Spring is time for admissions exercises for our PhD, MPhil, and MA
programs. I have long known that there are interesting discussions on
the web where mainland students exchange information on our teachers and
our interviews. Some kind souls post a detailed description of their
interview to help others prepare. What is astonishing is how much of
the information is simply wrong. Also fascinating is how many students
misunderstand what is going on. I did a search on one of the main
bulletin boards for these kinds of discussions in China and found a
candidate that we interviewed in the past few years who posted her side
of the interview. I have my notes of the interview and they are quite
different from her view. I will go through her description to identify
the ways our perceptions (and positions, of course) were very different.
The interview was conducted on skype, with video. She begins, as many
posts do, by commenting that we started late. It is true that we
sometimes run as much as 20 minutes late, but I'm surprised that
students expect such precision in the interviews. Then the student
admits that she did not catch the name of my "assistant"--actually my
colleague! (Note to me for future interviews: speak more slowly in the
introduction and repeat the name in Chinese to be sure students are
clear who is there). The student then comments, as others do, that we
did not allow her to introduce herself. This is interesting because,
given that we have read the file (including personal statement,
transcripts, letters of recommendation, writing sample), a
self-introduction seems rather superfluous. (A student has explained
that they are told, in training for interviews with foreign enterprises
in China, that normally an interview begins with a self-introduction.)
In fact, we always try to start with a relatively easy question to calm
the student down. But she did not view it like that, saying that when we
"directly asked her why she wanted to study anthropology," she
panicked, and gave a foolish answer about theory and practice. Then she
says we asked her about her long-term plans. She says she choked: "I
started to talk nonsense, the most horribly, I did not know what to
think, ... "a classic case of brain freeze."
"Then they started on some academic questions." She describes how we picked
The Interpretation of Cultures,
one
of the books mentioned in her statement of purpose, and asked her what
the book was about and why it was important. (Wow, we did that? That's a
pretty good question!) She says that she had prepared an answer to
this question beforehand, "but I don't know why but after my answer, he
turned with an inscrutable face to his assistant. Is it possible I got
the wrong book??? It made me suddenly lose all confidence." Actually,
my turning to my colleague was my nonverbal way of saying, "Your turn."
She continues, "Then it was the woman's turn to ask questions" (thereby
proving my point). The student was put out because we asked her
questions about her term paper, which was about moral tales and sayings,
so she did not know how to talk about that in English, she said. She
comments, "..continue falling apart." At this point in reading her
description, I feel bad that the student is under so much pressure, and
find it hard to believe. She has viewed everything we do to minimize
pressure as
causing more stress. She tries to deflect the
question by commenting on how difficult it is to get English books in
Chinese libraries. Interestingly, despite the fact that we are on skype,
she detects that my colleague and I give an understanding smile, but
she does not know why, and says she is speechless. In fact, we are
probably smirking because we know (and surely she also knows), that many
books are available in China for free online in high quality PDF
copies. These are not scanned versions, but the real original PDFs.
Applicants regularly complain that they can't get English books in
China, and we may have smiled because we can't very well tell them to
download books illegally, but we know that interested students can
obtain all the books they need or want. But we did not press her on this
because she was doing well overall.
The student then notes that at the end, we asked her if she had any
questions, and that she asked about fieldtrips. We told her there is a
fieldtrip at the end of the year for MA students but it is self-paying,
and she took that to be another sign of the discrimination against MA
students. But this is not true. We usually do
not take the
research program students on field trips, and in any case, all such
trips are self-paying (and they just cover the cost--we do not "make
money" on these trips). Indeed, we go to a lot of trouble to try to
avoid making our MA students second-class citizens, as they often are in
major US universities. But it is easy to misunderstand the situation
while applying. Our exit surveys show students are generally satisfied.
What is surprising is that despite the agony and angst expressed by this
candidate, my notes show that her English was very good, and that her
answers were not bad. She was a good candidate. In answer to a question
about Geertz, she said "culture is like a net" (well, he said "web,"
but that is close enough for admission to the MA program, since it is
designed for people interested in anthropology who have not studied it
previously). She was a good candidate and we certainly did not intend to
make her life miserable. One person I discussed this with suggested her
tone was perhaps exaggerated since, as a female and in Chinese culture,
she could not very well say the interview went well. There is probably
nothing that can be done to make interviews less stressful. At least
most messages have me as the "good cop."
The use of these websites to share information is interesting because it
reflects a Chinese tendency to go through connections rather than
public information. I remember in the mid 1980s showing my friends in
Taipei how to use the Yellow Pages. They did not know what that was, and
once they saw it, they said they would never use such a book; they
would ask their friends for a recommendation instead. One of our
students from China has mentioned that friends will ask her for
information on applying to other departments at CUHK. Even though all
the information is posted on the web, they ask her for help, assuming
that there might be some secrets or tricks that she can impart. The
websites are also interesting because they require altruism; those who
post do not get anything in return, except messages of thanks from later
applicants. From a strictly competitive point of view, they might even
think that helping others to have a better interview might make their
interview performance look worse by comparison. It is a good sign of a
developing civil society (or at least civility) that students share this
kind of information. I just wish it were more accurate. For accuracy,
however, they should really go to our department website.
Dr. Sophia Pandya from California State University gave a very informative and interesting talk on the misconceptions about Islam from non-Muslims at the Hong Kong Central Library. Dr. Pandya began the talk by summarizing and reviewing the negative perceptions of Islam from the West – “barbaric”, “terrorists”,“having four wives”…She explained the worldwide Islamphobia is reinforced by the mass media such as the news reports in the aftermath of the 911 attacks and the Hollywood movies. However, the misconceptions about Islam also have their historical roots of Western colonialism and imperialism according to the speaker. To highlight where these negative conceptions originated, she examined how the early pieces of some scholars which shaped and disseminated these discourses, including Orientalism from Edward Said and series of work from David Walkinson. In those works, Islamic world has been described as “in need to be rescued by the West culturally as it is ‘backward’”.
To provide a broader scope to analyze Islamic world, Dr. Pandya suggests the diversity of Islamic schools has to be recognized. Using two extremes in Islamic branches – the liberal Hanafi and the conservative Hanbali as comparative examples, she explained how the different interpretations of the Qu’ran in these two groups can bring completely contrast attitudes of group members towards certain issues such as family structure and women’s status. In order to erase the stigma imposed on the Islamic world, various Muslim groups have taken initiatives to introduce and promote themselves in accordance with their customs and beliefs. Therefore, the speaker also calls for a reexamination of Islamic studies without generalization yet look into every Muslim individual. At the end of the talk, she played a video clip showing the diversity of Muslims, which deeply impressed the audience.
