This paper explores whether any of the traditional aspects of Chinese culture discussed in the marketing and cross-cultural literature still apply to today's generation of Chinese students in the seemingly westernized location of Hong Kong. It finds that most of the traditional cultural beliefs are still endorsed although Hong Kong students also felt that they were quite independent, individual and creative-within the framework of respecting traditional values. The paper then discusses (on the basis of presenting the same set of students with the findings of this part of the research) how foreign universities might adapt their courses and programs to meet the cultural needs of Hong Kong students. It was found that universities need to adopt a delicate balance between respecting traditional Chinese values and concepts, and encompassing more westernized beliefs and attitudes which enable the students to learn in an environment which enables them to express their creativity and individualism, within a fundamentally quite conservative cultural environment. The value of the research is that it will help foreign universities position their programs and courses for this quite complex and subtle market.
[Copyright of Journal of Marketing for Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J050v13n01_09]

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigates the attitudes of 555 boys and 493 girls towards the three official spoken languages used in postcolonial Hong Kong (i.e. Cantonese, English and Putonghua). The respondents started their secondary school education one year after the city was returned to the sovereignty of China from Britain. They were in their fourth year of studies at the time of this research. A questionnaire survey was conducted to find out how differently the two gender groups perceived the three target languages when they were repositioning themselves in the new sociopolitical context of Hong Kong. Informed by the quantitative results, group interviews were conducted to explore the reasons underlying the main attitudinal differences between the two genders. Similar to the research conducted in other parts of the world, female respondents were found to be consistently more positive than their male counterparts in their attitudes towards the non-native languages while male students were more positively inclined to the vernacular. Given the more accommodating attitudes of females to other languages, it is more likely that they will be the group who pushes Hong Kong forward towards a higher degree of multilingualism.
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This paper presents an ethnographic case study of advanced second language (L2) students from Hong Kong who took part in a short-term sojourn in England after 14 weeks of preparation. While abroad, they lived with a host family, took literary/cultural studies courses, visited cultural sites, participated in debriefing sessions, and conducted ethnographic projects. Data consisted of interviews, an intercultural reflections journal, surveys, field notes, ethnographic conversations and a diary. The Intercultural Development Inventory measured their intercultural sensitivity on entry, after the pre-sojourn preparation, and post-sojourn. The findings supported the primary assumption that underpins the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity: 'as one's experience of cultural difference becomes more complex and sophisticated, one's competence in intercultural relations increases'.
[Copyright of Intercultural Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14675980903370870]