Life just goes on here in Wuhan and for this week, which is week 3, there aren’t a lot of things to mention about except for a few very significant events.

On Tuesday, we finally met the local students and we had an interaction session with them. We were allowed to choose between going to a theme park to play and an orchard to pluck tangerines. Apparently, most of us chose to go to the orchard to pluck tangerines. Well, I don’t know about the rest but for me, I chose to go to the orchard as it is something new to us as we don’t really have orchards to pluck tangerines from in Singapore. Next, I don’t really have the faith in China’s theme park safety if they mean it is something like Escape Theme Park in Singapore.

So, after our morning lesson on Chinese Medicine, we gathered under our hostel to meet the China students. Then we set off to this plantation!

The plantation was really big and pretty. The China students were very nice to us too. They told us tips on how to pick the better tangerines and they showed us something which I think it can never ever be done in Singapore, especially when it is in a plantation owned by an owner. If we can ever do that in Singapore, the next thing we know is that the police and civil defence will be after us.



The thing that they attempted was to start a fire in the plantation to roast the sweet potato that they dug from the ground fresh!



I find that this is something really very fun to do and I was impressed by how the way the local students do things. In an orchard or plantation like this, they could actually start a fire with the twigs and branches there. Although it seemed kid of primitive, I wonder how many Singapore students can do that if we were allowed to do this in Singapore also, reason being that most of us are bounded by the world of the internet to be too busy to go and experience new things. On the other hand, safety might be an issue as around the fire is bushes. So, there might be a chance that a orchard fire might broke out if the person is not careful.

After the picking of oranges, we went back to our hostel before going for a barbeque session with them. When we were leaving the plantation, I was feeling puzzled as before the trip, we were told that if we wanted to take the tangerines out, we need to pay for them at RMB 5 for 1 Jin (0.5kg). However, I didn’t see anyone paying for them up when we left and it seemed that the owner didn’t press for any payment either? Weird…

So we went to one of the compounds outside of the campus which they have their barbeque. As we were making our way there, we saw these people in the army uniform again. Now, it seemed that they were there doing some leadership training like what we have in Singapore when we were in Secondary School. There are some things in China which they have common with Singapore’s education system too.



Finally we reached the barbeque pits and here, I got a surprise again. There is no barbeque pits here! There must be a way that they can do it as, since they can start a fire in the orchard with twigs and branches, so can they do it here and I was right. We started fire with the most primitive way again and not a single fire starter was used. The feeling is just so back to the nature and so rural.



I believe that if next time I ever encounter this kind of situation in any barbeque, I would be able to start a fire even without a fire starter.

After around 2 hours of barbeque, we finished all the food and we had a mini chat session with the China students to know each other better. Although in the afternoon at the orchard, they weren’t interacting with us much as we were all over the place; they are all very warm and friendly. Most of the students are of same age as our Year 3 students. When we were talking about some of the common things that we teenagers will chat about, Stephanie Sun was bought up. It seems that her fame is really all over the Asia region already.

As we were chatting under the night sky, there were also people playing with fireworks. The fireworks here are really magnificent but Singapore definitely won’t allow this. China now also has some restriction with regards to playing fireworks. People are not allowed to play fireworks without any permission in city area due to the same reason as Singapore, which has got to do with safety measures. However, the good thing is that people are still allowed to play them at the countryside.

For Wednesday, we had our IS lesson and frankly speaking, I was not really happy with the teaching style of the teacher even though I think that the rest of the people they enjoyed it as it is taught in a different way to some extent.



Here you go, headphones and the lecturer will speak through the main speaker to teach.



As cool as it looks, I find that it is rather redundant. Firstly, people will be distracted by the buttons and if the headphone is not comfortable, people will keep fidgeting and adjusting the headphone. In some another way, this way of teaching doesn’t apply to me. However, I find that the good thing may be that people will not talk and the voice of the lecturer might not be heard next door. However, the lecturer was not really up to my standard as the way he speaks really makes people want to fall asleep. Anna is still the best lecturer I have seen here since last week?

The lecture was on Chinese Customs. Being a Chinese that is more traditional at home, I have known most of the things before hand. However, the parts that I don’t know seemed to be more interesting than the information that I actually knew beforehand. E.g. Feng Shui, some other marriage customs. However, I think that like what Anna mentioned, all these traditional customs are getting lost. In actual fact, I don’t really see people practicing them anymore such as giving the traditional bridal gifts.

Anyway, going to 3 Gorges tomorrow onwards till Sunday afternoon. Hopefully the cruise will be good?