Without realizing it, our guide has already reached its eighth chapter. After analyzing this particular set of questions, I found that they are highly visual, almost like an “evolutionary history of daily life” in the British Empire. It stretches from…

As this collection of notes grows thicker, analyzing Set 7 brings a specific realization: in Britain, history isn’t just a painting hanging on a wall; it is the flesh and blood of the current system. For those of us in…

This installment feels like being invited into the living rooms and back gardens of the British people. For those of us Hong Kongers nearing fifty, who have spent most of our lives eating wonton noodles, we now find ourselves trying…

What struck me most in analyzing this fifth set of questions was a sense of “cultural contrast.” In Hong Kong, we are used to treating exams with absolute gravity, assuming that questions must always revolve around complex political or economic…

The 24 questions in Set 4 feel even more like “time travel” than the previous rounds. One moment you’re being tested on a thousand-year-old tapestry, and the next, you’re asked where the current Prime Minister lives. For those of us…

If Parts 1 and 2 were about marking coordinates on a map of Britain, then Set 3 of the “Life in the UK” practice questions takes us straight into the nation’s “spiritual totem.” For those of us who grew up…

In our last session, we touched upon the outlines of British geography and the rule of law. Looking back at the answers probably gave many of you that “back in the exam hall” shiver. Moving into this second set of…

Fellow travelers, greetings as if we’d met in person. Approaching the milestone of fifty, we resolutely packed our bags and crossed the seas to this land of Roman descendants that feels at once familiar and strange. In Hong Kong, the…