This week I got to tour around the SYSU East campus with some of the Chinese students and some friends on the study abroad. Their buildings are much more spread out than the buildings on BYU so it was a lot of walking, but it's okay, I have to work off all of the food I'm eating somehow right? We probably walked around for like 3 hours, but it was so cool to get to know the campus as a whole, rather than just knowing the building we have class in. It made me feel more connected to the university.
The next day, in my global leadership class, we had a team building activity. In our teams we had to build the tallest tower out of paper and tape. Now out of 20 people on an engineering study abroad, not one of us is a civil engineer. Honesty hour: my team didn't win, our tower actually fell over one second before time was up so that was awkward, BUT we totally had the most fun, so I count that as a win. After class was done and after we had lunch, a couple friends and I walked around this little alleyway market next to the Go-Go (the food court where we ate). It was exactly what I expected from a Chinese market, so that was cool. Later that night a huge group of us went to downtown Guangzhou and got dinner and then walked around the city. We got to see this super cool fountain show where the fountain did different things to the beat of the music. (It sounds lame when I explain it but it was way cool, trust me). Then after the fountain show, we walked to the Guangzhou tower, which lights up different colors at night. Super cool. I learned that the tower was built to literally only be a tourist attraction. There's no other purpose to it. I think it's hilarious, but still cool nonetheless. Anyways, a ton of buildings in Guangzhou have super cool lights on them. Like one of them has a dancing person on it. Like it's just straight up dancing on the side of the building. I wish I could do that. It's a super cool place at night, I absolutely love it. When we were all taking pictures by with the Guangzhou tower in the background while I was waiting in line to get my picture taken, the Chinese woman getting her picture taken ran up to me and started taking pictures with me. It was so funny oh my gosh. Definitely felt super cool, not going to lie.
The next day was pretty wild. After class we took a field trip to the Western Han Nanyue King Tomb Museum and a Buddhist temple. The museum was pretty cool because we actually got to walk inside the tomb itself. It was relatively small compared to the tombs of emperors but this one had some interesting stuff in it. First of all, one of the side rooms was dedicated to the remains of one of the king's concubines. She didn't even look pretty, she just looked like a bunch of rocks, I don't know what he saw in her. There was also a kitchen and some storage rooms in the tomb. This man was so ready for the afterlife. He was also quite the player; in the museum we saw that he had a "concubine of the right" and a "concubine of the left", then 2 other concubines that weren't given the concubine title on the plaque but they had the symbol of the concubine or something like that. What a guy.
After the museum, we went to a Buddhist temple and it was super interesting. There was a large Buddha right at the front and when people arrived they left incense at the base and prayed to it. They had other buildings as you walked into the temple grounds. One was dedicated to what I think was a prayer. They were singing something and they would kneel and then stand up in a certain pattern. Then there was a huge building right next to that one, which was home to 3 extremely large and fancy Buddhas. There were places for people to pray around the entire display. It had a very peaceful atmosphere and it was very nice to see others practicing their religion and to see what they believed in. There was a building next to that one, which was dedicated to reading scripture in a quiet environment. Then around the temple grounds they had flowers, statues, and places to rest. Overall it was a great experience. I love getting to know other religions and I love seeing what others believe. It's so eye-opening.
After the temple, we walked around an outside market. Some friends and I were looking for lunch and so we decided to check out this underground place. Like we literally had to take an escalator down to get there. It was super sketchy though. First of all there wasn't an escalator back up that we could see, then when we got down there it was a bunch of old, empty jewelry cases then like 2 people sitting at a table. Also the lights were super dim. We had to take another escalator down to an even sketchier area to get there but we talked about it for a little bit and after a worker tried so incredibly hard to get us to go down there, we decided to leave. We didn't really feel like getting mugged that day. We ended up getting hot pot, which is where you cook the meat yourself and you add a bunch of stuff into the pot, like mushrooms, potatoes, cilantro, etc. It was delicious.
Yesterday we went to visit a company that manufactures aluminum bottles for hairspray and stuff like that. We actually got to see how they're made, which was pretty cool. And the people there were so so nice to us. It incredible what machinery can do nowadays. I'll throw in some pictures from that because my description of how it's made would be so incorrect.
Dang that was long, but thanks for sticking around if you read it all! China is the coolest and I love it more and more each day. Shout out to my parents for being the kindest people on the planet and allowing me to come here, they're the best :).
(Lots of pictures on this one, be prepared)
No comments:
Post a Comment