In the morning, we went to shifen old street 十分老街 to release sky lanterns 天灯 along the railway tracks. After that, we went to Sun Yat Sen's memorial hall and the National palace museum.
Our group's attempt at releasing our sky lantern!
Posing with our sky lantern ^_^
Every side is written with our well wishes...
From the bottom of our hearts💕
The lantern is lit! All ready to go!
Preparing to release the sky lantern!
Ready...1..2..3!
Woooo! Yippeeee :D
Looking in awe at our sky lantern
As it drifts further and further away from ground
Hope all our wishes would be fulfilled! :)
Reflections
Charmaine- Out of all the places I have been to so far, 十分老街 is my favourite :) The scenery there was really nice compared to other places I have been to for the past 5 days; the hills, bridge, railway track --> also because I could take many nice pictures there :D There were many shops which sold small sky lantern key chains. The key chains had a wide variety of patterns, colours and well-wishes to choose from. They were inexpensive yet delicate! In the end, I chose six as souvenirs for my family and friends.
After which, I had my first hand experience at releasing the sky lantern! I was very eggcited (bc I ate a lot of eggs xD, just kidding) and couldn't wait for my group's turn! Customers could choose the colour of the lantern based on what they wished for most. Since we were students, the teachers chose the colour purple (my favourite colour :D) to wish us luck for our studies. We were then given ample time to write our well-wishes. While thinking of what to write, I realised I had SO MUCH to wish for that I just couldn't pen everything down. Wishes for myself, my family, my friends. It was really a hard decision to make before I decided that our health was most important for now and of course, our occupation (students haha). As such, I wrote 2 simple lines on the lantern, which I feel, have already conveyed my wishes for everyone in my life overall. As the lantern was lighted up, I could feel the heat from the ring I was holding at the bottom of the lantern. I believe that as everyone lifted the sky lantern and released it into the sky, they all wish that their simple wishes would be fulfilled someday :) Although it was an enjoyable experience releasing the lanterns, the weather that day disappointed me. It was rather gloomy and the sky was not at its blue. If it was blue, I believe that the pictures captured would be nicer :D
Then came Sun Yat Sen's memorial hall. Just outside the memorial hall was one of Taiwan's most iconic tourism spot, Taiwan 101.
Taiwan 101 (google pics)
It is really tall compared to other buildings. Since the rain had just stopped, the tip of the building was engulfed in clouds. The clouds were hovering and covering the highest point of the building that it made the building seem so much taller :O I wish we could visit that building!!
When we entered the hall, it was almost time for the guards to "exchange places". As we were loitering around waiting for the ceremony to start, the two guards were standing there a still as statues with their weapons. I was shocked when I learnt that they had to stand at attention and could not blink for an ENTIRE HOUR. WOW. I mean, it sounds likely possible to do so. I tried staring at my friend with my eyes peeled but it shut immediately after a minute or so. I was just amazed that they could hold it there for such a long period of time. After the ceremony, we took a tour in the memorial hall. There were pictures, artifacts, information about Sun Yat Sen and this simulated voting booth which I found rather interesting. Since we're learning about China's History for History classes now, I felt that this visit to Sun Yat Sen's memorial hall was rather beneficial for us. At least we learnt some facts about Sun Yat Sen :D
what I got after visiting Sun Yat Sen's memorial hall
Next, we went to the National Palace museum. It was where many artefacts used by renowned people in the past and they had a permanent collection of more than 696,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artefacts and artworks. We were each given a walkie-talkie so that we were able to listen to Uncle Jeff while he is explaining how the different artefacts came about and how they are important. I realized that most of the designs were intricate and really expensive. I liked the black and white panda the most :D I found it rather cute. Although we have seen so many artefacts created by people in the past, we don't normally see such items being made in this present day anymore. I wonder if such "skill" has been lost.
Since it was our second last day there, the tour guide brought us to a pastry shop, Vigor to buy pastries back to Singapore! There were all kinds of pastries available. Omg food is heaven. The pastry shop brought a whole tray of pastries for us to try before we decide which pastry we wanted to buy. Yum yum :D we were told not to eat too much as we were going to have dinner later on but I couldn't resist it so..... Hehehe. I realised that the goodies are not usually found in Singapore or any other countries. I guess every country has their very own goodies to represent their countries. Taiwan: 牛奶太阳饼 and 凤梨酥 :D
Dinner was great! We had dim sum for dinner; 小笼包，虾饺 etc etc. I tried their oolong tea xiaolongbao. It was green in colour. My first time seeing a green dumpling hehe. It tasted okay I guess but since I'm not a fan of tea in the first place, I don't think my judgement is accurate :P
The day ended off with something rather unpleasant. It all started with the night before when I was in the hotel room all alone. It was when I heard distinct weird noises coming from the adjacent room. Since I was close to the people sleeping in that room, I wanted to know what they were doing. To my surprise, they said that they were chatting, preparing to sleep at that point of time. I didn't think too much then. It was not until that nights when my friend heard the same noise I've heard again. We were more frightened when more people began sharing their stories about the hotel being haunted. We were so frightened to the extent that we wanted to share rooms to give ourselves a greater sense of security, even the guys. This was where we could see that our class was really bonded as everyone offered their rooms out even if four to six people had to squeeze in two single beds that night. The guys offered to escort the girls to move from room to room as well although I could tell that they were scared themselves. I was really touched by my classmates' actions that night and I felt that it was an incident which had bonded our class like never before :')
Min Hui- It was quite a relaxing day today and I have enjoyed it :) And today's food was really appetizing!
