Sullivan in Hong Kong

Dr. Nancy Sullivan took the trip of a lifetime last year when she spent 10 months in Hong Kong through her Senior Fulbright Scholarship award. The Fulbright Scholarship is a highly competitive international educational exchange program that provides its recipients with grants to lecture or conduct research in a variety of academic and professional fields. Sullivan is one of five A&M-Corpus Christi professors to be honored with this prestigious scholarship.
While in Hong Kong, she taught English to first year college students while conducting research on Hong Kongers’ ideology and language.

Did you experience culture shock when you arrived in Hong Kong?
Well I had never been to Asia and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Hong Kong through the Fulbright. I love the Asian culture and I admire their strong respect for elders and ancestors. It was more of a people shock. There were 7 million people and I wasn’t used to public transportation where everybody is compacted. That was the hardest part.

Were the students inhibited to speak because you’re a westerner?
Its not that [the students] are not comfortable with it, rather they were shy, and because they were shy, I found myself answering many of the questions that I asked them.

Was it difficult teaching them your curriculum?
The first semester I taught them grammar and I thought, “Oh my goodness, I am going to have to rethink this,” because they really don’t know English at all. So I simplified my grammar class. But when I got their first tests back, they nailed them. So, I misjudged these students.

What type of research did you conduct?
I worked with a Chinese woman and did a questionnaire. Hong Kong is such an interesting city because it was a British colony and English was very important for success, but it was not used in the home. What I was looking at was how language attitudes intersected with social and national ideology. For example, if you identified yourself as a Honger Konger rather that Hong Konger-Chinese, what was your attitude towards English, Cantonese, and Pûtônghuà (p tông hwä ), China’s native tongue. I am also working with social psychologist and he really likes to investigate items of patriotism and nationality. We did a similar study here in the United States.

What was your favorite thing to do during your free time?
My husband and I traveled outside of Hong Kong. I went to a conference in Beijing and saw the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, and Tiananmen Square. Then we went to Thailand over Christmas break, Vietnam during Chinese New Year, and during Spring Break, we went back to mainland China and floated down the Yangtze River.

What was your most challenging experience?
FOOD. The food is very strange for me because I am a picky eater. When my husband and I went to Thailand on a tour, our guide stopped at a bug market and they had these piles of fried roaches. They eat things in China that we normally don’t eat. For instance, now I know where chicken feet go. And everything is served with its head on it, like duck.

Another challenge was when we were overseas when 9-11 happened. It’s really interesting to live outside of the United States when something happens. People would come up to my husband and me and make an effort and say they were sorry.

What where the pre-conceived notions about Americans that your students had?
There were so many westerners in Hong Kong but when I got to mainland China, people still wanted their picture taken with you. When you would go places, they would give you their child to hold and take pictures with you.

What were some of the lessons you learned while in Hong Kong?
I am more adventuress than I ever thought I would be. We didn’t know where we were going, we would just get on public transportation with 3 million other people and go. I found that I was able to survive in this country where it could have been very overwhelming to live. If my husband had not been there to push me, I think that I would have just stayed inside.

What about your trip made you feel successful in the role you had there?
The two semesters I was there, I taught the same group of first year students. At the end of their first year, the students had to decide which of the three tracks in the English program they were going to take. Of the 40 students over 20 of them decided they wanted to go into the linguistics and language track that I taught. I don’t think the chair was too happy because that only left about eight students for each of the other two tracks.

If you had to, what would you change about this experience?
We would have stayed longer. When we got back we weren’t ready to be home. There were still many things to explore in mainland China and Hong Kong. We really enjoyed Asia.

Is there another trip in the works?
I’m working on it. We were just on the edge of discovering our way around, and then it was over.

Dr. Sullivan returned from Hong Kong after 10 amazing months. Sullivan’s direct experience in Hong Kong is now an inspiration to her students and colleagues at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi as they seek to look beyond the familiar and explore the many cultures the world has to offer.