oelp reflection - MIng How

After this 7-days long of OELP trip to Shanghai and Yangzhou together with 2G, I have experienced a lot and also learnt a lot at the same time. Firstly, my knowledge of Shanghai has greatly increased and I am also now more aware of the impact China has on Singapore. For example, I got to know more as to why the China government is willing to spend such a large amount of money on setting up lights on Shanghai buildings. It is because setting up lights on the buildings will make the modern buildings look more beautiful and this can attract a lot of more tourists to come and visit. This earns money for the government since more tourists would then spend more money in their country, allowing the country to grow even more economically. Through this trip, I have also realized the importance of Singapore continue making the effort to improve because if we do not make the effort to keep up with other countries that are developing economically and improving so quickly, we would be easily overtaken and might be swallowed up by other countries, having no chances of survival in the future.

In Yangzhou, we went to RV’s sister school扬大附中东部分校初中学部 for a culture exchange with the students there. My buddy’s name is 王逸菲, and she told me a lot about Yangzhou’s culture and places of interest. I also got to know how their school operates by attending their lessons together with the students there. One of the thing that left the deepest interest in me was the discipline of the students there. Unlike the students in Singapore,  students in the Yangzhou school were very attentive and participative in class. They sat up straight and gave their fullest attention to the teacher, while being proactive in answering the teacher’s questions. Among all the lessons I have attended with them, the one that I liked and enjoyed most was the 端午节lesson. In that lesson, I have learnt some of the culture of Yangzhou and how people in Yangzhou celebrated this festival. They did many other things like 佩戴香囊，插艾草 and 吃十二红 which was not common to see in Singapore. There was also this hand on activity where we got to make our own necklace that can hold an egg. This was quite interesting to me since I have never seen or done anything like that before. In conclusion, this trip has also made me more aware of the values and beliefs of people from China.

From this trip, I also got to see how the Chinese managed to preserve and promote their own culture. For example, in Shanghai, we have visited many places like the Bund, French Concession, Huang Pu Jiang. One of things that I noticed is that even though on the outside the buildings look very well-preserved, there were many modern shops and cafes like Starbucks that could be found on the inside. This could mean that Shanghai has managed to strike a balance between modernization and preserving its culture, allowing to China to not only grow economically but also promoting its own heritage at the same time. In order to prevent their national heritage traditional buildings to slowly become useless and be merely taking up space, they made sure that these places become more enjoyable for tourists to visit by introducing modern shops and cafes like Starbucks. They have not only allowed these places to earn more money for the country but also made it a more comfortable tourist attraction for people to enjoy. On the other hand, in Yangzhou, we visited places like 瘦西湖 and 雕版印刷博物馆. Over there in Yangzhou there are a lot of places with beautiful scenery, therefore many tourists would be attracted and therefore visit Yangzhou. This can therefore help Yangzhou in promoting China’s culture.

After visiting Shanghai and Yangzhou, even though I enjoy being there very much, I am still proud to be a Singaporean. One of the reason is probably because in Singapore that is much smaller as compared to China, we face much lesser competition as compared to what the students in China face. As a result, we would not need to handle so much stress as compared to what the student in China need to handle since everyone is less competitive. Also, we get to enjoy better facilities and have a better quality of life in Singapore. For example, the variety of food we get to choose in both countries. In Singapore, since we are a multi-racial country, we are given a large variety of food for us to choose from. We can eat different dishes made by different races everyday but in China, we mainly just get to enjoy Chinese cuisine only.

In a nutshell, this OELP has generally been a fruitful and meaningful one to me and I enjoyed it very much. This was a rare overseas learning experience for me and through this learning trip I was able to understand China’s culture better and change my impressions of the people of China. This trip has also allowed me to understand my teachers and peers better and it provided a good opportunity for the whole class to bond together. If given another chance to go on an overseas learning trip with 2G again, I would definitely go for it again.