18

Day 18- 11 Sept.

Today, we had lessons with SHI DING LE regarding the culture of China. Dina was ill and stayed in bed. Probably, the weather and the heatiness got to her.

In class, we learnt that the Pre-Qin era(770BC-221BC) was the golden period for China as ppl had freedom of speech. Just as long as people would lend you their ears, you will be able to say what you feel. That time, China was divided into many small countries and people wanted to expand their trade to other country so it resulted in many wars. That period was also called the Zhan Guo Period. With such wars came chinese philosophers who question that existence. Cool..

Another thing that was taught was the difference in culture between the europeans who supports individualism and Chinese who supports group identities varied in a survey conducted by my teacher. She drew a picture of a group of fishes with 1 stray fish. She then asked her chinese class what do they feel. Out of 38 students, only 3 felt that the stray fish was happy being independent while the rest said the fish was an outcast.
The test was done on her other group of european students and their responses were all about the fish being happy. This goes to show that chinese believe that if you are alone, you are an outcast which means that you are bad.

She also says that the culture in WuHan is restricted and there is no religion in Wuhan as strictly speaking, the Hans clan does not hold up for any religion due to the worship of the king and the ancestors in the past. Taoism is barely counted as a religion as it is accepted as the main aim for it is to achieve longevity.

After class, she then brought a group of us to somewhere near which usually sells the unique works of students. On the way, she told us about why there had to be soldiers training for all schools at the start of the semesters, irregardless of female or male. It was linked to the strike which happened in China by the students around. They were very involve in politics and they tried to overthrow the government at that time(1989). It ended up in a bloody mess of students and to prevent this. "brainwashing" training were carried out since.