Day 6

Yet another wonderful Cooling Day at Suzhou...

We start of the wonderful day by heading to the Master of Nets Garden.
The story of the garden came about goes something like this...
<The Story>
According to our guide, there was once a rich family that is well respected in that area.                 Then one day, one of their sons fell into a lake/pond/sea (I can’t remember) he is on the verge of drowning when a mysterious guy saved the boy using a net. His identity till now is Unknown. So to show appreciation towards his son saviour, he build the garden to honour the guy and since the only evidence left was a net, he decided to call is the Master of Nets Garden.

So that how the garden is being name as such.

After exploring around the scenic garden, we headed for our bus to proceed to the Silk factory.
Which we will learn how silk is being produced and what are the various processes it has to go through.

We gained tips on how to differentiate between Real Silk and Fake Silk (Polyester).

Here is some cool thing we could do to check the authenticity of the silk.

1.        If we burn silk, it would produce a white odourless smoke.

2.        If we burn silk, it would still be smooth on the edges unlike Polyester.

3.        If we blow into the silk, we would feel the air passing through the silk.

So to sum it up, this is the list of process that it had to go through,

1.        They separate the double and the single cocoon first

2.        They then proceed to boil the cocoon to soften the fibre. Also to kill the worm.

3.        Then it went through a machine that will extract the silk from the cocoon and will reel it into a small wheel.

4.        They re-wheel the entire little wheel into a bigger wheel and hence the silk is suitable to be used.

After some shopping at the silk factory, we then proceed on having a hearty lunch at a nearby restaurant. Afterwards, we will be visiting the Suzhou Tourism and Finance Institution.

After lunch, we visited Suzhou Tourism and Financial Institution (STFI). We had the opportunity to tour around the school and visit the classroom while the students whilst lesson was going on. We also had the opportunity to have some hands on work with the students. They taught us how to make dumpling and make tea the proper way. While doing these, we also interacted with them and exchanged some pointers with them. It was really interesting talking to them and learning about their culture, school life and background. We learned that their diploma course is 5 years and their school hours is 8-4pm which is quite similar to ours. Most of them stays in hostel as China is so big and it is tough for them to get to school.

Their classroom is also very different from ours. All the classroom are hands on and even if it is a lesson for them to sit down and listen to the teacher, the set up of the classroom is very different. It is bigger with a lot of sculpture and model. It is not air-conditioned and honestly it is quite dirty. They have changing rooms for students to change after a culinary class and all the clothes were lying on the floor.

It was really great interacting with the students who are around our age and also studying tourism. Most of them did not want to work in the tourism industry actually but it is just a stepping stone for them to get into a university or even further their studies. The education system is quite different. They were amused to know that we are bilingual and how they cannot speak English well even though they learn since primary school.

Personally for me, this visit to STFI would be the biggest takeaway for me. I wished we had more time with the students! They are so warm and friendly.

After dinner all of us went to the SIP (Suzhou Industrial Park) and did a reflection within our own teams and shared our experience and biggest takeaways with the rest. It is a wonderful experience since we can listen to how other view this study strip as a whole and their perception on certain things. All that is left for our activity is the 2 hours trip back to our hotel in Shanghai! 

Tomorrow, we will be doing a site inspection in YueHua hotel before we leave for the airport and head back to Singapore, it has been an amazing trip so far, though tiring, it is fruitful and we truly gained a lot of experience from the trip and one and other. Can’t hope to touchdown in Singapore, we will be reaching in the evening and bidding our goodbyes there, I am sure it will be a tearing moment for all of us.

Day 4 End of World Expo

Sorry for the late upload... been receiving so much code error :(

25 sept 2010

Visit to the Singapore Pavilion

·         The structure is eco-friendly.

·          Several tv slow by 2 secs.

·         There are four poles representing multi-racial.

·         The sky garden representing Singapore garden city and there is one orchid that is specially breeded from Singapore to improve the bilateral relations between Singapore and shanghai.

·         The four drums are to be beat together as one symphony.

