Calligraphy & Tea Ceremony

Calligraphy is a first for me. Though I’ve heard of it but I’ve never done it. It’s such a coincidence that I came to the birth place of calligraphy to do it. We also learnt how to prepare tea for a traditional Chinese tea ceremony. We split into our tutorial classes and our tutorial class did calligraphy first. The calligraphy master taught us that we control the brush not with our thumb but with our middle and ring finger and the brush has to be perpendicular to the paper when writing. I learnt from my friends that the way Chinese calligraphy is different from the way normal Chinese characters are written. Certain points are stressed more than usual. It was definitely a new experience for me as I can barely write normal Chinese characters but now I had to write a more complicated method of Chinese characters but I manage to pull it off somehow and even wrote some complicated Chinese characters using the Chinese newspaper we had below our calligraphy paper. After that, we switched we the other tutorial class and we learnt about the traditional Chinese tea ceremony which is usually used in weddings and Chinese New Year. The more traditional Chinese people in China may still use it to serve their guest but it is a dying tradition in most parts. I was quite shocked to find out that there were many different tools part of the Chinese tea set. Like for example, there was a wooden curved dish to place the dried tea leaves, wooden tweezers which are used to carry the hot tea cup, a wooden scoop to scoop the dried tea leaves and a wooden spatula to transfer the tea leaves from the dish from the dish to the teapot. Different teas are made differently. First the set has to be sterilized with hot water poured over the set. The green tea was prepared by placing it in a pot with lid and hot water and then poured into the teapot, using the cover to prevent the tea leaves from entering the teapot but the teapot also has a ceramic strained but it’s just to ensure that no tea leaves enter the tea pot and they are then poured into the tea cups. When pouring the tea, one should only fill the cup to 70% of the volume. The remaining 30% is used to shoe sincerity. Red tea is prepared by pouring a quarter cup of hot water into a tall glass and transferring the leaves into the glass. The teapot is then filled halfway with plain hot water. The glass is then swirled to mix the tea leaves with the water and then poured into the teapot through a strainer. There are 6 types of tea: Green, yellow, red, black, chrysanthemum and guan ying tea and each have a different way of serving them. I really enjoyed learning about the various Chinese culture and traditions over the past few days and it has really expanded my knowledge on Chinese culture. I’m really glad that I came for this trip as I don’t think I could have learnt most of the things I learnt here back home. Even if I did learn them back home, it would not have been the proper traditional techniques.

Photos:

The calligraphy master demonstrating how to write the strokes.

Our materials

One of our 'masterpieces'.

My name in Chinese. Direct translation means Big You Down (Ta Ni Sia)

My calligraphy buddy, Gordon.

Our second 'masterpiece'.

The instructor teaching us how to pour the various teas

Joel trying t be serious and pour tea

 

IS presentations & Feng Shui

Before our Feng Shui lecture, we had IS presentations. We had to present what we found out about China and our experiences as well as our learning points and the future applications. It was really interesting to learn that some of us had different experiences here in Wuhan, though not entirely different and of course there were the usual similarities of experience like for example most of us talked about spitting and littering here as in Singapore it is illegal.   For the Feng Shui lecture, the lecturer first started talking about the various foods in different provinces of China like for example, the Shandong cuisine consists usually of clear, pure and non-greasy food and shallots and garlic are usually used as seasonings and soups are given to enhance Shandong dishes. Sichuan cuisine is usually spicy and pungent as they use a lot of chili, pepper and prickly ash. Fujian cuisines are known for their sweet, sour, salty and savoury taste and are usually known for their ‘pickled’ flavour. When the Feng Shui lecture started, we learnt that the ‘Qi’, meaning positive energy, has to flow in a straight direction from the front door to the back door and water flowing directly towards a house, away from a house or curving towards the house, are very auspicious. For study tables, they should never be placed facing an angle, should nnot be placed between 2 doors or 2 windows and should not be placed below overhead beams as it disrupts the ‘Qi’.  Your bed, on the other hand, should be placed on an unobstructed wall accessible from both sides diagonally across the floor. To be honest, I actually knew most of the things we learnt today as my mother is into Feng Shui and so I picked up some her knowledge of Feng Shui but I still listened to the lecture anyway to catch any new information that I could gain.

Paper Cutting

So today during lunch, Irfanah and I were waiting for some of our friends to print their notes outside one of the printing shop and outside we saw many packages. I then remembered what a lecturer who had previously gone to Wuhan told us. Basically, in China there’s and online shopping website called TaoBao where you can buy anything and in every area, there is a P.O box where you can send your items that you have ordered to be collected. All you have to do is present your receipt of purchase to the employee and you can collect you parcel and it seemed like today was a busy day among people who had bought things online as the outside area of the shop was flooded with parcel and there was at least 20 or more parcels there. Another thing I noticed, I’ve been going into shoe shops recently and I realized tha the largest size for females is 39 and some of my female friends are between sizes 40-42 and they have no choice but to buy shoes from the guys section which is quite sad as some of the shoes in the girls section are really nice and it’s a good thing I’m size 39 so I still have a chance. However, the shoes that I relaly wanted, a high top light grey coloured with white polka dots on one side and a nice big yellow ribbon did not have my size!!! Their largest was 37 and I was really upset as I totally fell in love with the shoe as soon as I saw it!! I had to end up settling for another shoe. In the afternoon, we headed to the English Saloon, which is located on the 6^th floor of the Foreign language School and it really does live up to its name. The inside really does look like an English Saloon. We were having our paper cutting lesson in there where we learnt how to cut paper in different forms. Before we started, the instructor told us about the different uses of the different types of pattern. There were designs such as the zodiac animals and fish and even a special one, the snake, since it’s the year of the snake but we weren’t going to do the difficult ones since we barely knew anything about his art. We start off by making the circle by which we folding the paper into a triangle and cut the excess paper away. Then we fold in in half 2 more times and cut a rounded edge. It must not be too round as it may form a flower-like shape and after that we are allowed to draw whatever design we want and cut it out. I think we had a lot of fun designing and cutting out our designs and it was really funny to see all the weird designs like for example, Wei Seng drew a horse on his while Priscilla drew a pig on hers and it was really entertaining watching them cut it out as their designs were really difficult to cut out. In the end, my design turned out quite nice and I even did another one!! 

