Mark (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

On the first day of the OELP trip we went to Beijing. The first place we went to was Wangfujing

. It was the place where the emperor's relatives used to live and is now a street for people to sell their various goods, for example exotic food such as scorpions. There were military vehicles and armed policemen vigilant and watching the street for potential threats. As we checked into our hotel room, weary and tired, the most prominent thing about the room was the translucent glass wall separating the bedroom from the toilet. We had a debrief and then went to sleep.

The second day we went to the China national museum, over there we saw many artifacts like weapons and declarations. There were also paintings of various historical moments like massacres and maps.

 We learnt about China's history and how it recovered after suffering various defeats. For lunch we ate the famous Beijing roast duck. After taking the first bite, I wanted to cry as I was not sure if anything in my life would ever replicate the taste of that duck. It was tender and just oily enough to taste nice but not too much to feel too greasy. After finishing eating the meal, there was much duck left over despite its splendid taste as we were afraid of eating too much. After that we went to the Forbidden City which was a large palace where the emperor lived, kept his gold, etc. It was huge and felt like a maze, it was grand and there was much space. Then we went to the Tiananmen Square, which was a large, large concrete square.

I had heard about the massacre that happened there some years back and was wondering why there was no mention of it from the tour guide. Later on i discovered it was a sensitive and controversial topic and it was not discussed.  After that we went to Southern Gong and Drum Lane where there were multiple stalls and shops trying to sell their own goods. The last activity for the day however was dreadful. We went to a tea house to do a performance and the performance was not very interesting, and neither could my friends or I catch most of what was said due to the language barrier. At the end of each performance you could hear us hoping that each performance was the last one so we could go back to the hotel and sleep. Soon after the nightmarish experience ended, we went back to the hotel, debriefed and slept.

On the third day we went to visit the Great Wall of China.

 It was a very interesting experience and was not really what I imagined. First we took a class photo at the foot of the hill, then we started traversing the steep mountain. With a 45 minute time limit I was worried that we could not reach down in time as we had to be careful walking the steep steps to prevent falling over, and thus did not go all the way to the top, which I found a pity. Next we went to the Ming Tombs where we saw more information about the previous rulers and their soldiers. Then we went to the summer palace, a huge structure with much ventilation which was very cooling and relaxing. Soon after we had dinner, then went back to the hotel. Despite being sure what I was expecting, what I was certain I did not expect was a two hour long debrief. I was quite certainly nearly falling asleep at every interval.

The next day we took a three hour ride to Tianjin. One thing I wanted then was a pillow but as I fell asleep anyway I cannot complain. After that we went to the ancient cultural street. Over there a woman sold hot dogs and as I wanted to buy one, it was still undercooked. The woman told me to wait and went inside a building for about five minutes. When she came out I gave her the money and she gave me the hot dog. Biting into it, it was still undercooked. I felt cheated and angry towards this experience and threw the hot dog away. After that we went to do a New Year painting which involved putting ink on a slab and then imprinting it onto paper. After doing so, the class boys had a sudden idea to sit on each other's laps while standing. This made for an amusing half an hour was we tried to sit in a circle on each other's laps and would end up crashing to the ground. Next we went to a local supermarket where we bought supplies and did a price check on some items to compare to Singapore.  Then we went to the Bird Nest and Water Cube which was a large stadium with quite a nice scenery.

 After this we had dinner, then a debrief and prepared for tomorrow.

On the second last day of the trip we went to the Tianjin private school where we were supposed to meet the students. We gathered into the library and my stomach was in knots. It was an extremely nerve-wrecking situation as I was extremely awkward with people upon meeting for the first time and it did not help that my Chinese was atrocious so I could not communicate properly with them. Eventually our buddies were outside the library and as my name was called I stood up and went to them. My honest first impression upon seeing my buddy was "I expected someone taller". However later on my deepest impression was that he was friendly and nice. As we awkwardly greeted each other with waves and nods he led me to his classroom. As we climbed the stairs one thing I noted was how big the school was compared to River Valley. On the way to the classrooms the corridors were packed with students, I realized that they were having their 10 minute break between lessons. The students chattered, chased each other around and it was quite loud. Walking into the classroom, my classmate and I were seated at two chairs in the center of the back of the class. I noticed that unlike Singapore all the tables were separated, this led me to believe group work and communication between students were happening less often, which upon asking my buddy I found out later was incorrect. The first lesson they had was English where the teacher was teaching them the basic sentence structures. What awed me the most was the rapt attention paid by students, the classroom was so quiet you could hear the fans spinning. Upon asking a question a teacher would quickly get a fast answer from the students. Their next lesson was math lesson where the teacher gave them worksheets to do, while explaining how the solution worked. Their methods of math were quite complicated and were a topic we had not learnt yet, leaving me quite helpless with the worksheet. Next was English lesson again where they used a speaker to read out an English passage from a textbook, where the students would then answer questions in the textbook based on the passage read. After that we regrouped as a class, went to go eat dinner and prepared yet again for tomorrow.

