Hong Kong Qipao Uniform

 My daughter was recently accepted by one of the top girls' primary schools in Hong Kong, which was a great source of relief and happiness for us after a stressful application season. Due to a strong Confucian emphasis on education, a growing population due to immigration from the Mainland and a lack of land for school expansion, the competition is brutal. There were about 3,000 girls applying for 140 spots at my daughter's school. Despite there being a strong element of rote learning in the local school system, I still believe that it is very important to build a strong foundation in basic literacy and numeracy. Where we will send her for secondary school can be decided later. 

I had posted earlier that I had wanted my daughter to be brought up with strong Chinese values. However, the local education system is quite Westernized, with a strong emphasis on English as a legacy from the years of British rule and with many of the best schools set up by Christian missionaries there is a strong ecclesiastical element in the teaching. To me this is a double edged sword, the good thing is that the teachers do "walk the walk" being devout Christians and there is a strong moral education, but this comes at the expense of some traditional Chinese beliefs. Indeed there is always a token presence of Chinese culture within the schools with traditional dance, some calligraphy and traditional instruments but these are usually ancillary to the main emphasis on the traditional orchestra or choir and western sports. 

A number of experimental schools, such as the ISF Academy, have been set up in the last couple of decades promoting Chinese values and culture, but these have been mainly international schools. However my feeling is that many of these traditional Chinese values have become mere slogans in these schools. Like the traditional arts (or even Christianity) the values need to be embodied and lived by the teachers and absorbed by the children through osmosis. With many of the teachers at these schools being expatriates or from the mainland (which has systematically destroyed the moral foundation and much of the basic Chinese culture) it is hard not to draw comparisons to the teaching of Communism, where beautiful slogans and lofty goals are taught but not really embodied and lived by the teachers. This is not to fault them (how do you embody filial piety? This is something that needs to be cultivated and also reinforced at home). One of the schools makes a big deal about the compulsory teaching of Wushu for physical education, which is a ironically is a great metaphor for the school. As readers of my blog would know, modern Wushu is a reconstruction of traditional martial arts in a performance context and while it produces great atheletes, it is missing the neigong and internal coherence and purpose of a traditional art. I would much prefer they taught Shaolin longfist or something similar.

There has also been an effort by the Chinese Government to foster greater patriotism in Hong Kong by making a certain number of hours on Chinese Culture being compulsory in all the local schools. This has been quietly adopted by the Education Department but there have been concerns that this is a form of covert brainwashing to promote loyalty to the Communist party. It is something that I am following with interest, but of the materials that I have seen so far in my kids' homework it seems rather sanitized and somewhat similar to all the stuff I had to learn about the UK and British history as a child. (At one point I could recite all the Kings and Queens of England from William the Conqueror onwards).
 
Despite its own flaws (such as the push for extreme localization and a Taiwanese as opposed to a Chinese identity), I believe that the Taiwanese still do the best job of embodying and living traditional values. Indeed the due to the popularity of the movie, You Are the Apple of My Eye 那些年，我們一起追的女孩 last year there were many op-ed pieces written about how Taiwanese girls were more innocent and less materialistic than their Hong Kong and mainland counterparts.  

But back to the topic at hand, one of the nice things about Hong Kong schools is that some of them retain the traditional Qipao as a school uniform for quite a few of its schools. Even Japan, with its iconic sailor suit for girls and 19th Century German uniform for boys doesn't retain the kimono or equivalent for school and don't even ask about Taiwan's uniforms (they are horrible). Although my daughter's school does not use the Qipao and some schools have voted to change the uniform, I still think that it is an elegant symbol of Hong Kong's Chinese roots. So I have included a few pictures of AngelaBaby modelling the Qipao as school uniform to share with my readers. 

For a website with some pictures depicting other school uniforms in Hong Kong please see here: