Day 4 (6-3-2009) - Chu Culture

Nothing much happened today except for the lesson on culture that we had. But today also reminded me of how we take the little things in life for granted.

At first look, the major adjustment we all have to go through over here is the weather, but this itself is a force of nature which we cannot change. Other than this, we have to boil our water all the time before we drink it from the tap. We also are still struggling with life without the Internet. Without it, I realise that I am so outdated. For example, I did not even know that my favourite football team, Manchester United, played a match 2 days ago.

One more difference is that over here, we have lots of technical difficulties with computers and things like that. The absence of our wireless internet itself is one. Today I realised that back in Ngee Ann Poly, the reason why our lessons run so smoothly is because we can afford good equipment and have very skilful and efficient team of programmers and technicians who can help us with any technical problems.

Having to change classrooms due to computer faults was kind of troublesome but I shall not complain about it. After all, I feel that the lesson was well worth the long wait.

Altogether, I learned that before there was the Hubei Province, there existed a kingdom called the Chu Kingdom, during the Spring and Autumn Period, and the Warring States Period; important periods whereby slave society collapsed and feudal system was established.

Then, in 221BC, the first emperor Qin, conquered all the 7 kingdoms and therefore created China, the first centralized feudal autocratic dynasty.

However, the Chu culture of the Chu Kingdom still remains.

Things I learned about the Chu culture are the Bronze Culture, Lacquer Culture and more. I find the stories of the Mandarin duck, Qu Yuan, the Phoenix, the Nine-heads bird all fascinating and I hope to learn more about them as we visit the museum tomorrow.

All in all, today was an average day so I hope tomorrow will be much better.