, [found] people were welcoming me, opening doors for me,” says Zhao, who felt a kind of certainty and security she had never experienced before.

Viva la Diva!

Cantopop legend Paula Tsui looks back on her 40-year career

By Minnie Wong

The lobby of Hong Kong’s iconic Peninsula Hotel, with its high ceilings, gold and ivory coloured columns and grand staircase seem like a fitting setting for a conversation with the grand dame of Hong Kong Cantopop, Paula Tsui Siu-fung. Tsui is elegantly turned out in a black pantsuit, a wig, and huge vintage sunglasses – the picture of an old-school movie star attempting to go incognito.

Indeed she quickly establishes she wants to go unnoticed, telling Varsity she does not want to be photographed for the interview. At one point she worries that the tourists holding out selfie sticks may be trying to take photographs of her.

This comes as something of a surprise as Tsui should be used to the consequences of fame by now – after a career spanning more than four decades. The 67-year-old star has outlasted her contemporaries, still plays to packed houses and has even won over a new generation of fans, some for reasons she never expected. Looking back, Tsui, who is affectionately known as Siu Fung-jeh (Big Sister Siu-fung) describes her life in show business as a dream.

“It’s a very real dream, although there’s a huge chasm between the day I first started and the 40 or so years that have passed in between,” she says. “I feel grateful – there’s been a measure of luck.”

But luck cannot wholly explain Tsui’s popularity. Apart from the time and hard work she has put into perfecting her craft, Tsui says it is her persistence that has set her apart.

“I’ve had many friends who are singers, some are much better singers than me, but they gave up in the middle of the journey… It’s all about whether you have the stamina and the interest to carry on.”

Paula Tsui in concert wearing her iconic dress
Paula Tsui in concert wearing her iconic dress Photos courtesy of Paula Tsui Internet Fan Club

Over the years, Tsui has built a solid reputation for her singing skills, her striking stage wardrobe featuring elaborate dresses with full skirts and long trains, and her easy rapport with the audience.

Today, her unique voice with its husky tones and deep register still captivates audiences. For her, singing is not just about the art of performance, it is about creating emotional resonance. Interestingly, she says she treats her songs as “patients” which she nurses to health to get the best out of them. Although she is regarded as a consummate professional, Tsui never formally studied music or singing.

She was born in Wuhan and moved to Hong Kong as an infant. The eldest child from a poor family with six children, Tsui left school at a young age to work at odd jobs to support her family. She taught herself to sing by listening and singing along to the tunes on the radio.

After drifting aimlessly between jobs, Tsui eventually found her calling in 1965 when she won a singing contest which led to her becoming a nightclub singer in 1968. Talent, luck and persistence led to her success and a recording deal with Sony Music that enabled her to release the Canto-pop albums that propelled her to stardom. “It all happened by coincidence, I never thought people would actually hire me,” she says.

Since her 1970 debut Mandarin album Autumn Night, Tsui has released more than 60 records before her last one in 1990. Her hits include classic Canto-pop tunes such as Season of the Wind, Char Siu Bao, Flowing in the Natural Direction and Behind the Bridal Gown, the theme song of a popular 1980s TVB drama series.

The Only Show in Town

The circus is back in town, and this time it’s a home-grown affair

By  Stanley Lam, Jessica Li, Howard Yang

 

Party in the Kitchen

Cook up a storm in the kitchen of your dreams – for one night

By Jessica Li

If you want to prepare a meal for a big group of friends but do not have enough space at home to accommodate everyone, you might consider renting a kitchen. Rent-A-Kitchen has two sleekly designed venues in the Kwun Tong industrial area, both of which have a kitchen, bar and dining area. The larger, 1,000 square feet Party Kitchen can accommodate up to 30 people, while the 400 sq ft Kitchen Studio is more suited to intimate gatherings.

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The overview of the big kitchen. Photo courtesy of Calanthia Wong

Calanthia Wong, who enjoys good food and cooking, founded Rent-A-Kitchen two years ago when she noticed that there is limited space in Hong Kong for people to have an enjoyable cooking and dining experience. “Most Hong Kong people live in cramped spaces of just a couple of hundred square feet. They have little personal space,” Wong says. “There’s no room for you to prepare a meal for your partner or friends.”

Rent-A-Kitchen provides a wide range of facilities for renters, including stoves, full-size ovens, refrigerators, cooking utensils, bowls and plates, cutlery and various types of seasoning. If you are unsure about how to use certain facilities, Wong would be happy to teach you. Apart from being a place for cooking and dining, Rent-A-Kitchen also offers a range of entertainment facilities, such as television, Play Station 4 and mahjong.

