Mind map of China's education

Mindmap of China's education

I used to think that China's education system focuses entirely on academics is not a bad idea, except the fact that students might get very stressed. However, now I feel that there are pros and cons to everything. Further long-term implications that might arise because of the education system. In the future when they are in the society, they might find it difficult to deal with work that requires them to be flexible and creative.

China Post-trip video

Heritage Part 2: Icon or I conned

Inference map of Botanic Gardens

Heritage Part 1: Preservation & Modernisation

With the passing of the late Mr Lee Kwan Yew, the issue of demolishing his house is highly debated in the country. Here, I would like to say that I strongly believe that Mr Lee's house should be demolished.
Mr Lee is known and honoured by many for his contributions in making Singapore a First-World country, from a Third-World, within a time span of just ten years. His contributions to Singapore are just countless. However, before Mr Lee passed away, he clearly stated again and again that he wanted the government to demolish his house once he is not present anymore. I believe that we should follow his wish to demolish his house if we truly honour him. If his house is retained because the people want to look at how this respectable man had lived his life and learn more about him, then I certainly do not think that is acceptable.
If one truly honour and respect Mr Lee, would they not follow what he wished and hoped for - to demolish his house?
Several books are published about Mr Lee and we can always learn more about this humble man through them. Videos about Mr Lee's life and contributions to Singapore are also available online. There are many sources of information and Mr Lee's house does not need to be there for others to learn about how he was like.
Thus, in my opinion, I feel that Mr Lee's house should be demolish.

Economy Part 5: Factory To The World

Although the majority knows of the consequences and feels that we should all protect our environment, but it is unavoidable that our environment will be affected when pursuing higher economy growth.
There is a chain connecting the environment and the economy growth. Natural resources from the environment such as coal and natural gas are needed for factories to work and produce goods for the economy to go on. Although the economy improves, the pollution increases and the natural and non-renewable resources decrease. The pollution would then affect our health and also contributes to greenhouse gases which enhances the global warming that we all are trying our best to help in the worsening situation. It is going to be an endless repetition of chain until our technology advance till when other source of energy can be used to produce products and does not contributes to the pollution.
However, we cannot sit by idly and wait for the government, the Non-Governmental organisations to come up with implementations and measures. We have to step up and do our part in protecting our environment as well. We can start by doing simple things like reusing papers, recycling papers by gathering all the newspapers that we have read finish in class and place them into the school's recycling bins. We can also limit the amount of new clothes we buy, by setting rules for ourselves that we should not buy new clothes until the old ones are unwearable. This can help reduce the huge amount of water that the factories use to produce just one shirt that we wear in our daily lives. We can also reuse the old clothes we have at home as a rag to clean the tables or to dry our feets when we step out of the toilets, or donate them to charity for the children who are unable to afford those clothes to wear.
I feel that even though it cannot be avoided that the environment would be affected by the economic growth, but we can always do our part in helping to protect it.

Economy Part 4: One Child Policy

Being in a family of 8 members, I cannot really relate well to being the only single child in the family. I have 5 siblings: My oldest brother(20, and going for NS this year), my second and third brother(18),who are identical twins, my older sister(17) and my little brother(6).
There are certainly pros and cons to having many siblings.
I grew up in a house where it is noisy everyday, everyone trying to add their comments into the matter-at-hand. My childhood memories was not really worth reminiscing. My big brother always liked to annoy me by rubbing his palm against my face. My twin brothers always liked to treat me like a maid, ordering me around to get their things for them like getting cup of water. My sister always liked to lock the door to the room and I always had to wait for a few hours till she opened it.
I never got the chance to buy new clothes as I always wore what my sister and my brothers could not fit in, and I was really upset about it for a while. The money in one angbao never exceeded $20 in my entire life, and the total angbao money I receive in one year, is barely one-fifth of what my friends receive in just one angbao. I always hated it when my classmates start sharing about how much they received over the New Year.
I used to admire how many of my friends is the only child in the family. They get to receive everything they want from their parents and they do not have to share anything with anyone. Take the angbao money for example, one of my classmate received $200 in one of her angbao. It is not possible for my uncles and aunties to spend $1200 on just my family alone. So they would have to divide the $200 into 6 shares, each getting around $30.

However, as I grew older, my mindset became more mature and I realised that it is not entirely bad that I have so many siblings. Although the house is never in a peaceful state when all family members are present, but the hyped atmosphere always make my low spirits high again. My parents do not value our academic achievements as much as our character development.(But academics are still important) Whenever I have trouble with my homework, I can always consult my siblings who specialises in different subjects. My third brother always share inspirational talks with us and as I listened to what he says, my view of the world and the things around me changes and I realise how childish I was before. Though we are siblings, our likes and dislikes varies and we can always share our food with one another and try out new things together. My sister has great fashion sense and she always help me to match my clothes to wear out when I am in loss of what to do.(I always borrow her clothes and she sometimes in turn borrows mine) My little brother just brings happiness to me whenever I look at his chubby little face.

When I sit down and think about this matter, I could not help but appreciate the presence of my five siblings. They have brought me happiness and made me grow in character in my entire life journey till now. Without them, I would probably still be an immature little girl who always plays in class, someone who values academics over anything else in the world, someone who is very outgoing, someone who is definitely not who I am today.
Although there are many benefits of being a single child(and many disadvantages too), but I feel that my family right now would be the best for me.

Economy Part 3: Standard of Living

The cost of living refers to the amount of money needed to sustain a certain level of living, including basic expenses such as housing, food, taxes and health care.

Having the highest cost of living in the world, Singapore definitely would have certain consequences to bear. The lower-incomes would find it more difficult to live comfortably. Having a low-income, the breadmaker of the households would already be struggling to support the entire family, feeding full everyone in the family, paying the electrical & water bills, and paying the school fees for the children. Although there are already incentives provided for the government and the Non-Governmental Organisations, but they would still be unable to live a comfortable lifestyle without having to worry about anything. 

Another possible consequence is the decrease in immigration to Singapore. Having a high cost of living, migrants might reconsider living in Singapore as they would have to work longer hours, to earn more money just to live here. However, there is still the pull factor for migrants to decide to migrate to Singapore. With the banning of personal possession weapons(e.g guns and rifles) except for authorised personnel, and the advantage of the small land size that allows stricter and more thorough checks through customs, Singapore's security is safer than many other countries. Thus, it is not definite that the migrants would reject coming to Singapore just because of the high cost of living. 

Although having a high cost of living would have certain possible consequences on Singapore, but there are other contributing factors to the decision-making depending on the different perspectives.

Friends or Foes? WIN-Win Partnership

Lessons learnt from Suzhou Industralised Park 
Originally, I assumed that since we are both Chinese, China's culture and Singapore-Chinese's culture would definitely be similar. However, the Suzhou Industralised Park Project made me think otherwise.
We follow more of the Western mindset which are: Content, Ends, Specificity, Formal Negotiation, Phase and Legal Contract. However, the mindset of China are: Process, Means, Generality, Prenegotiation and Post Negotiation Phases and Trust. The mindsets are somehow completely different. However, Singaporeans made assumptions of their understandings towards China's mindset and led to a poor impression they had on us. Had we put in the effort of getting to know about their mindsets instead of assuming, I am sure things would have been very different from what it is today.
Singapore also failed to cultivate a relationship between the Suzhou officials as they only interacted with the Beijing officials and Suzhou officials were offended.
However, I was glad that Singapore did not give up even though it did not turn out as planned. The government continued to organise more projects between both countries. Singapore also learnt a lesson, getting to know more about the mentality of China and I am sure the same mistakes would not be made in the future/on-going projects between both countries.

Sharing of development experiences
I definitely think that being a small island, Singapore should continue to share her development experiences with other countries. Compared many other countless countries, we are very small in size. We have to maintain good relationships between other countries, whether is it win-win, or WIN-win. If we become complacent and refuse to share our development experiences and advancement, other countries are always ready to replace our position, and we would soon lose a say in the world's matter. This way, we would go back to a third-world country as quickly as how we became a first-world one. Thus, we should maintain this crocodile & bird relationships between other countries so as to maintain our current position in the world.

E and C Week

"Experiencing another's culture may open doors that were previously closed ... but the choice to walk through those doors is entirely up to you."

Before E and C week even started, I thought that it was just another few learning journeys to Little India, Kampong Glam and getting to know more about other cultures. I never really anticipated it. However, the first lesson impacted me throughout the entire journey.

