Daily Reflection-Josiah

Cid Reflection( heritage,education,economy,history,identity,culture )

Day 1

宋城千古情—“建筑为形，文化为魂”

I feel that the visitors can truly experience the culture and heritage of China here as they can be immerse in the culture and heritage of China in various ways, just like the quote from Song Dynasty City:给我一天，还你千年。Firstly food,there are various traditional snacks like 冰糖葫芦. Secondly festive performances which involves street performers in costumes and includes sadens. Lastly, the infastructure. The theme of the park surrounds Song dynasty giving visitors a breathtaking experience. However i observed that there are some drawbacks, no matter how realistic the park is,it is still influenced by modern day technology thus not being able to show how Song dynasty of like entirely. From this visit, i think that people those days are very loyal to their country. From Yue Fei’s example, we could see how important China was to them. The people were also ingenious. There were inventions like saden and various innovations back in those days to make their life more convenient. Overall the people led a simple life as from their clothings I can see that they did not expect much of how they look. The dynasty was also prosperous as there was no war thus the people had funds and time to develop on the arts and cultural aspects of the country. After the visit, I asked myself a few questions one of them was if the performers’ individual excellence was more important than team coordination. It was through reflection that i realise that even though individual excellence was what everyone was striving for,without a team’s effort and coordination the performances would not be able to be carried out successfully as the team is only as strong as the weakest man.

Day 2

Today we went to Wahaha Company. I learnt about the history of Wahaha Company and its relative informations. Wahaha Company face challenges like battling imitations, short supply of plastic bottles during certain season and not having enough funds. However Wahaha Company overcome these problems using these strategies. They entice workers to work at the company using ways such as stock shares,promotion criterias,food and financial aid for workers that are doing badly ,awards and rewards every year to the best employees. Also at that time advertisements were not used much and Wahaha used advertisements to attract people to buy their products through star endorsement. I realised that the way to get your workers to really put their heart and soul into their work is to treat them like family-this is also what all the strategies above have in common. They make their workers feel like part of the company,the workers feel like they are not working in the company but instead also have a share of the company which makes them want to help the company progress as they themselves are part of the company and the company is also what they have.

Day 3

Today our focus was on historical places,one of the places we went to was TunXi Ancient Street. The street is filled with traditional snacks, accessories and architecture. It shows us that the street has certain sentimental value to be preserved in its original state despite the rapid progression of China’s economy. The shop owners also displayed entrepreneurship and creativity to keep trade alive by catering to the needs of the tourist. For example changing the packaging of traditional tea and 糖画. They change the packaging of traditional tea from plain tea bags into tins of all shapes and sizes with pictures and figurines of characters from popular culture so as to attract tourist which eye on specialities more than local culture. Another example is using traditional caramel candy to do drawings of characters like despicable me minions this allows tourist to appreciate the culture and traditional value of the caramel candy.Upon reflecting, i realise that with the progressing world around us, we have to make necessary changes to keep up with the ever changing world just like how to keep the traditional trade going the shop owners have to make innovations to attract customers from different background to a common tradition-the trade of the traditional Chinese items.

Day 4

Today we tried climbing the Huang Shan. The mountain trails were really steep and dangerous and we had to support one another to complete this arduous task. On the way up the mountain there was a really steep way that had no designated pathway for us to walk on we had a really hard time climbing the way up. i noticed that there were a lot of elders climbing Huang Shan and it really surprised me as there we in their mid-60s however they were still in the pink of health. When i had difficulty supporting m classmates across the steep way, an old lady with a confident smile offered to help me. I think that in comparison with the elders in our country the people of china were really fit and healthy. They were also extremely kind and helpful in contrast to the hostile and cold typical Singaporeans. From this i learn that stayng healthy is really important to be able to live our life to the fullest,as only when we are in the pink of health then can we do things we enjoy doing. The elders i met on Huang Shan was a perfect example of this, despite their old age they kept an active lifestyle and take charge of their life by keeping healthy. There were still able to climb Huang Shan despite their, this makes me a little ashamed of myself thus this reflection of mine. 

