OELP Trip Reflection Evelyn (2)

·         After a refreshing OELP trip to Shanghai and Hangzhou, I had gained lots of knowledge and experiences from this trip. Firstly, I learned from my school immersion buddy that China has a whooping population of 1.3 billion, which is around 19 percent of the entire world population. Living in a country like Singapore which only has a population of 5.3 million, I really can’t imagine what is it like to live in such a populated country.

Secondly, I learned that you can’t call a woman or a girl 小姐 as that two words means the same as the word ‘prostitute’, thus, calling a lady小姐 is offensive and from this trip I learned that we should not call a lady that. Same thing goes for hotels. While ‘hotel’ in Chinese do mean 酒店, in China, however, 酒店 means a bar where alcohol is served. If you want to say ‘hotel’ in China, you have to it refer to it as 饭店. Looks like the local language is more complicated than we think.

Lastly, I learned that Facebook, twitter some other social media sites that we love to use are actually blocked in China. This is because China does not its country using social media sites from the USA. Thus, it has a huge firewall all around China to prevent its citizens from using foreign websites. So does this means that people living in China does not use social media at all? Of course not! China has its own version of social media, such as ‘Renrenwang’ which is a convincing version of Facebook, ‘Youku’ which provides videos just like the good old Youtube. Instead of searching information on Google, also known as ‘googling’, people in China uses an equally popular search engine ‘Baidu’. Most people in China loves to use ‘QQ’ and ‘Weixin’ which is similar to Facebook and Whatsapp in many ways. In conclusion, this trip is definitely an eye-opener for me.

·         China loves its rich culture as we can definitely feel it when we went there. So how does China actually preserves and promotes its culture? Firstly, besides the modern shopping malls, high rise buildings and skyscrapers you see around the bustling city, you would find that some of the popular tourist’s sites include old or preserved places that are rich in China’s culture. For example, some of the places we went to were historical buildings, old streets or famous temples. Such as 城隍庙，杜家嘴，文庙街 and 西湖. These places were either untouched from many years ago or were built to resemble the ancient image of China. Singapore should also do so by preserving old historical buildings or by building something that resembles Singapore in the old times. By doing this tourists that visit might feel like they are being taken back in time as standing in an old preserved building makes one feel as if they are being taken back in time. This would allow tourists to really ‘have a feel’ of a country’s culture and history. Another way that China likes to promote its culture is through performances. When we went to Hangzhou, which was famous for its rich culture, we had the privilege of watching a performance in a theatre. It was an acrobatics show by the name “西湖之夜”. From the stunning, amazing and incredible acrobatics moves, the show was actually a story telling the audience the culture of Hangzhou. Singapore could also have a theatre performance telling tourist how the island was found and how we got our famous country icon, the Merlion. It is much better than flipping through books or searching online about a country’s culture when you can watch a performance that explains everything to you.