My first lesson was on Batik. When we had the briefing on Thursday, I got the information that I would be having Batik lesson on the following Monday of the E and C week. I was absolutely clueless as to what Batik was but I did not bother to even search it up online. I thought it would just be another boring lesson.
As I listened to the instructor introducing the Batik, I thought it would be very easy to paint out a beautiful design. However, it was not the case. I had a lot of trouble trying to wax the cloth as the hot boiling wax kept on dripping onto the cloth when it was not even part of what I wanted the design to be. At that moment, the instructor said, "Don't be restricted to what you originally planned, just let the wax drip. It will all eventually become a wonderful batik."
His words left a great impact on me. I should not be so restricted to what I already know about other cultures and be complacent with myself. By gaining more new knowledge, I can eventually realise that every culture has its own beauty that other cannot mimic. Although they might not be what I had expected, but it cannot be denied they have their own tastes, origins, history and many more. Every cultures are different from each other.
My attitude towards this entire E and C week activities changed radically. I put in all my efforts in the Batik that I was doing at that time. Looking at my completed work, I still have a great sense of accomplishment till today. My Batik was even chosen as one of the few to be shown to both classes!

My Batik Painting

The attitude that had changed did affect my learning journeys for the next few days. I became more humble towards other cultures and took up courage to interact with the shop owners to get more information on the various aspects of their cultures that we were not sure of. One of the interesting fact that I got from one of the shop owners in Little India was that widows would wear black bangles! Another time when we were at Kampong Glam, a lady shop owner even told us to go away and said that the clothings were not meant for us children. Although I felt a bit dejected, but it did not prevent me from approaching other shop owners.
It is because of the change in my attitude that I got to know much more of the other cultures which I otherwise would not have known if I had maintained my original mindset that others do not matter.

One thing that I feel can be improved about the programme is that we should have more time for each learning journeys. I often find myself being unabme to interacted more with the shop owners and I did not have time to look at all the shops thoroughly in detail. When I was at Little India, my group was so engrossed in examining the clothing stores and talking to one of the shop owners that we did not have time to look at the food stalls on the first floor. We regretted it when we prepared to go to the food stalls but found out that time was already up.
I feel that the time given to us for each place that we went to was not enough for us to know about the other cultures in depth. I believed that if more time was allocated to us, We could have gained much more knowledge about the other cultures. I am definitely willing to spend more time at the various locations, conversing with the people there. Thus, I feel that the programme for each other should be longer.

I believe that the main objective of the E and C week is for us to take our own initiatives to widen our horizon and perspectives towards the various cultures. The teachers are not there to spoonfeed us with the information we need to know. The internet are not able to give us the perspectives and mindsets of the many individuals belonging to the different cultures. We have to be proactive and and step out of our comfort zone to interact with strangers and gain more useful knowledge that can be put to use as we go on in our lives.
Seeing one of my classmates, Chelsea, being so sociable and out-going, always willing to converse with the strangers, motivated me to do the same as well. I believe most of us have achieved the main objective of this E and C week as we are "forced"(in a way) to answer the booklet that was given to us. By interacting with the strangers, I have also gained new knowledge and cleared misunderstandings I had towards the people of the cultures. If I had treated the Malays, or the Indians with the thinking J had before, I would definitely offend them. Thus, I was very relieved to have attended this E and C week's programmes.

All in all, I might have opened new doors and gained new knowledge about other cultures, but I believe that those are just a tiny peak of the iceberg. I would definitely want to walk through those doors, understand more about the other cultures in depth, embrace them all, and open other closed doors in the future.

Economy Map

Map of Economy

Singapore's Economy

As we all know, Singapore grew from a 3rd world country to a 1st world country within a short period of time of just 10 years with the help of the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew. However, should we become complacent and relax for just a little bit?
Singapore's government is small, making them very efficient and there is no corruption. We also have a friendly relationship with China for more than 20 years thus boosting our economy. We export mainly "technology knowldge" to China as we are more advanced in technologies. In doing so, they become stronger, and we in turn earn as well. However, does China really need us? If we become complacent, and our relationship with China turns bad, what will happen to us?
In recent years, the outlook of the relationship does not look very good. The various things that we do, the various things that we say, makes the relationship weaker and weaker. China does not necessarily need Singapore as the supplier for their technology advancement. They can always find another country with more advanced technology to work with, and there would be no need for Singapore. When Singapore is useless, our relationship would break off, and Singapore'a economy will definitely go down. Eventually, we will go back to how we were years ago, a 3rd world country. This is why Singapore and China's relationship is very important.
Thus, we cannot afford to be complacent. We have to be careful every moment and our relationship with China have to maintain friendly or even better. If not, our economy would drop rapidly.

