Vivian Chung’s faint British accent tells a story her
appearance does not relay. Despite the typical Southern California
fall attire she wears ““ tinted Chanel sunglasses, black
flip-flops, black tank top and jeans ““ the Chinese
second-year grew up in a different culture than that of Los
Angeles.
Just more than a year ago, Chung, a psychology student, left her
home in Hong Kong to begin college in Los Angeles. She had visited
the city only a few times, when she was younger, and envisioned it
as a reflection of media images such as the television show
“The O.C.”
“I wanted to go to California. It sounded amazing,”
she said. “I wanted a change. I wanted to be away from
everything. I wanted to experience new things.”
But though Chung is thousands of miles from her Chinese home,
the hint of a British accent in her speech is a constant reminder
of where she is from.
China ceded Hong Kong to Britain in 1842 after the Opium War,
leading to more than a century of British rule over the island,
which included British teachers in Hong Kong schools ““ thus
Chung’s accent.
Chung said that though most students have been accepting of her,
she constantly encounters surprise at how well she speaks
English.
Stacy Young, a second-year physiological science student and
Chung’s close friend and roommate, said she noticed
Chung’s British accent immediately when she met her during
freshman year and assumed she was from Hong Kong.
Instead of being surprised by Chung’s English, Young said
she was impressed by her bravery in coming to a new country by
herself.
“She’s courageous, gutsy,” Young said.
“She’s the epitome of growing maturity in college.
She’s so much different than the first time I met
her.”
Chung spent the early years of her education in traditional
Chinese schools where, she said, from first grade on students deal
with the pressures of midterms, finals and class rankings that were
used as opportunities for parents to boast about their
children’s success.
“It wasn’t about going to school and finger
painting. It was about studying,” she said.
Recreational activities were not emphasized the way they are in
U.S schools. During exam time, the few recreational outlets
students had, such as physical education, would be
“sacrificed” in favor of studying sessions, she
said.
Fearing the potential fallout from the transfer of Hong Kong
back to China in July 1997, Chung’s parents fled with her and
her younger brother William to Canada before she entered fourth
grade. The transfer had been agreed upon in a 1984 treaty between
China and the United Kingdom.
In contrast to traditional Chinese school, where there was
“no time to slack off,” and the atmosphere was
intensely competitive, Chung said her school in Canada was relaxed
and more about trying out various areas of study and
extracurricular activities.
“The days were a lot more spread out, a lot more free
time. I didn’t have to work that much. I was concentrating on
learning English. Intellectually it wasn’t very challenging.
There was just a language barrier,” she said.
After three years in Canada, Chung’s family returned to
Hong Kong, where she enrolled in a private international school. In
her new school she was surrounded mostly by the white and Indian
children of Hong Kong businessmen.
The return to Hong Kong presented Chung with a new language
barrier: She could speak, read, and write in English, but could not
write in Chinese very well.
She said the international schools in Hong Kong are
Americanized, taught by English-speaking teachers unlike in
traditional Chinese school, and influenced by American pop culture.
Chung said she did not spend time with many of the few Asian
students at her international school, but the ones she did know
were Americanized just like her.
While traditional Chinese students would go sing karaoke, Chung
said she and her friends adopted a more American social lifestyle
by bar- and club-hopping. Chung said that is one of the things she
misses most about Hong Kong, which has a legal drinking age of
18.
However, she said she is loving her UCLA experience and is even
considering staying here after graduation because of the laid-back
atmosphere and ever-present sunshine.
But UCLA is not exactly a reflection of the images she saw in
Hong Kong, she said.
“There was a definite stereotype (in Hong Kong) of L.A.
people being beautiful and they’re all blond, all tan and all
the guys are surfers,” she said.
Chung also faced a situation familiar to many new students,
international or not: discovering that she was no longer the
smartest student in class.
“I didn’t expect UCLA to be so challenging,”
she said. “I have to work really hard just to be
mediocre.”
Chung is not alone in her struggle to deal with the newfound
challenges of university-level education or adjustment to cultural
differences. There are many student groups on campus geared toward
helping international students fit in.
Tania Makayed, a fourth-year economics student and president of
the International Students Association, said the ISA provides a
network of support for international students from across the world
to make the often-challenging transition to life in the United
States.
“When people come from abroad, a lot of them tend to stick
to people from their own groups. We try to break the people away
from that. We want to make sure they blend into this campus and
make American friends,” she said.
But even though the California sunshine has wooed Chung into
loving UCLA, it hasn’t completely stolen her heart.
“I want to stay here in the future, but I don’t know
what my parents would think about that. Hong Kong’s
definitely still home.”