Blog Post by Pou Lijuan, FS0703
Not a temple but a school. JIANGNAN UNIVERSITY, located in Jiangsu province, Wuxi.
This is where Kimmy and I, Lijuan are attached to for our 3 months attachment, from the 9th March till 29th May 2009. We are already halfway through and slowly, we gain a better understanding in the Chinese language and environment.
The school compound is relatively clean and well maintained, as they have only moved to this campus a few years ago. Since we are from the Food Science course, we are posted to their School of Food Science. Both of us decided to work on their Bakery and Ingredient Research Department. We are to work with the Year 4 students who are graduating research students. Kimmy’s project will be on Angel Cake while mine will be on bread. Both of them will be having additional ingredients added.
After staying here for the past 6 weeks, we are always looking forward to the weekend outings that consist of a 45-minute bus ride to Wuxi downtown. It is a place where you can find shopping centres, and it resembles Singapore’s Orchard Road.
A Chinese student, who welcomed us from the airport when we arrived, introduced us to a few Indonesian friends. The hostel we are staying in is especially for international students, and over here, we get to meet and make new friends. Our new Indonesian friends introduced us to the shopping area during our first official Sunday outing.
Saturdays have become our cleaning-up-the-room cum laundry-wash days, while Sundays become our outing days. Even though it is always the same walk to the same place and same route every weekend, we are not bored of the place at all, as it is better than cooping ourselves in the hostel room for the whole day. Also, it is only during the weekends when we get to eat REAL GOOD FOOD as compared to what we eat during the school days! We could not accept their type of food initially. However, eventually, we have found food that suits our taste buds but there are limited choices. Surprisingly, they do not eat with a spoon but with a pair of chopsticks or a fork. Most importantly, their food is really very cheap! An average meal would only cost S$1.50. Although it does not look appetizing, it is actually rather edible.
Delivery can be ordered through phone calls to restaurants and they would send it to your doorstep, without any delivery charge!
Many of you should have heard of the astounding amount of pirated items sold in China, such as CDs, VCDs, and branded goods. Guess what? We learnt from my partner that real computer CD-ROMs are hard to get! At only S$1.25 each, these pirated stuffs are super cheap!
Complaints of the unruly China Chinese are commonly heard but when we meet them individually, they are actually polite, friendly, helpful and easy to get along with. Sadly, when we are walking on the road, people of all appearance and ages clear their throats loudly and spit onto the ground. Littering is also a common sight. On one occasion, while we were waiting for the traffic light, a woman who was right in front of us flung her tissue paper up the air and pretended to tidy up her hair.
The weather here is unpredictable. It can be scorching hot one day (29˚C), with its heat stronger than Singapore, and freezing cold the next day (11˚C), with wind blowing at full blast, so strong that we have problem walking. When it rains, it rains the entire day. Nevertheless, we have grown accustomed to the coldness here. It was actually extremely freezing cold on the day of our arrival with us having only a plain jacket on, thus we were asked to shop for warmer pieces of clothing, and we bought a coat each.
In China, with Chinese as the main language, English being uncommonly spoken, our Chinese has improved tremendously, and may unintentionally bring their accent back to Singapore, therefore spreading the use of perfect Chinese…