4Fs, Culture differences and similarities, and SG's shared values

4 Fs
They say that the most common and easiest working definition of culture is the 4Fs - Food, Festivals, Fashion and Folk. I do agree with this statement. If we want to find out more about one's culture, we can easily research them online and all the information would appear on the screen right in front of us. However, is that all to one's culture? We cannot understand one's culture so easily based on the information online. We have to approach the culture in person, getting to know the people of the culture, and to experience the culture by ourselves. But even then, we still might not be able to understand one's culture fully. Culture is not something that can be understood overnight, over months, or even over years. Thus, we have to open ourselves to other cultures and embrace them, movung from monocultural mindset, to multicultural mindset. Although we might not be able to reach the final stage of integration, but at least, we can strive towards acceptance of different cultures and adaptation to different cultures. And to start off, we can always get to know more about other cultures, by researching online and interacting with people of other cultures.

Similarities and Differences between Singapore and China's Culture

Similarities
• Both cultures are heavily influenced by Confucianism such as, filial piety and nation before family, family before self.
• Both education systems are very competitive.

Differences
• Singapore has many races which results in diverse cultures existing together while China consist of mostly Chinese, so they only have one sole Chinese culture.
• Singapore-Chinese speaks mandarin in a different way China-Chinese do. Furthermore, China has many provinces and people of the different provinces speaks mandarin or dialects in a different accent which makes it easy for them to instantly identify where the people that they are talking to grew up in.

• China supports its people to have as less child as possible while Singapore government encourages its people to have more children.

Singapore's Shared Values

仁，义，礼，智，信。

Humanity, Justice, Ettiquete, Wisdom, Faith.

These are the 五常 of Confucianism. Humanity(Ren), Singapore practise it in two of our shared values - Place nation and family before oneself. To care for others, to think about others and not be selfish.

Ettiquete(Li), is practised in another shared value - Communal support and respect for the individual. Everyone in Singapore should be respected regardless of where they come from, which language they speak, and the customs and tradition they practise.

Wisdom(Zhi), is practised in - Consensus, not conflict. Instead of quarrelling and still not get any positive thing out of it, we should always think of a win-win solution together, so all parties are able to benefit with no/equal loss. 

Faith(Xin), is practised in the last shared value - Racial and Religion harmony. We must have faith in each other, in humanity, and to accept one and another in this small little red dot, instead of tolerating other different races/religion. This way, we would be able to create a harmonious society for each and everyone, and we can all progress as one nation together.

"北京欢迎你"

Table for video on "Welcome To Beijing"

Chingay Experience

The Chingay Experience

Breathtaking. It is the one word that sums up the Chingay experience. Since it was my first time experiencing the Chingay performance, I was very much looking forward to it. Indeed, it did not disappoint me. Instead, I was very taken aback. Every performers were wearing very fancy costumes, and I even saw ethnic costumes that I had never seen before. In contrast with all the fascinating things, it was raining quite heavily that day. Being the first class to arrive at the venue, we had to sat under the rain for much longer period of time as compared to the others. It even took the second class fifteen minutes to arrive after us. The poncho that were given to us were not big enough to cover our entire body and some of us were wet here and there. "Although the weather was wet, our spirits were not dampened," as said by one of the female emcees. The rain did not make me any less excited, instead, it warmed my heart seeing how every audience was persevering through the rain to watch the performance.

