Day 14: Philosophy Morning, Birthday Evening

Chinese Philosophy class in the morning, with Ms Grace Tao, who puts in so much effort to provide us with materials to help us understand the complex ideology behind major Chinese Schools of Thoughts such as Confucianism (儒家),

Daosim/Taoism (道家),

Moism (墨家), Lawism (法家), Buddhism (佛家)

as well as the Main philosophers associated such as Confucius (孔子), Mencius (孟子), Zhuang Zi (庄子), and Lao Tzu (老子).

Although somewhat harder to grasp at the beginning, I really appreciate Ms Tao's efforts to make us easier to understand such as looking and photocopying excerpts from books in English to enable us to read and understand better, and videos such as one on Mencius and another on Lao Tzu, both masters in Taoism.

Lao Tzu in the video, explaining the defining concepts of Taoism

To help us better understand the philosophies, Ms Grace also showed us some of the famous quotes/sayings by these philosophers regarding their philosophy.

My favorite is this saying by Confucius:

Mind-warpingly wise

In the evening, we planned a surprise birthday celebration for our dear friend, Zhen Zhao, at the Greenery Cafe.

We had dinner, cake and presented our present for him. While we were doing so, some of the local students who joined us asked if this is our custom, to present the gift in public. Curious, I asked how did they normally did it. In China, Face-saving is as important as in Singapore, thus when they present gifts, they usually just leave it in the person's room or pass it to them the day after to avoid embarrassment for those that did not get gifts.

Reflection:

Personally, I feel that the way the Chinese students give birthday presents is very considerate, as they consider the feelings of others first and foremost even when celebrating a friend's birthday. In Singapore, when we present gifts, we do it publicly even though we try not to attract too much attention, which I feel would impact the mind of guests who had not brought presents feel very awkward. Even with present sharing, the public presentation of gifts could also make others feel bad when they compare gifts such as the size or cost of the gift which could make the giver feel inferior. A birthday is meant to celebrate a person's anniversary of birth, so I feel that it is quite a good practice to also present gifts in private to consider the feelings of everyone present, which would certainly make the celebration feel even better.