·         F1 prove that Singapore has the potential to host such major event.

·         Our four famous Singapore singers that happens to be in a same region and famous in China, sang a song to show the lifestyle, culture of Singapore.

·         Treating water as a precious natural resource.

·         Lunch – Soft ice cream and the coconut – how the coconut is being cut.

·         The World Expo has lots of high technologies such as the coin-making machine and a pre-paid card machine which has a webcam to capture your face.

Singapore Pavilion

Today is the day we got to do our attachment at the Singapore Pavilion.

Basically our team had to do the morning shift , then the another teams had to do the afternoon shift. When we enter the Singapore Pavilion, we are firstly attracted to the music played in it. It happens to be a “water-ballad” dance performance. We enjoyed watching the performance because seeing the performers dance with the water fountain was something delightful for us and probably it was our first time seeing this kind of performance.

 They even get to entertain/interact the audience by using the umbrellas and trying to splash them with water.  But during the performance, something caught our attention and we were disgusted by it – a young girl urinating on the floor.  We were not surprised of such action because we knew the culture behaviour of the China people. Anyway, after watching the delightful performance, we headed to the staff lounge for a briefing by the Singapore Pavilion tour guide.

Our tour guide happens to be from Singapore, studying in Temasek Polytechnic and has come here to work for her internship. We were very satisfied on how she briefed us throughout the whole tour. Firstly, we were brought to the first level to see the structure of Singapore. The structure there was eco-friendly and also on each pillar, there are televisions on it to show that Singapore do look back at their past since it is a country that has a rapid development over the years.

The special thing is that the video played on the television was slowed by 2 seconds from the first pillar to the last pillar. Also, there are four poles that shows the different multi-racial in Singapore and one of it has drums that can played as one symphony. Then, there is also a F1 booth which can let people to give it a try on what’s like to be on a F1 car, similar to the arcade game that we have in Singapore. After that, we headed to the second level which is the theatre part. We watched a 7-minute music video that was specially sang by our four famous Singapore singers – Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Ah Du and Tanya Chua. It was a video to show the lifestyle and culture of Singapore. We enjoyed it a lot after watching it. Then, the last part, we went to the third level which is known as the “Hanging Garden/Sky Garden” that is landscape with mysterious flora. It was beautiful. After that, we ended our journey in Singapore Pavilion.

They provided us lunch and it was authentic chicken rice from Singapore! We were all delighted as we really missed the food in Singapore, especially the chicken rice chilli! It was really delicious and what all of us gobbled down our food. However, they also changed the chicken rice of what we have in Singapore to cater to the taste of the locals here in China. For example, they had a side dish of glass noodles and fungus and the chicken is also steamed instead of roasted as that’s what most Chinese likes.

Shopping at Xin Tian Di

After dinner, our group proceeded to the French Concession area – Xin Tian Di. The Xin Tian Di is a preservation of the French history and have managed to maintain the authenticity of the area. Structures such as buildings very much resemble what we can find in Europe and this gives us a whole new experience. The past few days has been a lot about China and its cultures. However, tonight at Xin Tian Di it did not feel like China somehow.

Xin Tian Di is a frequent spot for the foreigners especially the Europeans and are usually for the rich  that are less price sensitive.  In fact in this area, there are usually more foreigners than locals. As we walked along the streets and malls of Xin Tian Di, we realised that it is like a mixture of Singapore’s Paragon and Clark Quay. Shopping was expensive with retail shops like Miss Sixty, G Star Raw and there were even Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. There were restaurants along the streets and tourists come here for a drink, meal or just to chill out. 

At the end of the day, we have reflected on several issues:

1.       Singapore Pavilion is showing the world that Singapore is what it is due to the combine effort of the entire citizen in Singapore.

