Today was our first time in Suzhou, and I woke up at 7am when we are supposed to gather at 830! We packed our bags, put them in the lobby and all 60 students were ready to start the day.
We headed off to the Master of Nets garden where we get to take a look of the environment of how people lived in the past. Living in a stereotype century, men are always superior to the women where they have to chance to receive education whereas the women stay at home most of their time doing housework. Walking through their main door, we arrive at the main living room where they have chairs of a bigger size and brighter rooms as compared to the women. The main living room is the resting place for the men where they have their guest seated. Moving on to the next room is a resting area for the women, where they have their own activities such as embroidery. Besides, there are also many rooms for different purposes such as the reading room and the meditation room.
Next, we headed off to the silk factory to understand how silk is being made and which silk is actually authentic. We really learnt a lot from going to this silk factory, it was also quite an interesting sight to see how silk is actually gathered. Although this is my second time at a silk factory, I am still as amazed as those who came for the first time. Although the silk sold is quite expensive, many of us still bought the silk! The fact that teenagers/young adults have a large amount of buying power is really proven as I have seen it with my eyes.
Lethargic from the 2 trips, we went to have lunch at restaurant near the silk factory. After having filled ourselves up, we headed off to Suzhou Tourism and Financial Institute (STFI) for our school visit. Many of us were interested to see how lessons are conducted and it turned out to about the same as Republic Polytechnic, using problem-based learning to solve the problem each day. For today, their “ problem” was to make Red Tea and they learned just by looking at the teacher doing it although it wasn’t done that well because the process of making Red Tea or Green Tea is much different! It was exciting to make Red Tea because I tried it personally and I made a number of friends at the school and so did TEAM AX. The students there were really friendly to us and very hospitable. Speaking of hospitable, we went to another section where we made dim sum, where we were supposed to make dim sum by filling it with pork and doing up the shape of the dim sum in which we were taught! Our dim sum compared to the culinary teachers or students were definitely no match for them hahaha! Pictures will be uploaded to show the big contrast (:
After having fun at STFI, we said our goodbyes to the wonderful students at the school and it seemed that they were really interested to get to know us better! Hopefully, RP-SOH can organize a school exchange program between and the 2 schools to build better relationships as well as allowing the students of both schools to benefit from this exchange. We headed off to the Suzhou-Singapore industrial park and we had to share our views on 3 questions that we were asked. The 3 questions were what have we learnt, what the cultural differences between China and Singapore were and what could be improved. Everyone shared how they felt, especially about the locals and also there were definitely improvements to be made for the trip but overall, all of us had a great time including Team AX! In addition, we had a panoramic view of the industrial park which really had a great and fascinating scenery. The scenery was so breathtaking and it is such a pity that Singapore do not have the space to have this luxury.
After sharing, we went to dinner at Fuji Celebrity Club and we noticed that the food served to one table was different from the rest and it happened that I was at that table that had the different food where we had 3 dishes of vegetables while the other tables only had one. Other than that, dinner was great and the portions were huge as usual. We headed back to Shanghai after dinner with a 2 hour trip and we reached Yuehua Hotel at 1030pm!
Team AX will definitely miss the students at the STFI and of course, the awesome cool weather in CHINA! I will definitely miss Team AX after spending 7 days with each other and I am so emotional that I’m going to cry now! Hahahahah! We Love Shanghai!
