Chinese University of Hong Kong

This course examines the techniques and procedures of evaluating environmental consequences arising from human activities, with focus on their application in Hong Kong as prescribed under the Hong Kong Environmental Impact Assessment Ordinance, and its Technical Memorandum. 

This course examines religion in contemporary Chinese society, emphasizing its presence and influence in everyday life. It goes beyond religious texts to immerse students in the richness of Chinese spiritual life, demonstrating how religious traditions in China are not merely philosophical concepts, but living practices that shape the everyday experiences of individuals and communities. A special feature of this course is that we will take students on visits to a variety of religious sites in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area to experience firsthand the diversity and vibrancy of religious life in China. This includes participating in meditation sessions, attending religious festivals, and learning the intricacies of the tea ceremony in a Buddhist setting. In addition to these immersive activities, the course will discuss the broader role of religion in shaping contemporary Chinese society. We will explore how religious beliefs and practices intersect with important social issues such as economics, the environment, gender, sexuality, and politics. 

This course examines the data structures and algorithms useful in programming competitions and technical interviews. Topics include but are not limited to advanced data structures, advanced search algorithms, decomposition techniques, combinational games, basic computational geometry, and basic number theory.

This course examines song writers and performers from the USA. In the process of studying American popular song lyrics, students will learn about such musical genres as “the blues,” “gospel,” “tin pan alley,” “folk,” “country,” and “rock and roll” as well as the elements of American history that give rise to each of these types of musical lyrics. Since one of the course elements is the relationship of musical lyrics to musical sound, we will spend considerable class time listening to popular songs , paying attention to the way a lyric’s meaning is conveyed through such elements as vocal style and musical arrangement.

his course is offered for beginners in Chinese calligraphy. It describes the basic concepts and techniques of Chinese calligraphy, the selection and use of materials and tools, and teaches students the regular, clerical and seal scripts. 

This course examines how comparisons can be made between languages with respect to their sound systems, lexical-semantic structures, sentence patterns, and pragmatic properties. Through systematic analysis, students gain understanding from research findings in language typology, language universals, and language acquisition. This course focuses on the basic characteristics of English and Chinese, and some salient contrasts between them. The approach is largely descriptive without assuming prior knowledge of theoretical syntax. The course also considers how comparisons between languages may help students associated with problems of translation and language teaching/learning. 

This course examines Big Data computing systems and programming models. It covers the architecture and components of Hadoop and Spark, data processing with Spark, and advanced topics such as Spark Streaming, graph processing, and machine learning. Students will learn to develop operational and programming tools for data collection, serialization, migration, and workflow coordination in Big Data pipelines. 

This course examines various environmental challenges in contemporary societies from a sociological perspective. Recognizing that environmental problems are often intricately connected with the conditions of societies that they are situated in, it explores the processes underlying social and environmental changes as well as the consequences that those processes may entail at national, regional, and global levels. Substantive topics to be covered include limits of growth and development, sustainable production and consumption, climate change and global governance, and environmental movement.

This course examines classical Chinese literary tradition in translation by focusing on genres including fiction, poetry, essays, and biographies in relation to three major themes and traditions: 1) the fantastic, the immortal, and the ghostly; 2) the moral, the loyal, and the outlaws; and 3) the romantic, the scholar, and the beauty. Through these themes and traditions, we analyze key issues regarding the formation of literary canon in China and how Han Chinese literati define the relationship between the Han and the non-Han, male and female, lawful subjects and outlaws in the process of literary canonization.

This course examines basic communication in Hong Kong Sign Language. An emphasis will be placed on the essential grammar of the Hong Kong Sign Language. It also offers a general introduction to the culture and customs of the local Deaf community.