2.       Singapore appreciate the close bond they share with Shanghai by actually having the effort to breed a new species of Orchid just to meet such purpose

3.       To put an end to the World Expo, we believe that China has done a good job as a host since though the government is losing money from this, they are able to convey the message to the world and their local which is “Better City, Better Life” They have thought us various way of living a green life, To those local that went to the pavilion, they are thought the ways that they can contribute to ensure that they can keep their part to keep their country a leading Eco friendly Country

4.       Xin Tian Di we have experience a different side of Shanghai in which is the “Rich” Local hangout. Since our guide mention that at night this place with either foreigner or people with top position jobs.

5.       Lastly and Importantly we learn that in China, the motorist does not give way to pedestrian. In other words priority is given to the vehicle which we find rather weird, ^^

Well that’s all for today.

 Due stay tune for more.

Day 5:
 

Hello from SuZhou!!

Today, we made our way to Su Zhou from Shanghai. The journey was 2.5hours long! The life in Su Zhou is much slower compared to Shanghai. The people here are poorer and they have a lower standard of living. It is quite different from the city life in Shanghai which we experienced for the past few days. The tour guide told us about the difference between Shanghai and SuZhou. For example, the average life span of a person living in Shanghai is 72 years old while those in SuZhou is 79 due to the hectic lifestyle.

One of the main thing about SuZhou would be the pretty girls and silk! Silk contains collagen which is good for the skin thus girls in SuZhou have good skin and they are deemed as pretty! We’ll be visiting a silk factory tomorrow so look out for more!

Before heading to Shanghai, we visited:

Shanghai Bus International Travel Service
The Shanghai Bus International Travel Service is a travel agency in Shanghai and today we were given the opportunity for a site inspection at this local tour operation office.

The Shanghai Bus International Travel Service was stared at about 2004. It has been six years then and they have made many developments to their company. They provide travel services that inbound, outbound and domestic (within China, amongst cities).  Travel agencies commonly provide such services. However in Singapore, there is no need for domestic travelling, considering the size of it. Hence, making it easy for locals to travel around. I believe this has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of this is that it proves that there is hardly a place in Singapore that is not accessible. Even when tourists travel around Singapore, it will not take them long. However, the downside to this is that tourist can get bored easily. Tourists may spend one week in Shanghai and still feel its not enough but it is more than sufficient for them in Singapore. This would also mean that tourists spend less time and money in Singapore. Singapore has to constantly create opportunities for revenue or something that allow tourists to feel that it is worth coming back for.

Moving on, some of the unique selling points of the Shanghai Bus International Travel Service is that it provides online registration. This online registration is in trend and is slowly gaining popularity now that people are more tech-savvy. It provides customers with convenience and saves a lot of time (travelling, queuing etc) for them.

Thinking about it, it will still be best if they have both the old and new. Not just to travel agencies but to most services, it is best to still preserve the traditional method and make use of the new one.  Both has its pros and cons and should help complement each other. For example, if the queue is long, use the online registration. At the same time, if the online registration has an error than we can use the old manual way. In this way, we can help achieve the best of both worlds. Both can help serve as a backup plan for each other.

We had shopping and lunch time back in Chenghuangmiao! Most  of us spent all our time shopping thus we had no time to eat our lunch and we had to packed food to eat on the bus!

We made our way to:

Shanghai International Convention Center
There is an upcoming event called Marine Port China 2010. It is the 12^th International Exhibition On Ports, Shipping and Logistics. Mr Wilson who is in charge of organizing the whole event brought us on site and explained the registration process to us. He mentioned that each of the delegate will received a personalized barcode and it will provide their information when they visit the site. There were also some plans made to ease the whole movement of registration for example, there were six counters which is able to cater to 6000 delegates but there is also 3000 delegates attending. This is part of their plan to speed up the process and this is part of their contingency plan for overcrowding. They were renovating the site thus we were not able to walk around.

After this, we embarked on a 2.5hours journey to SuZhou where we were greeted with a sumptuous dinner of the delicacies! Dinner was really a spread and the food is really different!

After dinner, we had some free time to walk around:

Guan Quan street.
This street is a mixture of both modern and old. There are back alleys where it is really old school, however the shops there were quite modern. There are a lot of different brands there. We also saw a lot of beggars around begging for money on the street and we didn’t see that happening in Shanghai!

