{"id":1702,"date":"2011-11-16T11:59:20","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T03:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2022-11-18T16:02:47","modified_gmt":"2022-11-18T08:02:47","slug":"hong-kong-style-ocamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2011\/11\/hong-kong-style-ocamp\/","title":{"rendered":"Orientation Week, Hong Kong Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

What orientation programmes tell us about different cultures<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reporters: Sandy Ho and Gavin Li<\/strong><\/p>\n

You might have come across groups of young people wearing identical T-shirts hurrying down busy streets in bustling city centres before. You may even have seen them mimicking the people on the treadmills in a fitness centre across the street on a busy footbridge in Wan Chai, or shouting \u201cwow\u201d in Causeway Bay\u2019s Times Square for no apparent reason at all.<\/p>\n

These fresh-faced youngsters are in fact university freshmen striving to complete various tasks and beat their fellows in a game called \u201ccity hunt\u201d, a highlight of university orientation camps, commonly known as \u201co\u2019camp\u201d, in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really fun to go around Hong Kong with a group of new friends. Some groupmates know a place better and the others are more familiar with somewhere else. [By] cooperating closely with each other, I feel a sense of achievement [when I see we can finish the task],\u201d says Jessie Kwok Ji-ying, a participant of the orientation camp at Hong Kong Baptist University.<\/p>\n

Apart from gaining great satisfaction during the game, Kwok thinks the \u201ccity hunt\u201d also helps to develop solidarity and a sense of belonging to the group.<\/p>\n

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The group that squeezes the most students into the phone booth wins.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Not everyone is pleased with their presence though. \u201cIt\u2019s as if I have entered a wet market with people shouting at you to buy fish and vegetables from them. Do they have to do it on the street?\u201d asks passer-by Yeung Suk-ching in Central.<\/p>\n

Dr. Edwin Chan Ho-yin, Chairperson of the Joint Committee on New Student Orientation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) thinks students may be so caught up in the moment, they are not aware of other people\u2019s reactions, \u201cMany are happy about being able to get into university, so they might think the world revolves around them and they can just shout slogans on the street and then run away,\u2019\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n

While freshmen in Hong Kong build team spirit by playing games that emulate reality TV, their counterparts elsewhere in the world achieve the same goal in their own distinctive ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have this race on the river. Every major builds their own boat. Two people are gonna sit on the boat with paddles and the whole school is gonna be there, and you wear the T-shirt from your subject,\u201d Swedish student Stina Alpsten says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t necessarily have to be a boat. It could be anything that could float on water,\u201d her friend Joanna Bergkvist, who is also from Sweden, adds.<\/p>\n

In South Korea, freshmen express their excitement in a less public way. Michael Kim Young-woo, a student at Sung Kyun Kwan University in South Korea recalls an activity called \u201cRoom Attack\u201d during their orientation camp.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery group has their own room. In the night, we have to attack the other room. We grab some Soju, a type of Korean alcohol, and the group captain would sing some songs and introduce himself, and we will have a drinking game with that group all night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kim notes that the drinking games can serve the same function of fostering unity among the students as a \u201ccity hunt\u201d does in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

He says there is no reason to play games off campus, as they would not find it fun to do things in front of the public. \u201cI think Korean students don\u2019t like such things. If we do the games outside the campus, other people are gonna see us. If we do that, like showing off my university student status, I think Korean people don\u2019t like it. We have to act humble.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cCity hunt\u201d may well be the climax for Hong Kong students during the orientation week, but what freshmen remember most afterwards is probably the cheer slogans that their seniors teach them.<\/p>\n

University students in Hong Kong usually call this group activity \u201cdem cheers\u201d or \u201cdem beat\u201d. Participants shout rhyming slogans to talk themselves up or berate others. This is usually accompanied by a set of gestures such as clapping their hands or thumping their feet on the floor. The purpose is to give freshmen their group identity and sense of attachment. It is so popular on university campuses that it has virtually become a tradition over the last decade.<\/p>\n

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University students in the process of "dem beat"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou can say that \u2018dem beat\u2019 is like a battle cry from the past, with drums playing and military marches to boost the troops\u2019 morale,\u201d says CUHK student Alan Leung Wai-kit. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think there is any significant meaning behind it. . . Actually it reminds me more of what primitives used to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carmen Ng Kar-men from the University of Waterloo in Canada says freshmen have to come up with their own slogans instead of learning it from their seniors and there is no hand clapping and foot thumping or at least much less than that seen in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Professor Saskia Witteborn at the CUHK finds it striking that students do so many things in groups on campus, including the collective singing and clapping.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose were things that were new to me because the little bit of orientation that I\u2019d seen in American campuses was quieter. There was definitely no singing and clapping and games going on campus, but here [in Hong Kong] it seems to me it is very important to engage people to become comfortable with each other,\u201d says Witteborn.<\/p>\n

