Pre-trip post

Welcome to our blog! We are a team of 13 TPJC students and 2 teachers embarking on a 6 day Economics and Geography Educational and Cultural Exchange Learning Trip to Hong Kong.

Map of Hong Kong Image credit: hkfastfacts.com

Hong Kong's famous city skyline at night! Image credit: wikimapia.org 

Hong Kong consists of 3 main islands known as Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong has a population of about 7.8 million. Through this trip, we hope to find out more about the economics, geography and cultural aspects of Hong Kong and thus, gain new insights about these learning aspects by linking it with the theoretical concepts we learn during the lessons we have in TPJC.

Before we embarked on this learning journey, we have done some prior research to find our more about Hong Kong, including the differences in the Housing Markets and private car ownership in Singapore and Hong Kong. Through this comparison, we have drawn up a few aims that will help us maximize our learning experience during the trip.

For example, based on our research, we have found out that the problem of inequity is most prevalent in both Singapore and Hong Kong, and as a result, most of the housing policies implemented have been centred around solving income inequity. Therefore, we want to find out more about the effectiveness of the policies and the current situation in Hong Kong by visiting a public and private house during the trip. Through this experience, we are able to observe the living conditions of both public and private housing in Hong Kong compared to that of Singapore.

Linking this issue to geography, we also wanted to find out more about the level of development pertaining to housing in Hong Kong. We have researched that about 80,000 people were living in inadequate housing in Hong Kong as of 2010. These homes and living spaces are usually less than 9.3 square metres in size, but cage homes tend to be only 1.9 square metres. This leads to various housing-related problems that affect the health of the people and thus, causing the level of development to stagnate. Therefore, we want to find out more about the current situation of public housing in Hong Kong and its effects on the people.

Prior to the trip, we were also tasked to find out more about the various places of visit as well as craft inquiry questions to ask at every place of visit.  One of which includes Breadtalk (Hong Kong), where we wanted to find out how Breadtalk operates in Hong Kong, its organizational structure as well as its similarities and differences to Singapore which is relevant to the operational structures of transnational corporations in Human Geography as well as market structure and production and cost in economics. We also read up about the geologic history of Hong Kong in preparation for our visit to High Island, a site with magnificent volcanic rocks, as well as Ma Shi Chau, an island that is linked to the main peninsula of Hong Kong by a coastal feature called a tombolo. Of course, we were also excited at the thought of meeting and interacting with new friends at the Singapore International School, and to learn about their education system and to learn more about the lifestyle of the people in Hong Kong through our interactions with them.

Stay tuned for our updates as we experience the economics, geography and culture of Hong Kong!