Hello again! I’m now officially a little over halfway through my internship in Hong Kong. The last few weeks have been Chinese New Year, so there have been some amazing celebrations going on with festivals, fireworks, and lots of food. Myself and the other interns here decided to celebrate by taking a trip to Taipei, Taiwan for the weekend before the celebrations started. During our trip, we got to explore so much from the sandy Baishawan beach to the foggy mountain town of Jiufen. Even though we were approaching a holiday week, Taiwan was still extremely lively and had so much to offer. To finish off our trip, we attended a temple on New Year’s Eve where people gathered to pray for a great year to come. After getting back, we took a day trip to Shenzhen, China where we got to have a traditional New Year’s dinner and set off fireworks.
Looking back on it, the great times I’ve been having in Hong Kong and beyond have made the identities that I struggled with back home become much easier to handle. Although, in the US, I struggle more financially, Hong Kong has options for food, drinks, and activities, at all ranges of prices. Having the option to spend my money in any capacity I want has been a major weight off my shoulders during my internship abroad experience. Here, it feels like instead of the title “poor college student”, I’m just another student trying to get by the same way everyone else is, and people go out of their way to help. Many stores will offer special student prices that are discounted heavily below the already low prices of their busy shops, even if it means they’re not making money. It’s times like these where the collectivist values of China show themselves different from the US. This really makes me think differently about how I identify myself back home and how money is perceived. I can’t help but wonder if a part of the reason why students in less stable financial positions struggle so much is because of the negative stimuli that comes with being “poor” in the United States.
I’ve experienced culture shock in other ways as well during my time here. Starting from my first day at work, I showed up around 10 minutes before my scheduled time to find an empty office. To my surprise, my supervisor told me that, even though my contract started at 9 AM, nobody really showed up until after 10:30, but they often stayed past 7 or 8 PM. Compared to back home, everything here seems shifted a few hours later in the day. As someone who normally goes to sleep around 10 PM, I had to get used to not getting home until after 7. Additionally, instructions from employers tended to be more about the big picture of what you’re doing—how your task leads to the end goal of the project—and you’re supposed to figure out the in-betweens yourself. It was scary at first to ask questions to my supervisor and coworkers, but eventually we have all grown closer and talk to each other regularly about things both in and out of work. Another cultural challenge was the pressure to go out every night. No matter what day of the week it is, there are always going to be clubs and bars that are full of people in Hong Kong. When being in a new country, it can be extremely easy to convince yourself that you need to immerse yourself in this daily, but it gets tiring fast. By making sure I allow time for myself to relax and go to bed at a reasonable hour, I was able to make myself feel much better while still managing to have lots of fun.
So far, this internship has been an extremely transformative and valuable experience, and I’m so grateful for the opportunities I’ve had so far. I would recommend that all interns travel to other countries while they’re interning abroad, since there’s so much to see and it’s often much more affordable than back at home. Also, keep an open mind and try to understand where the beliefs and values of a culture come from, even if you might not understand them, and you will likely see the benefits of how those values and beliefs shape cultures into what they are today.
Kyler Creech, Diverse Duck Ambassador
GlobalWorks International Internship in Hong Kong