Hackley School Trip to China

Today the group spent the morning packing and checking out of the  
hotel.  We had one more meal together at People 7 before getting on  
the bus to the airport.On the bus the group split into teams.  They were given 15 minutes to see who could remember and make a list of as many activities and places visited on this trip as possible.
Team #3 won. The prize was a jianzi, which is used to play what is basically the Chinese version of Hackey Sack.

After that last challenge Brantley presented the group with their  
parting gifts.  Gabby gave a thank you speech to China Prep on behalf  
of her Hackley classmates and teachers and presented us with gifts  
from Hackley.  We will think of the group fondly every time we drink  
from the Hackley mug.

The group  enjoyed their time in China and are returning with a deeper  understanding of the culture and an increased ability to communicate in Mandarin.  At the airport as we parted we were sad to see them go but chances are high we will all meet again in China in the coming years.

The flight showed an on time departure, everyone is looking forward to seeing their families and having some food from home!

Songs are a great language learning tool.   Today we learned a few new songs in class in preparation for Karaoke! There was even some choreography as the groups wanted to put on a good show for their teachers.

After class we had a big lunch at Brantley’s house followed by an art project led by Abby. Everyone in the groups was given a miniature Terracotta  Warrior (about one foot tall) to paint.  The group was quite creative with the colorful designs they choose and this echoed the fact that the real Terracotta Warriors were originally painted.

After our art project it was time for Karaoke and the group sang songs in English and Chinese. They did a great job and had lots of fun singing English songs and the Chinese songs they learned earlier in the day. The teachers joined in as well. Although everyone was shouting for more time at Karaoke, we headed to our final dinner singing along the street as we went.

Our last dinner together was delicious.  As we ate, we recapped the events of the past two weeks and discussed what the students had learned and observed over the course of the trip.  It seems the students are even more inspired to study Mandarin and excited to
return to China one day soon.

Today our language lesson started in the classroom and ended in Wang Laoshi’s kitchen where we learned how to make Jiaozi (dumplings.)  Wang Laoshi is an excellent cook and showed the group how to make the filling and properly fold the dumpling skins.  All together the group probably made about 140 dumplings with just  a few left over.

After lunch we drove to the outskirts of Shanghai to visit the Shanghai Volkswagon factory.  This visit included a video recounting the development and success of this major partnership between Germany and China and was followed by a trip through the factory.  We saw the production lines for a few different models that are sold in China from welding, engineering, installation of different parts,  to the paint job and final touches.

After the VW factory we returned to the Shanghai city center and went to the Tao Bao Market.  This is another market where the students had a chance to interact with merchants. At dinner we celebrated Gabby and Ian’s birthdays with cupcakes, singing and gifts.

Tomorrow is our last full day in China and we are looking forward to singing Karaoke tomorrow night.

Apologies for the picture uploading issues – all of the pictures will be removed from the blog today in order to repopulate and update all posts with pictures – should all be rectified within 24 hours. Thank you!

We started the day with laundry and Mandarin class then we headed out
to one of the biggest books stores in Shanghai where our teachers Ms.
Li and Ms. Wang gave us challenges to find  books on certain topics in
Mandarin.  We split up into teams and scoured the bookstore to
complete our assignments. We also visited the international bookstore
which had a wide selection from old classics to Harry Potter.

After the book store we went to lunch and had some traditional Beijing Duck.  Most of the students found it tasty and there was an array of beef,  noodles and stuffed buns to round out the meal.  Lunch was followed by a trip to Yu Garden.  Yu garden is part of the old part of Shanghai.  The traditional architecture is still in place.  There is a small bridge that turns 9 times as it crosses from one side of the water to the other.  We learned that not only is 9 a lucky number but the turns in the bridge are supposed to keep evil spirits from crossing.  A bridge built this way is better for Feng Shui.  Yu Garden is a bustling market filled with Chinese tourists as well as foreign tourists.  Student had another chance to try out their bargaining skills here.

