Hong Kong Life & Culture

This book is a concise and easy guide to help expats fit in local life of Hong Kong. It is intended to:

• Provide practical tips on how to integrate into local life and how to be seen to behave properly on occasions such as: dining, weddings, funerals, choosing gifts and tipping.
  
  
• Compare and contrast the Chinese and Western style of showing friendliness, disclosing personal information and communication. This book is suitable for expats, Hong Kongers who want to better understand the concerns of expats, and any person interested in intercultural communication.

Editions

• 1st edition: 2006
• 2nd edition: 2008
• 3rd edition: 2010
• 4th edition: 2013

Emily L.Y. Chan

Ms. Emily L.Y. Chan is a freelance language tutor, teaching non-Chinese people Cantonese and Mandarin. The inspiration for this book has come from members of the American Women's Association of Hong Kong (AWA) where she has been teaching "Survival Cantonese for Beginners” and "Fun with Learning Mandarin” since 2002. Ms. Chan, a Hong Kong native, acquired a B.A. (Social Work) at Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1994 and an M.A. in Humanities at California State University – Dominguez Hills in 1999.

In 2003, she earned her M.A. in Language Studies from Hong Kong Baptist University. Social work is all about helping others to enhance their quality of life; language is the art of communication. Ms. Chan attempts to combine her knowledge in these two seemingly different disciplines, to help expats and residents in Hong Kong understand each other's culture. Apart from language teaching, Ms. Chan is a dedicated volunteer. Being visually impaired herself, she has been helped by various warm-hearted people in many different ways at many different times. In order to return the favor to people who have kindly changed her life, she strives to make a difference in other people's lives.

From 1992 to 1997, she served on the Board of Directors of Recording for the Blind and Dyslexics in Princeton, New Jersey. It is still the largest organization in the world providing recorded educational texts for blind and dyslexic readers. In Hong Kong, she has been a long-time volunteer at three charitable organizations for the visually impaired, namely, the Hong Kong Blind Union, the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and Retina Hong Kong. She has been elected Vice President of the Hong Kong Blind Union from 2007 to 2009. Ms. Chan has enthusiastically recruited expats to become volunteers in the visually impaired community. One of her most successful projects was the joint hiking challenge between AWA hikers and Retina Hong Kong – sighted expats escorting severely visually impaired hikers to complete 100 km within 431/2 hours in the 2002 Trailwalker event organized by Oxfam Hong Kong.

• International Herald Tribune [2008-02-01]
• 南華早報(SCMP) [2007-07-01]
• 香港教育城 [2007-01-01]
• Aware (A Magazine for the Women of Hong Kong) [2006-09-01]
• 南華早報(SCMP) 作者訪問 [2007-11-01]