I received little direction for how to refine my project. The only concern was that a project about tea did not turn into something “touristy”. I would like to know if my “editor” (Rebecca MacKinnon or Diane) would prefer if I choose a “more news worthy” topic.

I think the original three-page layout I planned in the previous post is still perfectly viable. However, I am considering a fourth page on this man. He is a university-educated man who founded a tea shop over 10 years ago. He gives a free presentation on the history of Chinese tea and its culture. He also helped put together the collection of teapots at the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware. The museum (and tea shop) is inside Hong Kong park, and is a converted house of a British commander who lived there in the 1840′s.

I think I could do a page that mixes text and images to describe the creation of tea and the history of this shop. As an alternative, however, I think it is equally doable to instead incorporate this teashop owner into the soundslide of my other teashop owner.

I propose an in-depth look at the tea culture of Hong Kong today. My project will aim at answering some questions: What aspects of old tea culture in Hong Kong still survive in present day? What about British culture? Where else beyond the Peninsula can you get old-fashioned British tea in Hong Kong? In what ways have the British and the mainland Chinese people influenced Hong Kong’s tea drinking? What about tea distribution, where does it come from? Is there a good economy for it?

My final project will be broken up into several parts, however I am unsure which page will be first, second, or third. The following are in no particular order of preference:

Page 1 – Character Story
Background: I have already met a woman who has been involved in the tea business for many years. She owns a tea shop on Hollywood road. She is very personable and easy to speak with. She has a lot of opinions about tea drinking as well as tea culture in Hong Kong.
Page content and layout:  The page would be largely a written feature on this woman and her life as a tea seller in Hong Kong. It would incorporate vivid imagery and most likely a 3 minute soundslides piece. (Please look at page 3 for more details about the soundslides piece.) The feature would be broken down into looking at the types of tea she sold, what they meant to her, how much money she made selling what (from teacups to tea itself), and her experience as a teashop owner.

Page 2 – Historical Background
Background: This page would give a reasonably detailed description of the tea houses and shops in Hong Kong, as well as highlight three to four places in Hong Kong for tea drinking and the culture it invites.
Page content and layout: After the historical description – which would largely be text-based only – the focused pieces on the teahouses would be done as a mixture of pictures and text. The writing would center on the location and its history. If possible, I could also go and get small interview clips (a little more in-depth than a vox pop) with the owners of the shops and put them at the end of each “mini-feature”. The clips would basically describe the shop and its history, what it sells, and how it operates.

Page 3 – Soundslides presentation and links
Background: I would do this page as the most interactive of the three pages created. Both my 3 minute soundslide and links to teashops in Hong Kong would be put on this page. The soundslide would focus on the woman’s teashop and use the woman to narrate about tea culture in Hong Kong. During her narration, pictures and sounds could be incorporated from different places around Hong Kong that I visited for the historical page.
Page content and layout: The soundslides would go at the top of the page, under a title. Underneath the soundslides, I would put pictures of different Hong Kong teahouses. The pictures would double as links and would be laid out horizontally with descriptions under them.

Web Resources
Wikipedia – Hong Kong Tea
Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware
Hong Kong: Tea and Tea Houses

Related Pictures

Tea bags being packaged at a tea shop.

Traditional tea set used for customers to sample tea in shops.

Many items available to purchase at a tea shop.

The Hong Kong Public Housing Estates

Josh Fenn asks Calvin Hon about tainted milk as Hon sips his milk and coffee drink.

Hong Kong, China – SEPT. 29 – JMSC – Despite unsettling scares of tainted milk all over mainland China, Hong Kong dairy consumers remain unconcerned that their milk-contained products will make them ill. Out of three people interviewed, none of them were convinced bad milk had made its way to Hong Kong. The inverviewees maintained enough composure to even continue drinking or purchasing their dairy products while they discussed their knowledge about the recent milk-related scare.

“Starbucks is a company originally from a Western country,” said Calvin Hon while sipping his coffee. “The quality is maybe originally from the Western suppliers …”

Florence Lin buys imported ice cream but remains scared about products more local to mainland.

A woman, who insisted she remain unnamed, made a comment similar to Hon’s after purchasing her coffee at Café O, a local Hong Kong shop. She said, “Well it’s organic. They’re sourcing their products probably.” Café O is a coffee shop with a lot of imported products. “If you look around, it’s all Western. If you were going to have something to eat, this is gonna be a safe place.”