Some of the students wanted more time in places we have visited and as
we only have a few days left we paid one more visit to Fu Xing park to
see ballroom dancing and to Tai Kang rd to  shop for gifts for family
and friends back home.   We had delicious Ramen for dinner.

We set out early this morning for a journey back to Shanghai from Xi’An. Everyone was a bit tired but agreed that Xi’An was worth the trip. It’s hard to  believe that there are only four more sleeps until the flight home!

We were all very happy that a lost wallet and kindle were safely located at lost and found at the airport and were amazed that the wallet had not been opened.

After our arrival in Shanghai and a quick nap on the bus we checked back into our hotel, grabbed a shower and headed to lunch. The group is decidedly in favor of noodles, dumplings and rice so we carbo loaded to get ready for Chinese class.

After Chinese class we headed to a cooking school in the heart of the French Concession to cook up a dinner feast! The menu was as follows: Stir Fried Spicey Chicken Cubes by Ronnie and AJ, Shanghai Fried noodles by Gabby and Jed,  Tomato cooked with eggs by Juliet and Emma,  Mushroom cooked with bok choy by Jed and Juliet, 5 Garlic Flavor Clams by Raphael and Tom S.,  Stirfried string beans by Tom W. and Ian,  and Sweet and sour pork by Risa and Sabrina.  Everyone was slicing and dicing in record time and everyone had their turn at the wok. Every dish was delicious and made even more so because we all experienced the joy of cooking together.

We rounded out the night with well deserved foot and back massages.  Our feet where soaked in hot fragrant water and knees padded with icey hot chinese medicine to get the winter chill out of our bones.  We are all going to sleep well tonight.

After a very comfortable night in our (comparatively) luxurious Xi’An hotel, The Titan Times, we had a big buffet breakfast, complete with waffles, to power us for a busy day in Xi’An.

We started off by heading to some yaodong’s which are traditional cave dwellings carved into the hillsides around Xi’An. Although families have moved into modern housing in the past 15 years, many families choose to keep their cave dwellings at the back of their new homes to use as kitchens and a bedroom or sitting room. Many of the older generation prefer the yaodong for its natural cool in summer warm in winter temperature control. To get to the yaodong’s we walked through a local daily food market and planted fields of wheat. We learned that many people in this part of China don’t particularly like to eat rice as they rely on a wheat and corn diet and don’t feel that rice can fill them up.

After leaving the rural area we headed to the Terracotta Warriors site. There is a lot worth writing about the warriors, the history of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang that commissioned them and the history of the region. I promise to update more along with pictures once we are back in Shanghai. In brief, there are three dig sites that you can visit with warriors in various stages of repair. You are able to see how the warriors were actually found in the tunnels in which they were buried and the elaborate network of “rooms” built to house this vast army to guard the emperors tomb. We learned how complicated excavation has been due to a desire to preserve the paint color of all the warriors. We were advised that once they have the technology to unearth the warriors without the painted color fading within days, excavation will continue. In the meantime the warriors are a sight to behold. They are from the Qin Dynasty dating back to 221-206 BC!

After a stop at the Shaanxi History Museum to view an excellent collection chronicling the history and artifacts of the region we headed to “Muslim Street” for shopping and practicing bargaining. Home to roughly 60,000 Muslim Hui ethnic minorities or “hui min”, Xi’An has a large and thriving Muslim community. The street is a night market with lots of tasty local foods, local dried specialities like dates, and lots of stalls selling perfect gifts for the family at home. A good time was had by all as the group has made leaps and bounds of progress in both the art of bargaining and in confidence speaking Mandarin.

We meet up in the morning for another breakfast buffet before we head back to Shanghai for the last 5 days of the program.