The Purpose

Although Chingay started off in 1973 as a all Chinese event to compensate for the ban of firecrackers due to injuries and deaths caused, but it became multicultural in 1976, including all the Malays and Indians in the performances. By 1987, Chingay had featured its first foreign group, Japanese. Chingay now includes many different racial groups such as the Chinese, Malay, Indian, and other international groups. Chingay is a performance which showcases the examples of how Singapore's is a vibrant and multiracial society. Multiracial as in racial acceptance, and not racial tolerance.  Even in Singapore itself, many have the thinking that being in a multiracial society, one would have to tolerate others' cultures and believes. However, it is definitely not true. Being in a multiracial society means that one needs to accept and understand other cultures and religions that are different. If not, conflicts and riots might take place again.

Did it fulfill its purpose?

The first performers that came out, were ladies dressed in white and blue, dragging along a platform which was a crescent base with 5 stars at the tip. It reminded me of the Singapore flag, where the crescent represents rising young nation, and the 5 stars represents democracy, peace, progress, justice and equality. I thought to myself, how do these qualities help to contribute to a multiracial society? After thinking through, I came to a conclusion. With these qualities in mind when we act, we are able to build a cohesive society that includes every race and religion and where everyone is equal, and have a say, regardless of race, language or religion.

Ladies dresses in white and blue with crescent and 5 stars platform

There were also many showcases of the different races and religions, such as the Chinese, Malay, Indian, Japanese and Eurasian. The Singapore army also came out and the popular song from "Ah Boys To Men" were also played through the speakers when they were entering. Following that, were groups from the various religions, and participants from the community centres. After observing very carefully, I realised that even though it was a Indian showcase, Chinese were performing in it as well. It was the same for many other performances. The middle-aged performers from the various community centres were also of mixed races. This signifies the unity of the people as the different races in the same item would have to work together and accept each other's differences, if not, the performance would not be a success. Thus, acceptance and understanding are very important in building harmonious relationships among different races and religions.

Participants from community centres

Our Roles

"Come rain or shine,let us stay together. Chase the rainbow, and make Singapore a better home for us." 
As students and the younger generations, we can apply what we learnt in our daily lives and accept and understand what the other races and religions are all about to make the society more harmonious. This is also to ensure that the future generations would also be able to do the same and maintain this multiracial society of Singapore.

Forces of Culture

1)
Some of the forces that shape Singapore's culture would be Language, Food and Multi-Racialism.
Singapore is a multi-racial country, where people of many different races and religions live and work together.
The language of Singapore became very special because of the multi-racialism where the different languages, mainly Mandarin, Malay language and Indian language, are used by the locals freely, for example, a Malay stallholder may just ask her customers whether they want to makan(eat in Malay language) or dabao(take away in Mandarin). This mixed language is also known as "Singlish"(Singapore English), with the "Lah", "Leh", "Horh" used within conversations as well.
There is a wide variety of food available in Singapore such as, Char Kuay Teow(Chinese food), Roti Prata(Malay food), Curry in cuisines which originated from India, and many other traditional foods.

With the understanding of what these forces are, we are able to understand China's culture better. Although China is not a multi-racial country, but besides Mandarin, there are many other dialects used within the many different provinces in China as well. This is one of the forces that shape China's culture. When we know what the forces are, we are able to investigate straight into the forces and combine the forces together, and have a better knowledge on what China's culture is about as a whole.

 2)

It shows the drawing of a young child who also knows about how Singapore is a multi-racial country through the different skin coloured humans drawn. It is a widely-known fact throughout the entire Singapore. Multi-racialism has been existing here since generations ago. It plays a huge role in our culture.

Introduction

Hi! My name is Goh Yee Xin from class 2B. I am often known for my emotionless face because I do not smile easily. However, my closest friends would know that I am straightfoward with my feelings and laugh a lot with them.
My hobby is reading Chinese novels. It is because of this hobby, that made me grew a huge interest towards China. To be more specific, the history of China. The different kings that ruled the country from year to year did certain actions, be it good or bad, that made China what it is today. For example; the first king of the Qin Dynasty sacrificed many of its people to build the now very well-known Great Wall of China. Previously, I did not know much about CID2 except that we would get to go for OELP during the June holidays. But during the first CID2 lesson, Ms Ho mentioned that we are going to study about the relationships between Singapore, Taiwan and China. Although it is not exactly what I am interested in, but being able to learn more about China and Taiwan still excites me as much. In all, I am certainly looking forward to CID2! :)

Table on the perceptions about Singaporean and PRC Chinese