Personal Reflection

Personal Reflection

During the OELP, I learnt many things and made a lot of new friends. It also had my prejudice for the Chinese to lessen. At first, I always thought that China sold cheap, imitated stuff. But after going to places like Dongguan Street, I found out that they sold pretty decent items cheaply while others were just plain expensive. Their books there were also rather interesting and they sold many famous, Chinese translated books for cheap prices.

Shopping aside, I noticed that they had rather nice scenery, like at the bund. I further experienced it during the two boat rides, one showing Shanghai during the night, with their buildings lighted up beautifully like the Pearl Orient Tower, and the other in a river where many emperors sailed down in the past. There was also the 二十四桥, where we were given free tome to roam around, which had many rock formations rarely seen in Singapore and the Geyuan Garden, where there were many special features, like the tree that was struck by lightning, the "Tickle" tree, which would sort of tremble when one scratches and lastly, the Bamboo, which we never really see in Singapore and heard that there were many different types of Bamboo. I also learnt many interesting facts, like how they pleased the Emperor in the past. One example is that when the Emperor goes fishing, they would have people in the pond to secretly put fishes on the hook of the Emperor to create the illusion that the Emperor was really "Lucky" and thus keeping him happy. I found this quite weird as I wondered why the Emperors have never caught a person before.

We also visited their local school in YangZhou, where I found out that they were learning stuff more complicated and advanced then ours. I have always thought that Singapore taught the most advanced things. They further shocked me when I realised that they had not really seen an Apple product before. They were however impressive in terms of chess skills, traditional Chinese painting and height. My buddy was easily a head above me. Their lessons were also interesting, namingly their music, art, the 武侠 talk, where we learnt about heroes. We never had this in our school, and the best, their PE, where we were taught Wushu. I found their teacher very engaging and fun. Their respect for their teachers were also astonishing and make our respect to our teacher like a joke. We treat our teachers like our friends but they treat them like GODS. They seldom drink, go to the toilet during classes and were incredibly disciplined. They set a clear line between learning and playing. I think that this is one thing that I perhaps can improve on next time.

I experienced a lot of their history too. Like block printing and going to the old houses where famous people lived in once. I noticed many interesting features like their decorations and how most of them have a hidden meaning inside. I also learnt how block printing came about that it was used to store the earliest records and how troublesome it is as once you miscarve it, you have to start all over again and I wondered why so many people did not rage quit.

 The last thing that I would miss is our fun. Be it at the hotel, where we fooled around, or in the bus. I feel that we really bonded as a class. We usually meet up at nights to play and eat, having a good time together, getting locked out of our rooms and entering creepy hotels. We were always glad to return to the hotel and turn in. We also had fun in the bus as we played something like "Musical Bomb". I would forever remember these good times and I really hope that we can go there again as a class.

-Joshua