(This entry is being posted via Iphone, apologies if the formatting is off)

We have arrived in Xi’An. A beautiful day greeted us as we left the hotel in Shanghai and made our way via subway to get on the maglev train to Shanghai’s Pudong Airport. The maglev is the fastest train in world. We hit a maximum speed of roughly 430km per hour today and everyone agreed that the ride was a lot of fun. It took us a total of 8 minutes to go what usually takes about 40 minutes via car.

Our flight to Xi’An was smooth and on time and we were met by a sunny day when we exited the airport. After meeting our local guide Jane, we headed straight for our afternoon activities, a calligraphy class and a bike ride along the old city wall.

Xi’An was the capital of China for 11 dynasties and boasts an incredible amount of history and was an important place for many of China’s significant events and inventions. The silk road started in Xi’An originally fueled for China’s need for horses to defend against Mongolian invaders from the north, famous for their skill on horseback. As traders arrived to trade horses, the Chinese would bring silk, tea and other items of value to trade. As the appetite abroad grew for these Chinese goods, so did trade along the silk road.

Currently the population of Xi’An is roughly 8 million, a large but not huge city by Chinese standards, and about half the size of Shanghai. Many from our group have remarked that they like the city and feel like there are more trees here. I am just happy that we have good weather and a bit of blue sky for our visit. There is a lot of heavy industry in the region including Chinese military manufacturing an a large factory that produces parts for Boeing and the skies can be quite smoggy.

We had a fun and creative morning class.  The group participated in role playing activities related to restaurants and ordering food where they played the parts of customers, waiters, and chefs.  Some “customers” where not so easy going, however, the “wait staff” and “Chefs” did their best to please and problem solve while improving their language skills. The group learned lots of new vocabulary in
this process.

We had lunch at the hotel and then headed out on the train to the temple.  While at the temple we discussed the history of Buddhism in China and Chinese funeral rituals.  The group had a chance to burn incense and walk through the temple to view the many statues that represent different aspects of Buddhism and various incarnations of the Buddha.

We ended the day by enjoying some free time in the club house where the group played ping pong, billiards, and sang Karaoke together.  We found out that this group LOVES singing.  Some of the group sang a Chinese song that they learned in class.

Tomorrow morning we fly to Xi’An where we will have the chance to take a calligraphy class, see the Terracotta Warriors and visit traditional cave dwellings.

(Due to a memory restriction our pictures are not uploading properly – we are working to fix as soon as possible!)

The group started the day with 3 hours of Mandarin class and one of the highlights of the morning was learning Chinese tongue twisters.After class it was time for lunch so the group hopped on the train.  The students are getting more comfortable reading the Shanghai subway maps.  We got off at Ju Lu Road and walked to the restaurant called People 7 which gave us the opportunity to see another Shanghai neighborhood.

On one of the blocks we passed a large house with a star of the communist party on it and the numbers 8 and 1 within the star. The group learned that this represents the date that the People’s  Liberation Army was established (August 1, 1927.)  Any building with an 8 and a 1 within the star on it represents a PLA building.

The group really enjoyed the food at People 7 but the added bonus was that the restaurant felt like a maze on the inside and everything from getting in through the front door to figuring out how to open the bathroom door was a puzzle.  It was fun for the group to experience this modern aspect of going out in Shanghai.  After lunch we surprised Jed with special homemade birthday cupcakes made by Abby (one of our program leaders) and cards and gifts from friends and family back home
in New York and here in Shanghai.

After lunch we visited the TV Tower in Pudong  known as the Oriental Pearl Tower.  We went up to look out at 270 meters (about 870 ft) and then went a short ways down to the glass floor level 263 meters (about 860 ft) where you could stand on the glass floor and look down at the
city.  We followed that up with a trip through the Shanghai History Museum where the group was fascinated to see the mixed media and life like reproductions that bring to life the history of shanghai.

We rounded out the day with a delicious dinner and some free time at the Super Brand Mall – one of the biggest malls in Shanghai which also houses an arcade and an IMAX theatre.

The group helped make Jed’s birthday a memorable one!