We are spending our night in SuZhou today in a Oriental Hotel. All the furniture is wooden and Chinese. There are also Chinese characters on the walls. The beds are also hard as Chinese likes to sleep on hard beds because it is good for their backbone but we are definitely not used to it!

Goodnight! We’ll be heading back to Shanghai tomorrow night and we can’t wait to be in the super luxurious hotel! 

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Day 3 Pure Excitement!

Day 3 Pure Excitement!

24/9/2010

We start the day by having the bus to send us to the nearest metro station in which we will have a first hand experience on the Shanghai Public Transport System.

The surrounding was clean and the security is tighter than of those in Singapore MRT.
Trust me the transport system is simply amazing!

After we reach our stop, we took the bus and head for the gallery suites.
The place is not what I expected because honestly it is my first time entering a boutique hotel.
Though it lack of space I felt that the design of the place is kinda cool and comfortable.

After the tour of the boutique hotel, we then proceed for a hearty lunch before proceeding to SHOPPING at ChengHuangMiao and Han City (if im not mistaken). Price there were cheap provided if you know how to bargain with them. It was really exciting. Honestly speaking if you carry a lot of money with you, you would feel like spending them all here!

 

It sure does drain the energy out of us when we are to assemble at the bus since most of us fell asleep as we head to our next destination Yu Shanghai.

At the Yu Shanghai is the location where we will be having our dinner and the magic performance.

After the dinner, we watch a wonderful magic performance at the Yu Shanghai. It was AMAZING!!! seeing live magic performance is quite an experience indeed.


Afterward, we walked to the Bund for a little Sight seeing before heading back to the hotel.

I have tons of video I wanted to upload but here the internet is too 'fast' for me to do so. I'll try to upload it A.S.A.P

Till then Stay Tune

Day 2 - Shanghai World Expo, Nanjing Road

Day 2 - Shanghai World Expo, Nanjing Road

Structure of the China Pavilion

The different exhibitions that talks about the history to the future.

National Treasures that was dug out (below)

China's technologies 

Interesting exhibition about the Super Rice. They have actually placed mirrors surrounding  a patch of the Super Rice, making it look like a large never ending piece of rice field!

World Expo: China Pavillion
Today, our team managed to enter the China Pavilion but I got to mention, it was not an easy feat at all, even as reserved guests, we queued for hours before we were able to actually enter the pavilion itself. The crowd control was pretty well managed, it is definitely worth learning and adopting their plan on how we can handle huge crowds in future project plans, but there are still several problems arising as the locals were always trying to cut our queues and we were separated from our groups by them, causing some of us to be lagging behind. The guards were not able to stop them as they were being quite a handful, some of the local visitors even attempted to climb over the railings, we have definitely learn that we have to stay real close together to avoid us being separated. The feeling was exhilarating the moment we managed to enter the pavilion as the structures and the paintings inside were eye-catching and definitely eye opening for all of us.

As evident with the pictures above, the China Pavilion was perfectly structured ; Red, bold and massive. To us, it has greatly signified the majestic power of China yet at the same time educating us of their traditional beliefs. For this Pavilion, China has invested on more than millions.

Despite looking all traditional on the outside, its interior was definitely a pleasant surprise! More importantly, we could see how China have progressed since the past. It's developments have been constant.


Nanjing Rd
After we left world expo, we were brought to Nanjing Rd for dinner and shopping for about 2hours. Our tour guide told us that Nanjing Rd is the "Orchard Rd" in Singapore thus no bargaining was allowed. It changes our impression of Shanghai as we thought Shanghai wouldn't be orderly and we could bargain for almost everything!

We were also informed about the safety measures we need to take while walking along Nanjing Rd. Although there isn't major crimes such as robbery and murder which happens, there is still PLENTY of pickpockets! We had to put our bags infront of us at all times and take care of our belongings.

In Nanjing Rd, it was very much like Singapore as we saw shops such as "zara", "uniqlo", "haagen daz", "giordano" etc.. They also have a mall which is called "raffles city"! So, we felt quite comfortable as we feel quite safe seeing all these shops knowing that we are familiar with them.

