亲爱的日记

Hey people, Xuchen here :))) As you might have known, I went with my class for a visit to Shanghai and Suzhou for the OELP programme.The programme was to last for 8 days and through these few days, we visited museums, attended lectures, participated in school exchange programmes, and engaged in various recreational activities such as watching acrobatics show and shopping.    Although I could participate in last 4 days of the programme due to some personal issue ( ;__; ), I was still able to gain more knowledge about China and current affairs which I could never experience from normal lessons. I had also thoroughly enjoyed myself by spending time together with my friends and eating various Chinese delicacies through these 4 days (yayz). The trip to China was indeed enjoyable and extremely fruitful. I joined the class halfway through the visiting of the Suzhou Museum.  Through listening to the tour guide, I learned about the rich history and culture of Suzhou, and also see the numerous amazing artifacts from a long time ago. The artifacts were extremely well preserved, and the information of the artifacts was well kept, it was as if we were walking down the memory lane of Suzhou’s rapid progress. The museum even had gardens and ponds with various plants and fishes for relaxation. What I learned about the museum is that it is completely free of charge during special occasions like Children’s Day and National Day. This is to attract people to visit the museum and learn about the past of their homeland. I feel this is an effective way of instilling the value of national pride into the people. I’m not sure about the National Museum of Singapore, but maybe Singapore can learn from the Suzhou Museum, to open up more opportunities to citizens to learn about the past of the country, which would allow them to love, and be proud of their country. The next half of the trip was spent in Shanghai. Through the stay in Shanghai, we visited numerous sites to learn about not only the past of Shanghai, but also the present development of Shanghai and China. We learn about Shanghai’s rich history through the lecture in Shanghai Jiaotong University.  The lecture covers the entire history in detail, and also mentioned briefly about French Concession and Lu Xun’s connection with Shanghai.  After that, the visit to Xintiandi Shikumen Museum/French Concession and Lu Xun Memorial Hall allow us to experience these historical sites in person and understand what we had heard from the lecture better.  The most valuable thing I had learnt from these visits is the process of how Shanghai became one of the biggest cities in China. I learn that after China lost the Opium Wars to foreigners, she was forced to sign the Nanking Treaty, which includes opening up part of Shanghai to the French, which would be known as the French Concession. The architecture the Frenchmen left behind are preserved and was named the Xintiandi Shikumen Museum. Because of the Nanking Treaty, Shanghai was one of the first few cities to be opened up to foreigners, and hence it was a step ahead of other parts of China to modernize. Apart from that, Shanghai was able to transform from a rural land to a port city because of its superior geographical location. A huge part of Shanghai is located by the sea, hence causing Shanghai to be a necessary place to pass by for foreign cargo ships, this allows Shanghai to develop into how she is today, all these factors are very much alike to that of Singapore’s. And because of Shanghai’s status, it became one of China’s largest financial zone, hence China invested large sum of money to develop Shanghai’s transportation, science and technology, education, industry, culture, shipping and finance. We had also visited many tourist attractions which showed us how powerful Shanghai is in terms of finance and culture, namely the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall and  Lujiazui Finance and Trade Zone which includes the Oriental Pearl’s TV Tower and Shanghai Bund.  From these tourist attractions, we can actually see how developed Shanghai is currently. From the Urban Planning Exhibition, I saw many models of the city of Shanghai, and also enlarged models of many significant infrastructures. I realized that Shanghai is actually as populated as Singapore, with sky scrapping buildings all over the city; it was hard to miss the extremely tall building clusters in the middle of Shanghai, the Lujiazui which we will be visiting. From the tour guide, I had learnt that Shanghai has 13 train tracks, and will be increase to 22 by 2020 with extensions on numerous tracks, there are also 5 bridges connecting the 2 halves of Shanghai, Pudong and Puxi, with well-maintained and plotted roads sprawling across the map. What is most significant to me is that Shanghai actually has 2 airports, the Hongqiao airport and the Pudong airport (which we alighted at). All these showed that Shanghai focus greatly on convenience of transport, which make sense when she has a population of 25 million. Singapore’s transportation is also rather developed, but maybe we can learn from Shanghai about how the trains there don’t break down, and how flyover roads are built to reduce traffic congestion. Later on we visited numerous sites in Lujiazui, the most significant district in Shanghai. Lujiazui is a port by the Huangpu River, which is very similar to Singapore River’s port. Lujiazui is also a very popular tourist attraction with some of the most significant places in China, we were lucky enough to visit the Oriental Pearl Tower, where we spent some time at the 263 meter high Sky Walk where we can see the entire Lujiazui under our feet, and also the Shanghai Bund where the view of the Shanghai skyline is the best. After seeing all these wonderful tourist attractions spots, it made me wonder: since Singapore River is so similar to Lujiazui geographically, is our own port as good as Shanghai’s?  