Shanghai Adventure
by Maria Cremin TY 2014
As part of the Transition Year Programme, we were able to study Chinese language and culture with Zhu Zhenghao, who is a tutor in the Confucius Institute in University College Cork. One of the benefits of this course was that Hazelwood College was eligible to send a student to an Easter camp to continue studying Chinese. Amazingly, the lucky student would be going to Shanghai to do so.
Mr Burke assigned a project to all students who wanted to participate in the Easter Camp in order to decide who would go. The project was made up of two essays; the first one was about Chinese people and culture and the second essay was about why you wanted to go to China. I was delighted to be chosen for the two week study camp. Apart from the essays I also had to learn a traditional Chinese craft, learn how to make an origami shape and write Hazelwood College in Chinese script.
Everything about Shanghai is very different from home. Every day we had two to three hours of Chinese Language class. On the first day of class we were given a work book which we were to use during the two weeks. The class was quite fast intensive, but the teachers were great and were really helpful if you had any problems.
Chinese teachers are very different from Irish teachers in that if they notice students are not paying attention in class or on their phone they don’t correct them, they just continue teaching the students that are interested in learning. Apart from Chinese class we all had two classes of Chinese calligraphy and four classes of taiji. Once we had all our classes finished for the day we were free to go site-seeing.
During the two weeks we went to a range of different places, such as the East Pearl TV tower, an overnight trip to Hangzhou and Suzhou. We went to Tiger Mountain and went into an old Buddhist temple. We went on a night cruise on the Hanupang River, we visited an ancient water village and went through it on a gondola style boat.
