Year-End Summary Report (Part 2)
Today the lab seniors all went to Sai Kung for a trip. I’m the only one left. Thinking about it, I’ve been in Hong Kong for half a year and haven’t been out to explore at all. Half the reason is my diligence, half is my laziness — they left at 7 AM while I wanted to catch up on weekend sleep. Continuing from where I left off.
Addendum first
I didn’t write about undergraduate teaching in the previous post because I’m not familiar with it. But thinking more carefully, I do know a bit. So let me write what I know. Hong Kong’s undergrad program used to be three years — starting next year, it will change to four. Apparently, because some political courses were added to the curriculum, there were protests accusing the school of brainwashing. I’ll write based on the three-year system. The syllabi are all online here — Level 5 is for graduate students, the rest are undergraduate courses.
http://www.comp.polyu.edu.hk/en/taught_courses/syllabus/index.php
First difference from home: curriculum flexibility. Courses can be added or removed at any time, as long as the Department’s Program Leader agrees and the Academic Committee gives a quick review — no need for school leadership approval. Tongji’s Software School courses were once very flexible too — during the first three years after the school was founded, our curriculum didn’t need to go through the course selection system and could be adjusted as needed. But later, the university decided the Software School was causing trouble and demanded we submit our training plans to the course selection system for “standardized management.” Standardized means convenient for the leadership. What do the higher-ups know about which courses should or shouldn’t be offered? All they care about is “standardized management” — meaning minimizing trouble. Submit your plan years in advance, then follow it strictly. If you deviate, you’re punished. That’s what they call management — maintaining stability above all else. Effectiveness is secondary. Currently, the Software School’s syllabus is adjusted once a year — better than other schools’ once every four years. But annual adjustment still has problems. For instance, if I adjust the syllabus now, it only applies to students entering in 2012. Previously enrolled students don’t benefit immediately — they follow the old rules. “Old methods for old people, new methods for new people.” The problem is: if I add a course for current juniors, it won’t actually start until four years later, because the 2012 cohort are freshmen and won’t be juniors for three years. Predicting which software technologies will be useful in four years is nearly impossible. I participated in the Software School’s 2007 training plan adjustment, and it’s mostly been implemented. I’m proud that I successfully predicted mobile development would take off and added an Android course — I resisted Nokia’s temptation and didn’t include Symbian. Now the Android course has Google’s partnership and is working well. Unfortunately, I also added J2ME to the curriculum — a miscalculation. Who knew J2ME would die so fast? Removing it would also take four years to take effect. My sincere apologies to students who took J2ME or are about to.
Second difference: practicality. Hong Kong’s financial industry is developed, but IT is mediocre — very few software companies. The local success of WhatsApp (or WeChat, which might be more familiar as its Chinese clone) is celebrated as Hong Kong’s pride. So the Computer Department also offers finance-related courses. Programming isn’t emphasized much — no C/C++, only Java. If you want to be a coder after graduation, you use Java for information systems. They also offer iPhone programming — another practical touch. I remember when Tongji’s Software School wanted to offer Windows Programming, some leaders objected, saying it was advertising for Microsoft. Which is why our Android course is now called “Mobile Application Development” rather than “Android Application Development” — given Google’s relationship with the government, naming it outright “Android” might get it rejected outright. The department has decent hardware — an Apple lab with 40 iMacs for Apple courses. Students bring their own phones — for Hong Kong people, buying an iOS device isn’t a big deal. Also, class sizes are smaller — no 80-person classes like in China.
This semester, I participated in two undergraduate courses: TA for COMP201 and exam invigilator for COMP200.
COMP201 is called “Principles of Programming” — actually Java programming, a first-year course. My role was lab assistant. Every week, there’s a lab session with small exercises for students to do, with TAs available for help. This is actually an excellent way to learn programming, especially for beginners. The Software School used to do this — when I learned C, Zhu Hongming was my TA. But for some reason, it seems to have been discontinued. Now first-year C/C++ is all lecture, less practice. I also graded assignments. The professor assigns homework every week — fill-in-the-blanks, coding problems. All students get the same questions, yet I wonder why everyone makes different mistakes. If you gave the same problems to everyone in China, the submitted answers would probably all be identical. Don’t Hong Kong students compare answers? Later I found the homework of a few mainland students (easy to identify by their pinyin names) — all identical, including the coding problems. I felt relieved — this was the homeland I know.
COMP200 is even more interesting — it’s like an integrated practicum. The exam is called “Amazing Race” — like National Treasure puzzle-solving. Starting at 8 AM, students go to various locations on campus, using their computer science knowledge to solve puzzles and advance. There are 10 levels; you can skip two. The levels I remember: calculating partial derivatives of equations, running 1000 meters and then writing code; writing a Python script (they have Python courses too) to calculate BMI, inputting test data, and the result points to the next location; binary-to-ASCII conversion; digital logic circuits; QR code scanning, etc. Through this project, students integrate everything they’ve learned. This project made a strong impression on me. I thought about running something similar at the Jiading campus — with its vast space, it’d be even better than PolyU’s. But it’s probably unrealistic — QR scanning requires an Android or iPhone; you can’t force every student to buy one. PolyU has campus-wide WiFi, so students can look things up anytime. Scanning a QR code to reveal a URL is useless if your phone can’t get online. Also, if we put ten clue notes in one spot, would teams sabotage each other — the first team takes all the clues and everyone else is stuck?
