The Chinese University of Hong Kong Department of History Department of History
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HIST2501 Hong Kong History in the Field
(Not for History Major Undergraduate students)

Semester 2 (2025-2026)

Lecture TimeTuesday, 10:30-12:15

VenueRoom 208, Lee Shau Kee Building (LSK 208)

LanguageEnglish

Lecturer WANG Yiqiao (39437122 / yqwang@cuhk.edu.hk)

Teaching Assistant ZHANG Xinyao Kingyo (kingyosinio@link.cuhk.edu.hk)

Course Description

This course will introduce the history of Hong Kong by focusing on its “fields”. It will examine how various field sites (such as temples, museums, historical trails, and renovated historical buildings) could be used to understand the history of different places, events, and people in Hong Kong from the ancient period to the present. After a brief introduction to the historical development of Hong Kong, the course will discuss aspects of rural Hong Kong history before moving on urban Hong Kong. The last section of the course will explain the diversity of Hong Kong’s communities, cultures, and religions. To help students understand Hong Kong, the course will organize several half-day trips to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories.

Syllabus

6/1

1.     Hong Kong History: An Introduction

13/1

2.     Archaeological Sites of Hong Kong

20/1

3.     Piracy, Forts and Cannons in Hong Kong

27/1

4.     Lineages in Rural Hong Kong

3/2

5.     Hong Kong Fisheries

10/2

6.     Remnants of Hong Kong’s Victoria City

Lunar New Year

24/2

7.     Historical Trails in Urban Hong Kong

   Reading Week

10/3

8.     The Tung Wah Hospitals and Coffin Home(Chinese community)

17/3

9.     Hong Kong under Japanese Occupation: Historical Sites and Memories

24/3

10.  The MacLehose Years

31/3

11.  Non-Chinese Communities in Hong Kong

7/4

Holiday

14/4

12.  Hong Kong History in Pop Culture

Assessment & Assignments

Field reports (40%)

Presentation (30%)

Term paper (30%)

 

Three field trips will be arranged during this course. You are required to attend two of them and submit a field report for each. The field trips will be held on different Saturdays. Regarding the field reports, the lecturer will provide you with specific questions before each field trip. Most questions will focus on your observations in the field.

Tutorials

No tutorial will be arranged in this course.

References

A detailed reference list will be available in the first lecture.

Honesty in Academic Work

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

  • In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
  • For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.

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