Fresh Tomato Pasta
You can cook Fresh Tomato Pasta in the kitchen. Photo courtesy of Calanthia Wong

Wong says many of the customers are couples who wish to prepare a nice meal together. She says there are no security cameras, giving them more privacy. Best of all, customers do not have to clean their own dishes after their meal. “No one likes to wash dishes,” Wong says. “You can just leave after you dine and play here, you don’t have to worry about cleaning.”

The space is not just rented by foodlovers. Some engaged couples have taken pre-wedding photos at the venues, and companies have organised employee team-building activities there. Some media and advertising companies have also rented the place for photo shoots and filming television programmes. For more details, head to www.facebook.com/RentAKitchenHK.

Edited by Tiffany Tsim

Let’s Get Rolling

A simple and little-known paper art technique 

By Stanley Lam

Origami and paper cutting are popular in Hong Kong but there is another type of paper art that is less well-known – paper quilling.

The delicate artwork is created through rolling, looping, curling or twisting paper strips 3mm to 10mm wide. The coils are then pinched into specific shapes and glued together to form pictures or even 3-D models.

The technique was first used during the Renaissance by European monks and nuns to decorate religious items. It was later used to decorate pictures, boxes and jewellery. Although it only requires simple materials and tools to create a wide variety of artwork, paper quilling is less popular compared with other traditional paper art forms, says local quilling teacher Clare Wong Oi-lam. Relatively few books about the art form have been published around the world.

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A local quilling teacher Clare Wong Oi-lam

“It was only after 2013 when Harbour City hosted a paper quilling exhibition showing artwork by the Russian graphic designer Yulia Brodskaya that people started to notice it in Hong Kong,” says Wong, who has taught paper quilling for nine years. She remains fascinated by the art. “I have to do something related to paper quilling every day, either teaching or creating my own art piece,” she says.

Wong explains that paper quilling can be a very creative art form. Artists can come up with new designs by playing around with the composition of the picture, the use of colours and textures, and different coiling techniques.

Wong also loves the art because it is affordable for most people. The essential tools, such as stamp tongs, scissors and glue, can be easily bought. The one item that is the hardest to find is the quilling pen, which is used to coil paper. It can only be found in Chung Nam Bookstore in Yau Ma Tei, says Wong, and costs HK$35.

“Paper quilling is very easy to learn and is suitable for people of all ages, although smaller kids might find it difficult as they cannot move their fingers flexibly,” says Wong.

With its low cost and level of difficulty, paper quilling art could be the perfect Christmas gift

Head to Head to www.quilling4fun.com for more details.

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Edited by Tiffany Tsim

 

November 2016 – Localisms

The results of September’s legislative council election saw a redrawing of Hong Kong’s political landscape. Six young non-establishment lawmakers who don’t belong to the pan-democratic camp was said to usher in an era of post-Umbrella Movement politics. Many media organisations and commentators referred to them as “localists”. But what does localism mean? In our November 2016 issue, Varsity explores the idea that there is more than one answer to the question and looks at how Hong Kong’s localisms evolved. Please read our stories below:

They’ve been dubbed “localists” but the label doesn’t adequately describe the different political stances of the six young non-establishment activists elected to the legislative council in September and the groups they represent. Varsity talks to some of the new lawmakers, their allies and scholars to see how they differ.

The popular perception of localists today is that they advocate a separate Hong Kong identity and have an antagonistic attitude towards mainland China and Mainlanders. Yet just a decade ago, localism emerged as a movement to cherish and strengthen local identity while embracing inclusivity and universal values. We speak to some of the core members of that movement.

There’s no doubt that localism is popular with Hong Kong’s younger generation. Our survey of more than 500 young people shows that more than two-thirds of respondents said they support localist groups.

 

 

 

 

 

Localisms – Editor’s Note

Localisms Across the Spectrum

Without a doubt, the most eye-catching news of September’s Legislative Council election was the victory of six young non-establishment lawmakers who are not from the pan-democratic camp. Local and international media have broadly described them as “localists” (本土派). Today, most people think of “localists” as those who advocate a separate Hong Kong identity and who have an antagonistic attitude towards the Mainland and Mainlanders.

But it is perhaps misleading to think of localism as a single, unified ideology or movement. Scholars say political localism is split between left and right. Those on the left strive for self-determination through peaceful and rational means, while those on the right want to promote Hong Kong nationalism and support radical protests against Mainlanders. This is why we think it might be meaningful to think about “localisms” instead.

In order to understand these differing values, we listen to pro-independence localists such as Chan Ho-tin from Hong Kong National Party and democratic self-determination advocates such as Demosisto’s Joshua Wong Chi-fung.

While the spotlight is on the new political stars, many seem to have forgotten the roots of localism. Professor Law Wing-sang says the first wave of localism appeared in the 1970s, when a generation of Hongkongers born and raised locally began to express their affection for Hong Kong culture and attachment to the city. This developed into a sense of the need to preserve the city’s way of life and values in the years leading up to the handover.