Some readers say I always assume the worst about Chinese people. To some extent, it comes down to social trust and moral standards. You can see it in small things. The other day I went out to eat. The food was taking too long. I asked, “Has this dish been started? If not, forget it, I’ll pay and leave.” The owner said directly, “It hasn’t been started,” apologized for being too busy. In China, whenever you ask this, the answer is always the same: “Almost ready, almost ready, it’s in the wok.” But what’s really happening? It can’t always be that the dish just went into the wok when you asked. The first time someone told me directly “hasn’t been started” was here in Hong Kong.
Public Services:
PolyU’s informatization is excellent, shown in several areas. WiFi covers the entire campus — small campus, easy to cover. Log in with your school ID. Not just the school — all of Hong Kong seems WiFi covered. PCCW hotspots everywhere, with agreements that allow students to log on for free with their IDs. As a Hong Kong student, you can get WiFi anywhere in the city. I haven’t even bothered with a 3G data plan since arriving — completely unnecessary when WiFi is everywhere.
Within the department: upon registration, each person gets a Novell ID — your login for everything: email, printers, Unix SSH, cloud terminals.
Every student gets an unlimited-capacity email. All department notices go through email. This seems normal in a company, but it’s incredibly hard to promote in mainland universities. Last year, the Software School deployed Microsoft Live@EDU (which PolyU also uses), giving everyone an @sse.tongji.edu.cn email. It never took off with faculty — some strongly protested being forced to change their email. They prefer 163 or QQ mail. Send a notice to their school mail, and they claim they didn’t receive it. The promotion has been largely unsuccessful. This reflects the management chaos.
Printers: each student gets 50-200 pages of printing credit per month (research students get more), shared across the entire department. Very convenient. Contrast this with the Software School’s copiers and printers, locked with rules like “faculty only, students caught using will be warned” — seems stingy. One important thing: no printing books. That’s copyright infringement. If you try to print out a PDF book, you’ll be invited for tea with IT Admin immediately. Copying is also forbidden. Books here are outrageously expensive — often $100 USD. Many Hong Kongers go to Shenzhen to buy mainland pirated editions for 1/10 the price. There’s the socialist advantage.
Cloud terminals are very useful. Back at home, whenever the lab needs new software installed, the IT staff suffer — install on one machine, then image it across the network, often taking a full day. PolyU uses XEN cloud platform VMs: set up one VM, turn it into a template, clone countless instances, one per person. With virtual desktops and cloud storage, teaching is very convenient. You can log into your VM from anywhere, and your data is still there. When the course ends, the VM is deleted. This is vastly superior to network imaging and restore cards.
All courses here are online: submitting assignments, grading, discussions — all on the web. Some professors even upload lecture videos. The school runs a platform called learn.polyu.edu.hk, integrated with the course selection system. Much better than back home. For example, when collecting assignments, I add an Assignment with a due date, and it’s done — students upload themselves, submission closes after the deadline, and the system emails the professor and TAs saying “go grade.” After grading, the weight of each assignment as a percentage of the total grade is calculated automatically by the system. At home, students submit by email, hard copy, CD-ROMs. There are open-source systems for this, but recalling the pain of setting up a teaching website in China — it’s a long story.
Other:
Looking through this post, it seems lacking in bombshells. Let me add some at the end. If this gets censored, it’ll be because of this section. There’s a statue of Democracy Goddess on campus. When I first arrived, I thought it was a knockoff of the Statue of Liberty — the American one holds an ice cream cone in one hand, while ours holds something in both hands. I later learned there’s deeper meaning. I was too young then — I had no idea this was something that originated from the mainland.
Corresponding to this goddess is a Democracy Wall. People can post big-character posters on this wall, demonstrating freedom of speech. But after six months of observation, I’ve found that so-called capitalist freedom and democracy indeed have problems. Whether it’s letting people take to the streets to “stroll” or letting them post anything on the wall, it’s mostly about letting off steam. Take the wall: the most famous incident this semester was a big-character poster attacking a dormitory warden. Students wrote that the warden misused dorm fees, suppressed student freedom, was autocratic and arbitrary — in oversized font. They even got a foreigner to write in English, saying the warden wasn’t just unfriendly to Hong Kongers but also to international students. After two weeks of struggle sessions, the warden threatened legal action. The poster-writers immediately caved, wrote an apology letter saying all accusations were fabricated, that the warden had been dedicated and kind to them, that they were just bitter about not being allowed to play mahjong all night in the dorms and disturbing others’ rest.
As for the “strolls” — also about letting off steam. When I first arrived, the Filipino domestic helper residency issue was big. On weekends, two groups would take to the streets — one supporting their residency, one opposing it — shouting at each other with megaphones. Then they’d go home, and that’d be the end of it. You do your strolling, the government does what it was going to do anyway — they don’t decide policy based on whose megaphone was louder.
Because Hong Kongers can vent in real life, they don’t need to vent in the virtual world. Their BBS forums are boring and low-quality. Unlike mainland China, where people use all kinds of literary devices — humor, innuendo, metaphor, allegory, using the past to criticize the present, pointing at the mulberry while cursing the locust tree — to express discontent. Maybe decades from now, these online essays will be collected as classic literary works of our era.
I’ll skip research for now — it’s only been half a year. Let me observe a bit more.