Another highlight of the orientation week apart from \u201ccity hunt\u201d is \u201cWu Pin\u201d (literally meaning mutual slashing in Cantonese) or exchanging insults, which is more prominent at CUHK. It is an occasion during which opposing groups, usually from the different colleges, take turns at shouting slogans to insult and taunt their opponents.<\/p>\n

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Opposing groups of students square off in "Wu Pin"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There have been controversies over the obscenity and vulgarity of the slogans during \u201cWu Pin\u201d in the past.
\nThe verbal battle is a way for students to heighten team spirit over a short time by establishing enemies.
\nHaving said that, there is also a harmonious side to local \u201co\u2019camp\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Hong Kong, as elsewhere, freshmen are usually divided into groups, each headed by seniors who act as leaders. What makes the local o\u2019camp unique is that the newbies are told to address their seniors as Jo ba and Jo ma (meaning \u201cgroup dad\u201d and \u201cgroup mum\u201d).<\/p>\n

CUHK student Alan Leung Wai-kit feels comfortable calling his group leaders by these names. \u201cCompared with \u2018group leader\u2019, I think \u2018group dad\u2019 sounds friendlier. \u2018Group leader\u2019 itself feels more administrative while \u201cJo ba\u201d really gives you a sense of family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leung adds that these Jo ba and Jo ma take care of the freshmen as if they were really their sons and daughters, citing instances of them helping their exhausted \u201cchildren\u201d to carry their belongings.
\nProfessor Joseph Bosco from the Department of Anthropology at the CUHK finds the borrowing of the motherhood idea in the student domain \u201cvery interesting\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the senior students] are like a mother, in a sense. They have to take care of the child who has to be taught how to behave in this new environment, like bringing a child into the world, the university world,\u201d says Bosco.<\/p>\n

He also attributes it to traditional Chinese hierarchies. \u201cAcross the Chinese, you don\u2019t say just tongxue (classmate). You usually say xuemei (school sister), xuezhang (school brother). You always have a clear sense of hierarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nA similar orientation camp tradition can also be found in Korea, says Korean student Michael Kim. There, senior students voluntarily fork out cash to buy milk for the freshmen in their group for one month. Kim explains they are willing to do so because they were treated with the same hospitality when they were freshmen.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, a variant of the senior-junior relationship can also be found in Brazil, only instead of a familial tie it is based on a \u201cmaster-servant\u201d relationship.<\/p>\n

University of Sao Paulo student Douglas Trindade describes an initiation rite called \u201cped\u00e1gio\u201d popular in Brazil. First, freshmen paint their bodies in different colours and boys get the weirdest haircut imaginable. The new students are then taken as \u201cslaves\u201d, purely for amusement, by their seniors and are asked to beg for money on the roadside from the people in cars that have stopped at the traffic lights. Afterwards, they have to give all the money to their \u201cproprietor-senior\u201d. Half of the money goes to either charity or for a party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am pretty sure this slavery joke has nothing to do with our colonial past. It\u2019s just funny to consider someone your master for a day, you know?\u201d says Trindade.<\/p>\n

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Douglas Trindade (left) peforming his \u201ctrote\u201d, which means prank in Portuguese, on freshers\u2019 day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While university orientation programmes everywhere are mainly about having fun and making new friends, there are obvious cultural differences in achieving the same goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Norwegian students are known to have mainly, and often only, activities involving alcohol,\u201d says Victoria Steinland from the University of Oslo. \u201cSome say the drinking culture among Norwegian students is a little out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinland adds that there is a festival with free events such as popular lectures, outdoor cinema and even beer brewing classes every day during what they call the \u201cbuddy weeks\u201d, which last for two weeks.<\/p>\n

Whereas in Germany, the \u201co\u2019week\u201d puts more focus on practicalities. \u201cThere\u2019re orientation lectures of all kinds, even how student representation works!\u201d says Janwillem Van De Loo who studies at the University of Hamburg.<\/p>\n

Van De Loo thinks orientation week is something that belongs more to the Anglophone countries. \u201cI remember Rayner, a friend from Sydney, telling me very extreme things like they get dropped off in small groups in the desert after getting hijacked really drunk from a freshers\u2019 party,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

In contrast, there are in general more ice-breaking games during o\u2019camp in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Hong Kong, it\u2019s not as culturally easy for strangers to meet each other, so you have to provide not only more opportunities, but you have to actually do more to break the ice,\u201d says anthropologist Joseph Bosco.
\nHe adds that all ice-breaking games are intended to help people get to know each other more quickly. Drawing on experience from his education in the US, he thinks American students may find the games played during the orientation camp in Hong Kong very childish and not want to join in. He says: \u201cThey consider themselves adult already.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Varsity takes a look at o’camp with Hong Kong characteristics and look at how orientation activities on Hong Kong campuses compare with those overseas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1990,96,7],"tags":[27,33,47,55],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-121","category-november-2011","category-periscope","tag-cuhk","tag-culture","tag-education","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":84,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2269,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/2269"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}