Hong Kong is one of the world's bustling megacities, and one with a partially British history.
In the first half of the semester, we will get an overview of Hong Kong's cultural history by studying events, people, places, documents, traditions/rituals, and objects/artefacts that help us get a deeper understanding of daily life in Hong Kong before, during, and after British rule. We will look at Hong Kong's history (a) before the British arrived, (b) during the Opium Wars between the U.K. and China, and (c) during the period in which Hong Kong was a British colony (1842-1997).
This will be followed by studying contemporary culture in Hong Kong since the handover to China in 1997. We will try to analyse how things have continued to change under Chinese rule from a bird's eye perspective and, more "down to earth", how ordinary citizens live their lives in one the world's largest, most well-known cities.
We will also study Hong Kong's education system and its most important schools and universities.
Lastly, because the year 2019/20 also marks the 30th anniverary of the peaceful revolution of 1989/90 in Germany, we will also try to find similarities between the movements for democracy in Europe during the late 1980s and the current protests against the Chinese central government in Hong Kong, which recently have been frequently covered in the news.
By understanding the past and the present, we'll try to have an outlook as to what might come in Hong Kong's future.
This course is relatively fact-based and less theoretical than usual, i.e. it is supposed to be useful and practically oriented for future teachers of English. Bachelor students are of course equally welcome. |
