The ‘Real’ Hong Kong Tour
The ‘Real’ Hong Kong Tour
Wong Ming Sheung, Mandy and Lee Yee Wa, Eva's Story
Faculty of Arts and Faculty of Business and Economics (HKU Business School)
BA and BBA(Acc&Fin)
Eva Lee and Mandy Wong partnered with CEDARS to plan, organize and execute 2 activities, namely The “real” Hong Kong: Wah Fu Estate Tour and ‘Let’s Go Grocery Shopping’ to promote daily cultural integration among local and non-local students. They found that they have picked up event-organization skills. Both activities were well received by participants. Their tips to success are: having a good preparation, flexibility and be proactive.
The 2 girls believed that these 2 activities could show the underrated and unseen side of Hong Kong to the international students. Hong Kong has always been known as a cosmopolitan metropolis in all the movies and touristic advertisements. However, people seldom dig deep into the authentic parts of the city’s local culture.
“We aimed to engage our non-local schoolmates in the local lifestyle through these 2 activities. They were offered the opportunities to know more about the grassroots culture by visiting the public housing estate and grocery store,” said Eva.
"The participants were amazed by the city myths.”
In the Wah Foo Estate tour, the participants were taken to the waterfall bay. They also took a walk around the shrine of 8000 abandoned statues. As Eva pointed out, these 2 places are the most unique spots in Wah Foo Estate but tourists will never get the chance to visit there unless they go there with their local friends.
As for the grocery store visit, Mandy recalled, “The participants were amazed by the city myths told by the grocery store’s owner. Even though it was a hassle for me to translate those local stories for them, they were able to comprehend what was going on and found this session very informative.”
Both of them described their event-planning experience as fruitful and rewarding. It was the first time for them to organise everything on their own. They still could not believe that they had successfully accomplished this task.
“It was our first time to become a tour guide. There were more then 10 participants in our tours. We found it difficult to take care of every single participant. Luckily, no one felt left out during the tour,” said Mandy. Both of them hoped that CEDARS would organize more cultural trips like this in the future so that HKU students can have more exposure to the unknown side of Hong Kong.
Written by:
Tracy Wong
Year 1, Faculty of Arts
April 2021