Woke up early to the sound of traffic again (doesn't bother me that much anymore, hurrah!) and went for OEC class, hoping that it's not something painfully dry like the last lesson.
Thankfully, today's lesson was about China Politics, and it was actually rather interesting. Learnt a few things about the Chinese government, like how they actually have a Ministry of Water Conservation. I thought this was quite interesting, as Singapore doesn't have such a ministry. As far as I know we only have campaigns to help conserve electricity and water.
They also have a Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which allows any Chinese citizen above the age of 18 to join as a member. However, we were told that joining the CCP has actually lost most of its actual meaning as youths are joining for the reasons. To kickstart their career, most of them sign up for CCP to make personal connections important for career advancement. I think this is rather sad, since I'm sure the pioneers of CCP definitely established this party for more noble reasons.
Anyway, after OEC, we headed out for lunch and then for a cultural exchange as the 黄家湖 (Huang Jia Hu) branch of WUST.
It was yet another bus ride that lasted more than an hour, since it was towards the south on the province.
Don't have much photos of the bus ride there since I fell sound asleep on the bus, but I woke up at some point to see this very large abandoned building that looked like a school. There're actually a lot of these abandoned buildings scattered around Wuhan, from what I see on bus rides. Ah, the luxury of having so much spare land.
Their administrative building. The sign actually says "Military training in progress, drive slow." I got a little confused seeing that, but apparently it's actually compulsory for freshmen to attend military training. According to the local students there, this is to instill endurance, to encourage them to perservere throughout the years they were to spend at the university.
Not a bad idea, I must say, but I doubt I would have survived if I were them. What's worse, the weather was a sweltering 36°C and there they were marching along the roads in their camouflage-printed shirts and olive long pants while we cruised along on our big bus and the powerful air conditioner.
The students were very welcoming and actually featured a welcome message on their LED screen, along with a red banner outside. They even welcomed us as we alighted from the bus, which was rather surprising since no one's ever done that before.
The entrance to a Biology exhibition featuring real organs and cadavars of old, young (even babies), male and female. Not for the weak-hearted, definitely. Didn't take any photos in there since there wasn't really anything worth remembering. Eliza got a little disturbed after a while and I ended up waiting outside with her with Hanhui, who insisted he's not affected and was just done with the exhibition.
We got ushered to another part of the campus after the exhibiton, for cultural interaction with the Logistics sutdents. They were so warm and welcoming, they were giving us a standing ovation as we walked into the classroom.
Gave us a short presentation about China, Wuhan and their campus. Props to Xiao Ping (right in photo) who delivered it all in English even though, according to them, they haven't been studying English for a very long time.
Two of the people present then actually came up front to give a singing performance in English. They were actually pretty good and their enunciation was accurate too.
They then asked if we had anything to perform for them...but we didn't since this exchange trip was pretty last minute. Oops. Thankfully the guys were game enough to come up with a performance last minute, singing Qing Fei De Yi by Harlem Yu.
Their huge library, where we were ushered to, to know about WUST history.
Nicholas, standing at 1.78m and still taller than the huge vase.
On the bus ride home, something along the highway caught on fire. Some other vehicle passed by and we didn't manage to see what was on fire, but this was the resulting soot.
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Personal reflection
I guess today's lesson would about the Chinese students. While people in the streets are usually not that friendly, the Chinese students are the total opposite. The students at WUST Huangjiahu gave us such a warm welcome, it was surprising. The standing ovation, the free mooncake (that probably didn't come cheap for them) they gave us so that we would be in the Mid-Autumn mood, and the overall excitement they had for us when the whole time we were there.
I remember how they literally cheered with relief when they heard we could actually speak Mandarin. I've taken the ability to speak two languages fluently (one of them, anyway) and be able to switch between both so easily for granted for so long, but today, they reminded me how fortunate it was to not struggle with it as much as they're struggling with English now.
Another one of the students went up to the front of the class, to welcome us once more. I can't remember most of his speech, but I remember the one sentence he said that made quite an impact.
"My lecturers have told me so much about Singapore, I've always said to myself, "If there was a vacation I can take to anywhere in the world, I would go to Singapore." It is my dream to study in Singapore."
I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being honest, and once again, he reminded me how Singapore is like a sanctuary for some people in other parts of the world. Sometimes I would lament at how I was born in Singapore and wish I was born in other parts of the world, but that one sentence of it showed me, once again, how fortunate I was.
I think most of this trip didn't only show me how China can be so drastically different from Singapore, but instead, it opened my eyes to how fortunate Singaporean-born Singaporeans are. I could've been placed anywhere in the world, I could've been European, American, Arab or born in other parts of Asia, but I was fortunately placed in one of the most awesome little red dot in the world; Singapore.
