To the Wonderful Days at Olomouc

Kaixin Zhao (PhD Student, ENG, HKBU)

15 July 2023

Olomouc is a small town. It is, in fact, the sixth largest city in Czechia, but for a PhD student cramped up in the bustle of Hong Kong, the space that Olomouc offered was one of mental liberation. It is in this beautiful and serene setting that I found a new dimension of excitement for my research.

My teacher (Prof. Lian-Hee Wee) had kindly taken Yoyo and I along when the Department of Asian Studies at the Palacký University invited him to give a series of lectures. By including us, Profs František Kratochvíl and Joanna Sio also generously folded us into their seminar series so that Yoyo and I were able to give our very first academic seminars on our own. It may not mean much to them, but to us, it was our first international academic experience, where we each were featured with our own posters. It was a humbling experience. Other than learning from the generous comments of other academics, we learnt also how important it is to have a warm and supportive environment as well as teachers who have such faith in their own students’ work. These taught me to aspire to be an academic of similar magnitude, should I someday attain the same positions. In this regard, we feel very fortunate that HKBU Graduate School understands the needs of nurturing us, particularly in this case, through the very crucial financial help that paid for our travel. Our accommodations and food were generously taken care of through the funding that Palacký University paid to Prof. Wee.

I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on what seems to be revelation to me about being a scholar. Other than being exposed to European art and architecture, and the lifestyles that encompass clean and fresh air, with the liberal spirit of street art and graffiti, an incident that impressed deeply upon me was a visit to a Ondřej’s farm. Prof. Ondřej Porokny, like František, is a senior academic steep in linguistic scholarship. But I soon found out that these scholars were more like renaissance men. During a casual conversation, Ondřej introduced us to his orchard and experiments on food sustainability and agriculture. He discoursed freely on the archaeological evidence of cabbage fermentation and how China must have received cabbage no earlier than the Han dynasty, while František explained his student’s work on food preservation during famine periods. These were complemented with Lian-Hee’s own arguments of Chinese guqin musicology. I felt so narrowly confined to my research, and saw for myself that true scholarship does not limit itself into narrow categories.

The experience at Ondřej’s farm brought me back a few days to our visit to the farmers’ market the Saturday before. I began have a more profound sense of living a life reminiscent of the excitement as if I were a little girl again. The delight of discovery and of things small, bright, and beautiful is something the trip rekindled in me. This was a journey that will bring me to smile for much of the ruggedness ahead when I get home to Hong Kong.