Saturday, March 12, 2011

Exploration!!!

12 – 3 – 2011
Yay , it’s the 1st weekend  we are spending in china . Today something interesting happened in the morning , someone in our group prank called us as a morning wakeup call …well its kinda hilarious because the person said “这里是幸福贵台,你有人在外面等你 “ . We were suppose to meet at the main lobby at  about 10.30am and when we all gathered the person that prank us was revealed and the most funny thing is that the person prank called Mr.Tan too by accident and the person when he/she heard Mr.Tan voice immediately ended the call. Haha the person that prank call got  pranked instead. Well enough of jokes as we know today is a Saturday which we are going to use the time to explore Tianjin as much as we can. Our 1st stop is Tianjin’s foodstreet well judging from the street’s name of course we are going to eat there  :D We went to the bus stop near our hotel and found the bus that brings us the Tianjin food street , in the end we took bus 50 which brought us to the foodstreet. The 1st dishes that we tried was beef noodle’s ,Cold Chinese noodle with vinegar and Cucumber like vegetables , Cold Chinese Horfun with vinegar and Cucumber like vegetables . We also tried beef buns which tastes great but it’s kinda salty. We visited a shop that sells different tea leafs , the lady owner was kind enough to share with us some art of drinking Chinese tea for example she said that the taste of your tea actually depends on the tea of your water when you first added into the tea as the taste varies at different temperature. Also one thing I observed is that the 1st few cups of freshly brewed tea is always poured away, when asked why does she do that she explained that it is because the few cups of tea being poured away is not fully saturated with the taste of the tea leafs and it will not taste good. While walking around in the food street we  also found a uncle that uses melted sugar to make pictures with it , if im not wrong  the term for it is sugar art.The uncles drawing is perfectly precise which im surprised as his drawed the picture by pouring the sugar from a large spoon. We also bought and tried a kind  of Chinese candy called 龙嘘 I don't  know if I typed it correctly but in English it’s called dragon’s beard . it's a very intresting candy as different  flavors are wrapped in the dragon’s beard.
After eating and shopping  at the foodstreet for like about 3 hours we headed to one of Tianjin’s 古文化街 this is actually a place that sells  antiques items. We  choose to explore this area because it’s a place that  can contain many  things that are being used in ancient times and it can help us to understand more of china’s heritage. One of the 1st places we went was a sort of mini museum/ store which sells jade , old Chinese wooden furniture. It’s really interesting  because the wooden furniture is hand crafted and  it is crafted in a very detailed way. Which  can tell us the crafter probably dedicated himself in creating such unique  art pieces. On the same building we also came pass a shop that sells antique clocks and radios that you probably cant possibly find them in Singapore anymore. Well of course we did some shopping there and while we were shopping and admiring some of the antique items ( though we cant afford it.) we came across a sketch artiest  drawing a portrait of anyone for the amount of 10 yuan which is roughly 2SGD . A few of us actually had our picture drawn and im one of the few that had our face drawn and on a scale of 1-10 I probably give that guy a 8 . We explored around古文化街 till around 4pm and went to have our dinner.
After a very filling dinner at Pizza Hut which we were so grateful there one in china because we are starting to missed the food in Singapore and this is probably one  the funniest thing I have heard in my life is that when we ordered 6 Pizza’s and when we wanted to order more the waiter actually told us that they have ran out of flour which is a very  funny thing because  if they were to run out flour what’s there to sell.
After dinner its already 7pm and we took a bus across the road came back to our hotel and surprisingly we came back in time for rolecheck and during the rolecheck  Mr.Tand and Chua told us that they went to Beijing today to explore around and they briefed us about safety as it is very important because apparently they  witnessed a theft where someone on their bus had his laptop stolen.
Reflecting…
I feel that today although we were asked to  go around exploring we ended up playing and eating but I felt that today was a very good start because although we played and eat a lot we  actually did learn thing’s through it for example we learnt  what sort of food Tianjin people eat their breakfast ,what are their traditional food and how to make a good cup of tea .while during the古文化街 exploration I realized that china  have many talented people  for example the  sketch artist and the candy art uncle that we met at the foodstreet. This actually taught me why china is improving at such a fast pace in my opinion it's because their country has lots of talents to bring the country forward. Also today’s trip at the古文化街 taught me that china actually valued their countries antique at a very high value  because it tells them how rich their history is to the world .


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