Day 5

今天我们到了寿春中学做了交流。让我留下最深刻影响的是寿春中学学生们的诗歌朗诵比赛。他们个个朗读的都是爱国的经典诗歌。学生们个个胸怀大志，对自己的国家中国都充满热忱。学生们在台上个个都胸有成竹，虽然只有十三岁大便是如此惊人的自信实在令人赞叹不已。学生们每个村催的嗓子里都包含着对国家的爱，看得出他们都很想成为中国社会的栋梁。我觉得身为新加坡人的我们应该从学生时期开始为我们这片土地我们的家园尽一份力。身为学生的我们也应该向他们学习勤奋，乐于学习的热忱，唯独有发奋图强地不断进步才能取得最后的胜利。才能让新加坡这个小红点在国际舞台上发光发亮。

Day 6

Today we continued with our exchange program in Shou Chun High School.k After interviewing the Chinese students i discovered some amazing facts. Despite their 12 hours long and tiring school hours from 7a.m. till 5.30 p.m. they have a lot of homework spending an average of 3 hours a day on homework with homework like mathematics which includes 5 pages of 20 questions per page.This leaves them with only at most 6 hours of sleep daily. The Chinese students think that our school life is more fortunate than theirs and they were stupefied when we told them about how we spend our everyday lives. Upon reflecting, i feel that despite the abundance of time we have we Singaporeans lack the intuitive to take charge of our own learning and improve ourselves but instead waste precious time which is a given privellage on matters that are not as important as our priority as students. However the Chinese students’ mindset of tuition is somewhat similar to Singaporeans. They too do not like tuition but in contrast to us they would see the necessity of having supplementry lessons despite their already heavy workload if time permits and learning calls for it. Whereas Singaporeans see tuition as a weapon of competition against other fellow Singaporeans, this mindset is inappropriate thus instead of competing we should go for tuition because we want to improve ourselves as individuals and not to satisfy our ego of winning.

Day 7

Today we learnt about Huangmei Opera at the Anhui University of Arts. I realised that China’s Education system integrate Huang Mei Opera unto music courses in Anhui as part of the efforts to promote traditional culture. I infer that with dwindling audiences and fewer youths expressing interest in Chinese Opera, this intrinsic part of Chinese heritage might be on the verge of becoming an endangered art form in Singapore. Regarding this issue, I thought of a few way to promote Chinese Opera to the youths in Singapore. If we change the Opera characters by incoperating popular culture and edit the the dialogue for example adding the common slangs that youths in Singapore use in their daily conversations,words like LOL, YOLO, we would be able to relate Opera to the youth by involving them more sparking their interest. We can also do so by incoparating a wider range of instruments for example including instruments from popular culture like the electric guitar and keyboard to produce sound effect that draws the youths attention to a whole new Opera that they would be interested in. A way to start this is by incoporating Chinese Opera into advertisements on television as youths are heavily influenced y media that there are exposed to,thus by integrating Opera with for example a new product it might start a common topic that involves Opera in it, slowly building up to a wide scale popularity. 

Day 8 

Today for our last destination of this fruitful learning trip we went to Hai Di Lou Restaurant. The restaurant itself left me with the deepest impression and ended this chapter of the trip with a beautiful closing. The customer service of the restaurant was indeed remarkable. They staff at the restaurant treated us as though we were guest visiting their family. The team dynamics of the workers there were incredible due to the fact that they were closely knitted like brothers and sisters. Their hospitality was commendable and i think the only reason why such high level of customer service could be obtained was due to the fact that they did not see what they were doing as a job but instead treated what they were doing as missions to accomplish a common goal which is to bring out the best of Hai Di Lou Restaurant leaving every single customer with best memories. I heard that they even had staff outside of the toilets to clean the hands of the customers. I learnt that only when we do our best at what we are doing then can we bring out the best in ourselves.