On the last day of the school exchange we went to my buddy's house. His grandparents were very courteous and welcomed us. My buddy gave me his gift, and I proceeded to give him mine which was Tiger Balm oil, something unique to Singapore. After that we sat down and watched some television programmes while eating some fruits. After that his father drove us to a park, it had beautiful scenery with trees and paved roads and children playing happily. It was very relaxing and I quite enjoyed it. Lastly we went back to his house and ate dumplings which were very tasty and I again enjoyed. However, embarrassingly, I did not know how to use the chopsticks correctly, and humiliated myself in front of his family. We went back to the school and played a bit of basketball as well, and as all good things must come to an end, we left.

 We ate dinner, had a debrief, and then packed our luggage.

As we drove to the airport, I could only think to myself how much I enjoyed this trip. Now I wondered what was the gift my buddy gave me as I realised I had not opened it yet. As I opened it, I laughed, it was a pair of chopsticks. It was a very nice experience to see the cultural difference between Singapore and China, as well as being with my classmates overseas. I loved the trip and would very much love to go again.

OELP was a very fun and enjoyable experience which taught me things like how to be independent and also gave me a chance to learn more thanks to my experience in China.

 One takeaway is the understanding of different culture between different people. Though me and the people in China are both Chinese, our cultures are quite different such as people in China having much more studies focused lessons. This leads to them having them much stress as they are pressured to study well and compete against other people in China.

 Another thing I learnt is what China is to Singapore. Is it an ally whom we can work with to further improve ourselves? Or someone whom we will have to compete with in the future? Personally I feel that China is a foe as the current exchange program we have with the school in Tianjin shows that they undergo many tests and revision in order to keep themselves afloat to complete among themselves. Another thing that they have that we lack is their rich history, such as the grand places we visited like the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, etc. They have much historical value to be learnt and are the national monuments of China, representing their past. These are things we do not really have as a strong suit. China will prove to be quite a worthy competitor in our race against each other.

 The last thing which I have taken away from this journey was the lesson not to stereotype. I originally thought the citizens were going to be spitting phlegm everywhere which I gladly did not see on this trip, and I also half expected to be robbed at sometime during this trip which I yet again am glad that I did not experience. I came to China with the wrong mindset that was quite biased against the people and I felt quite bad after the trip as for example from the exchange program where my buddy brought me out that they were actually warm and friendly rather than the cold loud people I had expected them to be.

 Overall, OELP was a very fun trip and I learnt a lot from it, given the chance I would definitely go again.

 

 This is the recent conversation i had with my buddy

俊豪：

明禹！你好！好久没见了！一转眼，三个月就过了。我们现在快要有年终考试，老师们都急着跟我们练习。我知道你们现在放假，九月开始新的一年。你兴奋吗？我也好奇，你怎么样，我听说你们天津有爆炸，你们还好吗？

明禹：

哈哈！马克你好！真是好久没见了。你没错，我们现在放假。我也蛮兴奋地等待新的一级的开头！又是开始读书了。哎，我好想和你们一样，一班一起出国，一定会有个很好玩的经验！我希望你们当时在这里也玩的开心！啊，你也不用担心，我们还好，没有人受到伤。真可惜，有这个灾难发生在我们这里，打扰了我们的生活。你有时间也可以再来，希望你的华文进步了！哈哈

 

I feel that the Merlion is suitable to be our national monument. To qualify to be a national monument a structure must be something special and memorable. When asked which was the first structure they thought of when hearing the term "Singapore's national monument", most people replied Merlion as it was an interesting building to represent a nation. The Merlion is so unique to Singapore that some consider it the personification and mascot of Singapore, and many tourists make sure they visit it when they come to Singapore. It is also so famous that it is featured in popular culture, for example the influential anime, Cowboy Bebop. Its fish body represents our history of a fishing village Temasek, and the head of a lion is how we got our name, albeit it's backstory being exaggerated.

