When mainland student Jessie Wang Zhenzi arrived in Hong Kong she did not find Hong Kong residents very friendly.
'I used to ask the way in Mandarin but many of the Hong Kong people just disregarded my question,' she said. 'And sometimes people would answer by saying 'I don't know' in Mandarin so I knew they understood but were just not being very helpful. I just felt depressed at that time.'
Ms Wang, who is from Kunming in Yunnan province, came to do postgraduate research in new media at City University after gaining a BA in broadcast and TV directing at the Communication University of China in Beijing.
She decided to learn Cantonese and signed up for a free evening course in the language offered at CityU by Tim Chiu Tim-fai, a translator in the Home Affairs Department. 'The great help I received from Mr Chiu was not only in the language,' she said. 'I felt so happy in his class and I found many, many smiling faces. His attitude to mainland people was totally different. He was so nice, kind and friendly.'
Ms Wang was so moved that she decided to make a documentary about the class. One of her professors suggested she submit it to RTHK which was commissioning a series on contemporary life in Hong Kong. She got through the gruelling selection process and her video All About The Teacher was broadcast in February last year and has also won one of the national Top Ten Television Documentaries Awards of 2004-5.
'I just wanted to record a person I liked and the process by which I got to know him better,' she said. 'It is also about myself. He invited some good friends to this class to speak with the students and so I met some friendly Hong Kong people through the class. RTHK put the documentary forward for the national awards and I was very surprised when I won.'