Photos:

A lady opening her arrived package

Us in the English Saloon

Inside the English Saloon

The interpretation of this cutting means that children will grow and learn many new things

This wishes all old people longevity

Wei Seng's design

The instructor teaching us how to draw the designs

Us cutting our paper

Mr Lee's design

My first design

Wei Seng's design. Turned out to be not bad

My second design

We Seng's second design. Forever with the horses

Rachel's design

Priscilla's cute pig design

Strawberry picking and Partaaay

Today, we went strawberry picking. I think genuinely most of us were quite excited the strawberries that get sent to Singapore are usually quite sour and bland and so we thought that picking them right here from the source was going to taste even better and sweeter buuuuut as usual we were wrong!!!!! Our first obstacle was the muddy, slippery and tiny pathway which we had to conquer in order to reach the so-called green houses. Everyone kept walked very carefully so as to not fall. Unfortunately, Samuel fell twice and got mud all over his jeans and coat and Nazhifah was screaming all the way!!! When we finally reached the greenhouse, we were given a plastic bag to keep the strawberries that we collected. We then started plucking the strawberries. According to my knowledge on strawberries, the redder they are the sweeter they are. Therefore, I started plucking the reddest strawberries I saw. There were some strawberries I saw which had mold on them and some of them were overripe as they were sticky and some under ripe as they were still of a greenish-white colour. By the time we finished picking I think most of us were sweating due to the fact that we technically were in a green house. When we were about to leave the farm, we realised that we had to pay for the strawberries to take them home. Some of my friends paid between 5-15 yuan to take their pack home but we were also told that if we didn’t want to take it home we could leave our strawberries there with them so when I asked Dr Tan about this, she asked the person-in-charge if I could leave mine there as I wasn’t really keen on bringing mine home as I had tried some of the strawberries earlier, after washing them of course with the water from my bottle, and I was quite disappointed that they weren’t as sweet as I expected them to be. I have never tasted a sweet strawberry in my entire life!!! How sad. Now back to the point, the person-in-charge told me off without asking me to pay. I was so grateful to him!! But I still had to walk down the dreaded muddy path, though it wasn’t as muddy as what it was when we first arrived as the mud had dried, it was still muddy and slippery. Before we boarded the bus, all of us were quite upset that our shoes and even our jeans had mud on them and we felt really bad as we had to board the bus back with the muddy shoes which meant that the bus driver would have an extra clean up job to do. We were then given about half an hour to clean up ourselves before we headed over to a party hosted by the local students. I think the first thing everyone did when we got back home was to rush to the bathroom and clean our shoes. It was a good thing I took the toothbrush from the hotel back at the Red Cliff as it came in handy today when we needed to scrub our shoes free of mud. Most of us changed our shoes, some of us wore slippers but luckily I had an extra pair of shoes to wear. We then headed to a hall situated in the Sports Hall which is right next to our dormitory building. The local students put up a performance for us. The first performance was break dancing. They break dancers had quite good skills, similar to the break dancers back at home. The next was a game where two groups of four had to pass water from their own cup to their group mate’s cup but they could only use their mouths to hold the cups. In the end, the winners got a calligraphy script which was really nice. The next game was musical chairs and I so happened to get ‘volunteered’ by my friends to play but it was a good thing as I ended up winning and I got the calligraphy script as well!! There was then a performance by the roller skating team of the university and I was quite impressed by their skills. Though they made some mistakes, their skills were quite impressive. Then there was a performance by the local flute orchestra and according to Nazhifah who is an excellent flute player, their flutes were out of tune but at least they tried their best. Next, the game that was played where a group of two people had to transport a balloon using a specific body part which does not include your hands. The first group was Ms Mikia and Mr Le versus Dr Tan and Ms Chua. They had to transport the balloon using the heads and Ms Mikia and Mr Lee won and they  too won a calligraphy script along with Wei Seng and Joel, who transported the balloons using their backs against Asaph and Nicholas.  The final game was where individuals had a group of balloons tied up to their ankles and they had to burst each other’s balloons by stepping on them. The person with the most balloons at the end of the game would win and this time Rachel won first and Nazhifah, second. Then we had a long karaoke session. First, we sang some Chinese songs and later on we sang some Korean and English songs. It was quite a fun experience but also a sad day as Ms Mikia is leaving us!!! It’s so sad as we really bonded with her over this trip and though it was our first time getting to know her, she’s like a mother to us now and I will really miss her and hope to see her more often back in Ngee Ann. Although it’s only goodbye for now, I will still miss you Ms Mikia!!!

Photos:

The pathway to the farm

Inside the greenhouse

The strawberries I picked

The dreaded slippery and muddy pathway.

The party room

Us enjoying our snacks

Our many snacks!!

The local students break dancing

Us playing the water transfering game

Musical chairs

Local students playing the flute

Ms Mikia and Mr Lee

The calligraphy script that I won in musical chairs

The locals writing calligraphy on the spot for us

The leg on the balloon bursting game

Mr lee and Ms Mikia singing karaoke

Ms Mikia's last day here in Wuhan!!!!