What I heard is that Shanghai’s port is actually better equipped and has more cargo ships docked than Singapore. Furthermore, I personally feel that the tourist attractions at Lujiazui are far more interesting than what we have at Singapore River. I think Singapore really must learn from Shanghai, about how they plan the city, what buildings they choose to build, what areas they choose to invest in. Even though we are currently richer than China in terms of GDP per capita and we are overall more developed, China is actually catching up fast, and one day may even overtake us, hence, we must learn how they can progress so fast, and adapt part of their measures into our plans. the super awesome Sky Walk of the Pearl Towel oops weird pose :x Of course, OELP isn’t just about learning, it’s also about enjoying ourselves (while learning at the same time). Through the trip, we visited some of the most popular shopping districts in Suzhou and Shanghai: the Shantang Street, Nanjing Road and Chenghuangmiao.  The first shopping street we visited was the Shantang Streets of Suzhou. The tour guide told us that the street is location by the banks of a river, and it was originally a trading center for settlers to trade their good. As China modernizes, the street was made open to public, and became a main tourist attraction in Suzhou. And in Shanghai, we visited the mirror image of Shantang Street, the Chenghuangmiao. The amount of crowd in these streets was rivalling that of Orchard Road. In the shops, attractive souvenirs native to China can be bought at extremely low price, there were traditional Chinese fan, Chinese knot, Chinese toy figuring, Chinese pipes and many more. All these things came about from China’s rich and dramatic history and culture. After the short shopping spree, I was armed with bags and bags of little goodies, some for myself and some as souvenirs to give to friends and families. To compare the Shantang Street and Chenghuangmiao to Orchard Road, I personally feel that the these old shopping streets would be a far more attractive shipping district due to the unbelievably low price and the traditional Chinese flavor of the items sold, whereas Orchard Road offers expensive branded goods from all over the world which may be a bit costly even to the rich tourists, and the things sold would not be as attractive because after all, tourists came to Singapore to buy things uniquely Singaporean, and not some worldwide popular brand. Maybe one day Singapore can open up a permanent pasar malam with all the traditional Singaporean things sold at cheap cost, that would be a must to visit for all tourists. However, Shanghai does have a shopping district which is extremely similar to Orchard Road, in a sense that this street also has numerous shopping centers department stores selling branded things from all over the world, and also food native, and foreign to Shanghai. The pricing for brands like Nike, Adidas, Li Ning, and Paul Frank is extremely exaggerating, so in the end all we bought was food from a nearby convenient store, just like what I would do at Orchard Road, except that even the food in Orchard Road is expensive. We also had the highlight of our trip: the acrobatics show from a renowned acrobatics group. The performance was highly entertaining, with extremely tensed moments and incredible stunts. Acrobatics is something I can never see in Singapore because we don’t have a stage made especially for a single performance but there in Shanghai, there was this huge hall with the stage design just to make the performance flow smoothly. It was indeed an unforgettable event. After the trip to Shanghai and Suzhou, I realize I still have a lot to learn about China past, present and future. The trip was a real eye opener and through this journey, I can also see how these can be relevant to Singapore, or even ourselves. After the trip, I really want to visit the more undeveloped areas in China to see the living standard and finance of China as a whole and not just the most developed city, because from what I have learnt, Shanghai does not represent the entire China where everything is glorious and grand, there are places haunted by poverty and illness and I want to see and experience these places and learn what the Chinese government is doing to help these people.  It is then that I realised, everything is subjective and whatever we see will have a different side to it if we just see it from another perspective. What we see isn't really what things are, but what we interpreted as. Hey, that sounds like a dice! When we look at a dice from one face, it doesn't mean that every other face will look the same. If you flip it around, it's a whole new look very very different from what we saw! ~The Fabulous Xuchen