China Trip 2019
China
On October 21, a group of seventeen made up of teachers, parents and students flew 9113 Km, over 12 hours, to reach Beijing- the capital city of China. This ancient city provided us with breath taking views and an interesting long history. The mass crowd queueing up in Tiananmen Square was quite a scene. Most of our group members have never seen so many people in one place! Although, Tiananmen Square is the largest city square in the world, so perhaps it is only normal for this to happen!
Over the first three days our group visited the Temple of Heaven, a jade museum, Ming Mausoleum where 13 dynasties of emperors and empresses were buried, and then the Great Wall of China. There were many steep steps at the Great Wall. We worked hard climbing up, it was exhausting, but as we stopped and calmed our bodies down, we saw the colour of the early autumn trees, covered by the late afternoon golden sunset. It was just beautiful.
At Forbidden City, we learned about dynasties that divided ancient Chinese history by different ruling families. We saw pandas at Beijing zoo. One panda was hiding and sleeping behind the bamboo, another panda was eating bamboo laying on its back. Such a happy life, just like our koalas. We saw the ancient architectures, the intelligent artisanship of building the Temple of Heaven without one single nail. The short ride on a rickshaw in the pouring rain was another highlight of Beijing. Beijing revealed its true beauty after the rain, so many modern skyscrapers we could see. An authentic lunch at a local Beijing Hutong house followed the rickshaw ride. We all enjoyed the home cooking from the local people.
We flew to Xi’an after Beijing. Xi’an is known as the ancient capital city of China, the place where 13 dynasties set their capital city. A 13 Km bike ride on the 700 years old Ming Wall in Xi’an was fun and special. It is like we were on the time machine to see the city from 700 years ago, but at the same time, riding in a modern city and seeing all the new skyscraper apartment buildings beside the wall. A small group of us went to the famous Muslim Street at night. The modern colourful lights covered the ancient wall. The weather was cool but pleasant. We enjoyed seeing all sorts of local street food, walking in the crowd of local Chinese people, many of them young people who finished their day of work and enjoyed socialising with their peers. We thought we got lost on the way back to our hotel, because their subway system is so much more complicated than ours, with each side of road having at least four different exits. Their road and public transport system is so different to ours in Australia. In both Beijing and Xi’an, the local government adopted a road use policy that certain number plate-car registration number are restricted to be on the road on certain days of the week with the aim of reducing air pollution.
We visited the Terracotta Warrior Museum, which is where China’s first emperor Qinshihuang was buried, only some 2200 years ago! It is believed that there are 8000 terracotta warriors of which only 20000 have been unearthed. The Chinese archaeologists and scientists are still exploring ways to preserve the artefacts so that they do not destroy them due to the exposure to oxygen. The tomb of Qinshihuang is as big as the whole Truganina suburb!
We spent a little more time flying to Nanjing from Xi’an as our flight was cancelled, but that did not stop us from feeling excited about our visit to the sister school in Nanjing. The students performed four skits, a few dances and a Kungfu demonstration with their PE teacher and students representatives. It was so cool. We exchanged our gifts at their assembly and then we learned Chinese characters and did some calligraphy and story making with the Chinese words. The school visit ended with a special lunch at a restaurant near the school, where we tried a popular modern vegetable in China called icy-grass, and the mouth-watering sweet and sour fish with pine nuts, both food we have never seen in Australia!
Before heading to Shanghai from Nanjing, our group visited a small water town called Tong-li where we enjoyed a pleasant river cruise on their green water canal. Our boat passed many stone bridges and we saw many old, grey and white southern Chinese residential buildings.
We were all so exhausted from the bus trip to Shanghai, but the night river cruise on the Huangpu River in Shanghai lit our excitement again. The modern Shanghai proudly presented its glamorous night view- rich varieties of skyscrapers of the Bund, many of which being on the list of the tallest buildings in the world! The next day we walked the along the famous riverside park called the Bund, it has a different pronunciation than the way it is spelled, (sounds almost like the brand Bond). There we saw many beautiful western architectures built by European settlers in the early 1900s. Shanghai is truly a place where east meets the west!
We had a quick visit to the silk factory, where we saw the life cycle of a silkworm, how they found the end of the silk thread from a silkworm cocoon, how they put many layers of silk together to make silk quilts and so on. We then went to a famous market called the Yu Gardens where many of us got to try local street food, and bought Chinese crafts.
We watched two shows during our trip in China- one story about golden mask dynasty, where a female ruler sacrifice herself to save her people and the other show was an acrobatic show. Seven motorbikes went in to a giant metal ball and rode at high speeds at the same time. Our hearts nearly fell out of our mouths!
We flew over 11 hours back home to Australia, all feeling exhausted physically in the end, but so rich in our mind as we had learned so much, seen so much and felt so much! Wonderful experience indeed.
Yuanbin Wei, Naomi and Alexander Sleeman, Shaian Elias