After the handover, discussions about localism emerged from the protests against the demolition of Star Ferry Pier and Queen’s Pier in Central, which were led mostly by the post-’80s generation of activists. The localism of the time focused on preserving Hong Kong’s unique heritage and the collective memories attached to it. It was also concerned with people’s relationship with the land and the plight of the disadvantaged.

To look at how localism, or localisms, have evolved from this to a movement that wants to separate Hong Kong from the Mainland, and even seeks to build a separate nation, we interview some of the activists who participated in the earlier social movements and ask them what they think of localism today.

Localism has become a hot topic among young people who are now more aware of political issues than ever. Yet, some have observed that they seem to have a narrower understanding of what localism means, and have a more hostile attitude towards Mainlanders.

The Occupy Movement in 2014 – which was sparked by Beijing’s refusal to allow a free and open nomination process for the election of the Chief Executive – is said to have “awakened” local youngsters. But Hong Kong-Mainland tensions have been simmering for the past few years, fuelled by such issues as the competition for infant milk powder and maternity ward beds, and parallel traders. These have also shaped the new form of localism.

Polling more than 500 young people as well as talking to concern groups established by secondary school students, Varsity looks into youngsters’ understanding of different localist groups and the rate of their support for localism.

Localism has changed the political landscape but it is not unified and unchanging. In this 2016 November issue, we try to look at how localisms have evolved and how young people view localism today. Our reporters and editors have put in a lot of effort to produce this issue. I sincerely hope you enjoy your read.

Editor-in-Chief

Vivienne Tsang

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The New Localists

Politicians and parties labelled as localist embrace different ideologies
by Chester Chan & Rammie Chui

As Sixtus Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching of Youngspiration stepped up to take their oaths of office as legislative councillors last month, they unfurled flags proclaiming “Hong Kong is not China”. Leung vowed to serve the “Hong Kong nation”.

To many observers, this was a sign of things to come for the next four years, after six new non-establishment lawmakers from outside the traditional pan-democratic camp were elected in September. In the wake of their victories, local and international media were quick to hail a new post-Umbrella Movement era in Hong Kong politics. Many headlines referred to their election as a victory for “localists”    (本土派).

But the all-embracing term hides the fact there are significant differences in ideology among those who have been grouped together under the label. Today, the term “localist” is most commonly associated with those who seek a separate identity from China, in some cases a separate nation, and who take an antagonistic attitude towards Mainlanders.

However, these qualities may not best describe the views of Eddie Chu Hoi-dick, one of the six new legislators to be placed under the label. Chu was one of the activists who promoted “local” (本土) values a decade ago when the movement was more focused on creating a Hong Kong identity through preserving Hong Kong’s unique heritage, sharing common experiences and values and rethinking Hong Kong people’s relationship with the land.

These earlier approaches to localism have been virtually eclipsed since the announcement of the restrictive framework for universal suffrage by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) and the 79-day Occupy Movement in 2014. Since 2014, the tension between mainland China and Hong Kong has not eased. Issues such as parallel trading, the disappearance and arrests of Hong Kong booksellers and the disqualification of pro-independence candidates in the Legislative Council election have further worsened Hong Kong-Mainland China relations.

This has prompted some to worry about the future of Hong Kong after 2047, when the Sino-British Joint Declaration’s guarantee that Hong Kong’s pre-1997 way of life would remain unchanged for 50 years comes to an end. And instead of calling for the government to re-initiate the process of political reform, the new non-establishment politicians are proposing self-determination for Hong Kong. Although the six legislators who have been branded localists all support the idea of self-determination, political scientist Ma Ngok says they have very different values.

“Their ideologies are very different, one is right-wing, the other left-wing, they are two extremes,” says Ma, an associate professor from the Department of Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK).

Ma says it is difficult to define localists but based on the September legislative council election, he says the new forces can be split into two camps.

The first camp, which he would call localist, comprises the CPR Alliance (Civic Passion led by Cheng Chung-tai, Proletariat Political Institute led by Raymond Wong Wuk-man and Hong Kong Resurgence led by Horace Chin Wan-kan) and Youngspiration and the only openly pro-independence candidate Chan Chak-to.

Ma says these parties or groups emphasise the idea of Hong Kong nationalism which he says can lead to more xenophobic emotions. He cites the views of Chin from Hong Kong Resurgence, whose advocacy of “Hong Kong City-State Theory” contains racist elements that denigrate Mainlanders and opposes new arrivals coming from the Mainland. Some of the anti-parallel trader actions organised by other localist groups also involve activities and rhetoric that discriminates against Mainlanders.

In contrast, Ma describes the main members of the other “localist” camp – Eddie Chu Hoi-dick from the Land Justice League, teacher Lau Siu-lai who organised roadside “democracy classrooms” during the Occupy Movement and former Occupy Movement student leader Nathan Law Kwun-chung from Demosisto – as self-determination advocates.