 

In a CID lesson we learnt about China’s golden age and their cultural advancement in society. We were posed the question, was Singapore in its golden age? Many people disagree, saying Singapore’s golden age has come and passed, we are now in a society where the average Singaporean has to work their guts out just to make ends meet. However, I feel that Singapore is in its prime now, with many technological advances being made and much progress being made in our country as a whole. We were once an insignificant little dot on the world map, but now we are known worldwide despite our lack of resources and manpower. We now have education systems which beat other larger countries and our GDP is also considerably higher than many other countries despite our drawbacks. This is because our people are smarter and thus we have such a successful country, having advanced so much since the past.

I feel that Lee Kuan Yew was a very impressive man. He was able to make Singapore from what it was then to what it is now. In the past Singapore was nothing special, just a small dot on the map. However with his ingenuity and foresight, he ensured the people of Singapore were smart enough so that we would be able to beat other countries. He also fought for equality as when we joined Malaysia and were told of its racist rules, he decide to do his best to prevent Singapore from having unfair rules and had all Singaporeans learn English as their main language. He was also able to withstand corruption and in fact live a simple life, doing his best and making Singapore the best place it could be.

Earlier on, my group mates and I presented pictures of what we felt represented Singapore. To me, what represented Singapore was Singlish, our unofficial language. Singlish, a mix of many different languages such as English, Chinese, Malay, and is our commonly spoken language here. Many people do not understand the culture of Singaporeans “la”, “lor” and more but it is simply our way to express our feelings towards a certain subject. What I find interesting about Singlish is that it is something natural that comes about, we do not take Singlish lessons in school, yet we can all understand each other with our weird mixes of languages. Personally, I felt that we could have done a lot better for our presentation as we did not really practice much for it and thus the result happened. We should understand that we have to practise our speeches properly or else we go up in front of the class and make a fool of ourselves, also wasting our classmates’ time.

 

With China's GDP rising, many people predict that China will soon be the next leading economy. Many products are being made in China thanks to its manpower, such as phones, shirts, calculators, etc. I feel that this is beneficial for us as we, a bilingual country, can communicate with China and China has to rely on us to communicate with the US. With it's growing economy, many people are starting to save money in Chinese yen instead of US dollars now.

I feel that the reason for China's one child policy is understandable, however I disagree with the policy. Being made to counter it's overpopulation, I feel the policy was made with good intentions but had some unfortunate backfires. For example, I find it extremely unfair for girls in China because parents were more likely to abandon them in order to be able to have another child in the hopes of having a son to carry on the family name and to help out in the family business. This however, has been mitigated as some parts of China will allow another child if the first was a girl. Another opinion that I have is that the child will be spoilt by the parents. This causes a society filled with people who don't know how to communicate with others as they are only used to having anything they want, which I feel will lead into a decline in China's standings in the world. Lastly I feel that it is extremely strenuous on that lone child to have to support his or her parents, along with each parents grandparents and maybe even their spouse's relatives. This too has been mitigated as well though, with more parts of China willing to allow a second child if either parent is an only child. Ending off, I would like to say that I find the one child policy hurting more than helping, but think it is good that the government is making an effort to help improve it.

I feel that Singapore is far from being one of the poorest countries, in fact quite the contrary as seen by the fact that it is the most expensive cutting the world. However, despite the fact that that I find poverty in singapore much less common such as the fact that everyone has a house to live in thanks to the government subsidies, I still feel that we should try our best to help citizens in poverty as required such as welfare for necessary items such as food, daily necessities, etc. Poverty has been on the rise in Singapore in recent years and I feel that we have to do what we can to help the citizens who cannot afford daily necessities and require welfare to be able to support themselves, then earn enough to stop being poor.

 

I spent most of my time during the June holidays at home, however I still found it enjoyable. I spent some time playing computer games which I had always enjoyed, and also finished a series of books, the Inheritance Cycle, which I found interesting. I also went out with friends during the holidays to keep in touch and have fun together by going to each other's houses and watching movies together. I also had to spend some time to go back to school as I had CCA training in order to train for the upcoming SYF this year. Whatever time I had left was spent on finishing my homework as soon as possible which was extremely boring.