Day 7: Politics & Surprises (Part 1)

What an strong title slide. I seem to be running more when I'm overseas, could be the humidity levels are not as high as Singapore, or just plain enthusiasm. Despite sleeping late and waking up really early for the lesson at 8.30am, I'm still able to run to the classroom block and pay attention for the lesson on Chinese Politics. Perhaps this can be attributed to my interest in Politics, and especially that of China's.

After lessons was lunch, where I went to the Canteen at 12pm, peak hour for the canteen. Once we stepped in, I wanted to leave immediately. The queues were so long that they really stretched from the stalls to the other end of the room. No wonder there were so many students walking out with canteen food packed to go, because I suspect there were insufficient seats too.

After lunch, I ran to the classroom block again, because I had only 8minutes to get there where we were supposed to meet to board the bus. Once again, I made it in time and we boarded the bus somewhat delayed by others and went to the new WUST campus very south of Wuhan, next to a lake called the 黄家湖(Huang/Yellow Family Lake), thus the new campus is called the WUST 黄家湖 Campus.

It was very big. Huge, so huge that we toured the campus on the bus. Which was a good thing, because we would all have died before we even walked half the campus. Which is also quite worrying considering how long and far students would have to walk from the main entrance to their school clusters.

While the campus is very much bigger, 3 times perhaps, the size of the QingShan campus where we are staying, and newer, with better facilities and modern buildings and hostels (think HDB/Condo-like buildings), I prefer this old campus because it is much more convenient and the trees are older s they provide more shade from the harsh, harsh sun.

The first place we visited was the Medical Sciences block, and we were given a tour of their specimens room, filled with preserved human body parts. Having learnt biology in Secondary school, the specimens made it extremely interesting to me, as I have not seen actual samples before. I also asked some of the LSCT students if we have these in Ngee Ann, and it turns out that it is illegal (so I was told) to do so in Singapore. Regardless, I am thankful for the unique opportunity to see these specimens.

Then we were brought to another block for a short presentation on WUST, Wuhan and China by some students in English. Like they candidly admitted, English is their "first foreign language", and they rarely speak it on a day-to-day basis. Thus even though it was quite hard to understand the words they were saying, I really appreciate their determination to do their best. They also presented us with mooncakes for the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival, and had some short performances, which totally caught off-guard. Luckily Hanhui suggested we sing a song with them, and it was quite enjoyable overall. Pity we couldn't reciprocate the gifts.

Then we were brought to a really really huge building, their library, to visit their museum on the history of WUST, which surprised me, as I did not know that WUST's earliest incarnation was actually set up in the Qing Dynasty in 1893, and is actually considered to be quite prestigious, especially in the specialist field of metallurgy.

Reflection:

The one thing that surprised me the most, was the military training all the freshmen had to undergo. When we first drove through the main entrance, we were surprised to see so many red banners put up with encouraging slogans, which turns out to be intended for the freshmen. Then, we saw groups and groups of boys and girls dressed in military garb, a camouflage shirt, olive green pants, and olive green shoes, all standing at attention or sitting down trying to hide from the unforgiving sun. We were all very shocked, as the students looked so young (they were actually around my age!) and small-sized but they were all blackened from standing in the sun all day.

When we departed and reached the hostel, I asked one of the student leaders about this practice of 军训 (military training), and he said that it is a compulsory activity enforced by the government to instill discipline and morals to the university freshmen. I personally feel that this is quite a good practice given that these University students come from all over the country and are staying away from their parents and homes, so it is important to make sure they are disciplined to study hard and take care of themselves and not indulge in bad behavior. However, I also think that this practice will never take off in Singapore, since my generation is very sheltered and pampered, so parents will never consent to see their children sent off for 10 weekends to learn how to fall in and do goose-step marching. Furthermore, Singapore does not have a culture of student hostels since we do not need it given the relative proximity of schools and institutions to students' homes. Thus it would make the practice somewhat redundant.