At an Italian deli, a customer not purchasing coffee also thought buying foreign products made her safe. “Well this is Italian,” she said, indicating to her ice cream. Non-Western imported products scared her, however. “Now (my family) is drinking Soya Milk instead of dairy milk.”

Calvin Hon’s interview

Unnamed woman’s interview

Florence Lin’s interview

The group I am in is really relaxed. Well have our own ideas and share them with each other. Some of us have preferences as to what our roles will be within the project. This week, I volunteered to organize the class wiki and head up the research gathering. Both Josh and Nathan want to work on photography and narration, which leaves me with the more administrative end of the project. I think a good role for me will be to edit and make sure people get things done.

We have some basic ideas on how we plan to approach our work and I am helping to solidify those. Pragmatically, we plan on making several visits to public housing estates in Hong Kong. We are very fortunate to have Nathan because he speaks Cantonese and will help us get interviews and photos. I am really interested in finding a really good family to use as our angle for the story. Right now, we want to look at the public housing estates from the angle of a teenager. I think a great heritage way of doing this is to find someone in their 70s or 80s that has pictures of what the housing estates were like for them as a teenager. What would make it even better is if they had a son, daughter, grandchild, or other relative that is currently living in the same estate. Adding a generational angle, I think, would make our story really compelling.

A great difficulty that I haven’t mentioned is: how are we going to get into these estates and take pictures? I really hope Nathan’s Cantonese abilities come in handy. I know that if I went in there alone, I would probably ask in English and someone would shake their head “no” emphatically at me as a response. We have also found some “before” pictures online, which are pictures that someone has taken of the original housing estates in the 50′s. We already sent emails to ask the photographer if we can use them. However, I do not know: Are we allowed to use someone else’s pictures, so long as we have permission?

Morning Tai Chi (mid-range)

Originally uploaded by flickrsugarmans

An older crowd organizes at HKU and does Tai Chi on a near daily or daily basis. These pictures were taken on Monday, a national holiday in Hong Kong. They seemed very advanced in their movements considering they didn’t once take notice of the camera.

In my initial general sweep of websites, I started at Wikipedia, looking first for topics to explore. I searched “History Journalism Hong Kong” and came up with very little I wanted. The closest search results were “Journalism school” and several Hong Kong publications. I replaced “Journalism” with “Media” despite my first interest being in a historical coverage of Hong Kong journalism. Still, very little in terms of specific pages surfaced that I found useful. I deleted “History” and came across this page, which is quite extensive and led me to a number of story ideas as well as different sources. It holds information about the legalities of Hong Kong media as well as, though incomplete, a list of media companies throughout Hong Kong. It also has a link reference of specific interest, the Hong Kong Press Council, which, as its website states, “… is the first self-regulatory body by Hong Kong’s journalist profession.” Continuing my reading of the “Media of Hong Kong” Wikipedia page, I became interested in journalism and its legal protections and started reading about it on one of its Wikipedia pages. It includes the protection of the freedom of speech within the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (a UN-established measure), which I found an interesting fact because of bits of information I have read and heard about the government controlling or previously controlling the media of Hong Kong. I thought it relevant to also look at a second page discussing the Covenant and read an explanation and read a page through Wikipedia’s references. Moving outside of Wikipedia, I Googled “history of journalism” in quotes and looked at the first link it brought me: a profile of a journalist who also published a book about 40 years of journalism in Hong Kong, written by the Asia Times in 2008.

As evidenced by my aforementioned research and discussion of it, I would say my most interesting story ideas surround Hong Kong Media and its history. Exploring a little deeper, based on my web searches, I think the history of Hong Kong’s legal system in relation to journalism in Hong Kong could be an endlessly fascinating topic. I am interested in what journalism was like before European takeover. Did China rely as heavily on censorship as it does now? I’m also interested in how the hand over has affected journalism in Hong Kong. Are we now going to be subject to the same censorship that mainland encounters? Referring to the latter: I am interested in studying it because there is always a reasonable amount of discussion about Hong Kong being part of China. Certainly, it officially considers itself to be, but there are so many different laws, regulations and customs that are not the same between mainland and Hong Kong. We have different currency, traffic laws as well as different regulations for freedom of speech. As far as I can tell, speech goes relatively unsanctioned in Hong Kong. I am interested to find out if journalism will stay as it has been or if it will conform to the more conservative ideals of mainland China.

Stay tuned.

Full interview