We had to settle our own dinner so we asked the service counter of a mall to recommend a place for dinner which we could try some local dishes. She then directed us to the top level which has a Shanghai restaurant.
While ordering, we asked the waitresses to recommend us some popular dishes that people usually order and we ordered them too. The food turned out to be really delicious and we were happy with our dinner!

Day 2 China Pavilion

Bus Trip

Its a wonderful Morning, the breakfast is wonderful!
We eat our fill and proceed to the bus and prepare for another trip to World Expo.

Arrival of world Expo

Lesser crowd then yesterday for security check in.
We were assign meeting spots before heading to lunch.

Lunch

Lunch was hectic. It basically a warzone with waiter shouting all over the place and the endless crowd its the worst dining experience ever! we had our fills and head to China Pavilion.

China Pavilion

The waiting time is just too long! we had to wait at least 1hr on the ground floor before heading to the pavilion.
However, luck is on our side as they present to us a choir group from Sydney Australian which they "perform"
for us by having a min sing along session like "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Bob the builder" and "some nursery rhymes". It definitely is a fun sight.

We then manage to kill the 1hr + wait to enter the pavilion. Then we were greeted by another 2hr long of queue -_-. The line is super long snake. With no source of entertainment, waiting is hell!.

Finally we reach the start of pavilion and as usual people were being pushy, it gets annoying after a while.
Imagine we start our wait from 1.30pm - 4.30pm just to enter the pavilion. However, the interior was spectacular. Its definitely a wonderful sight to begin with. From big screen theater, into the lively paint work and the architectural findings. The sight from above is simply spectacular, people look like ants and the crowd is still full.

Our leg are killing us and its a sign to tell us to leave the place. We headed down and meet up with the rest of the group and headed for dinner and SHOPPING!

Nanqing 353 plaza

We had our dinner and shopping nothing much happen here, its just like another Orchard for us

Hotel

We need to get some sleep. We are so so tired! 

Day 1 of Shanghai Study Trip

Departure

Everyone is excited for the flight SQ 826 which will depart at 1:15am :)
The flight service is really enjoyable and smooth. However we need to get some shut eye as when we arrive we will have loads of activity to do.

Arrival

Airport Immigration service is good however, i feel that it can be improve on if they know English better.
We were all very tired from the plane ride though to make sure that the trip is fruitful, we embrace ourselves for the various activity ahead.
We then proceed to meet our tour guide Mr Sam! He is definitely very friendly guy since he greeted us warmly and gave us a brief introduction of the World Expo and Shanghai during our bus trip to the location.

World Expo

As we alight the bus. We are rather astonish to see the mega building of the China Pavilion and the HUGE crowd awaiting to go through the security check. We waited for about half an hour or so to pass the security check.

Surprisingly the temperature here have dropped at least 15 degree Celsius since our tour guide mention that Yesterday it was 35 degree Celsius. In conclusion its pretty cold and windy.

Basically the Activity we are going to cover is visiting the Denmark, Spain and Coke Pavilion.

Coke Pavillion
Simply awesome, they teach you a cool method to make a thin ice layer on top of your coke.

Denmark Pavilion
It is very artistic indeed architectural wise and its interior. Funny incident which involve a women falling into the exhibition was seen there. Try to took a video but missed it. Enjoyable but we felt that lack of information is given.

Spain Pavilion
It is GRAND!!! though only 9 people were allowed, We send Shamin as a representative and he will upload videos of the pavilion. The exterior were superb!

Dinner
We proceed for dinner at a restaurant. Unique thing about the restaurant is that customer and staff were allowed to smoke in the restaurant itself. O.o???

Check in Hotel
After a wonderful dinner we then proceed to our hotel Yue Hua Hotel.
Nice ambiance service is pleasant.
Now we need a good rest since we are all very very exhausted from the activity done.
Done updating... its time for SLEEP!!! another wonderful day of adventure awaits us!