Firstly, I would like to ask you...Have you ever released a sky lantern with your well wishes on it?
Well, in the morning, we went to Shifen to write our well wishes for one another and what we would like to achieve for the half a year ahead on sky lanterns and released them into the sky. Normally, people do this in the evening so you may think why we did this in the morning, the reason to this was because our dear tour guide, Uncle Jeff, was unable to book a time in the morning for an expert to show us around Sun Yat Sun Memorial Hall. It was hard to book a timing for an expert, so we really appreciate Uncle Jeff for all his hard work and effort put in to organise our OELP trip for it to be a meaningful one.
The day before, most of us took the initiative to think of the words we were going to write on the sky lantern. I thought of having the whole class bonded and be the "top class"(behavior, character and studies) forever and also for myself to score well in my academics and my CCA as well but no matter how hard I tried, I could not express and phrase this wishes properly. So this morning before we wrote our wishes on the sky lanterns, we given some time to shop and explore around the streets of Shifen. We got mini lanterns as souvenirs. This is my second time here in Shifen, so I only thought of buying one for my friend in another class. Those mini lanterns are all unique in their flowery patterns and printed words so I really was in a loss of which one to buy but in the end, I settled with a red string and white lantern with pink flowery pattern on it and the words are " 一帆风顺， 锦绣前程” which I thought it was the most suitable for my friend). Ahha! From those mini lanterns I got inspirations for the words I am going to write.
"学业进步，梦想起飞” was what I wrote. Also, I wrote the other wishes in English...I am so sorry, I couldn't express them using the beauty of Chinese.
Oh and have you ever heard of fried ice cream? While we had a little more time before we left. Dan qi, Ms Swee and Mrs Vong went to buy fried ice cream and wow! It was delicious!^^ The Strawberry flavoured ice cream melted in my mouth as i crunched on the fried skin of the fried ice cream. Sweet and crispy, the best type of ice cream I have ever had! I would sure come back for more in the future if I have a chance to go to Taiwan:)
Afterwards, we had our lunch in a restaurant and hmmm... The food is awesome:)
Next, as planned, we went to Sun Yat Sun Memorial Hall. We were fortunate enough to witness a change in the guards for Sun Yat Sun's statue. I learnt that they had to stay stationery in their "at attention" position for an hour before a change. They could not move unless a command is given to them(even if there is a fire). I feel that it was really brave to take up this job and respected them.
Then, we were showed around the Memorial Hall. I learnt that Sun Yat Sun was a really smart person from the grades shown in his report. All of his subjects were graded Honour except for one 而且是名列前茅的一个学生。How wish i could be like him... He is a person worth to be respected as he had a mind set to protect his country and do his best to serve the country. Also, the expert shared with us a piece of information that was deeply etched in my mind. When Sun Yat Sun proposed to his wife, he gave her a gun instead of a ring. Woah, that moment I heard this the first question was "Why? Did he intend to make his future wife commit a suicide then?!" But then I learnt that he gave a gun to his wife so that his wife could protect herself from any danger whenever he is not by her side. Romantic(because it showed that he cared for his wife and wanted her to be safe) yet far-sighted, how could a lady not fall for him...
Special thanks to our gorgeous 讲解人员 we were able to expand on our knowledge on Sun Yat Sun. ^^
Following that, we moved on to the National Palace Museum. Uncle Jeff was our 讲解人for that place. We were told to wear earphones to listen to Uncle Jeff's explanation on the different artefacts as Uncle Jeff told us that it would be very crowded and noisy in the National Palace Museum. So we wore the earphones and it was TOTALLY COOL as i could hear Uncle Jeff clearly! Hehe:) The place was extremely crowded and when I tried to take my earpiece out as it was quite stuffy after awhile... I couldn't even hear myself speak :O
Those artefacts are ancient and awesome looking. Some had carvings that were so minute that we could not see it from afar. They were so beautiful that I felt like owning one but as expected, the price is quite "beautiful" too... Some artefacts had history behind their existence and some were build for a purpose. It was worth it coming to the National Palace Museum. I got to see for myself the artefacts that could not be even found on the internet. TOTALLY AWESOME
Since it was our second last day, Uncle Jeff brought us to the pastry shop called "Kobo Vigour". I bought many yummy pastries home like the 太阳饼，凤梨酥 and 牛咋糖。 It is hard to find this pastries in Singapore as it is part of Taiwan's delicacies. So most of us ended up buying a lot and we packed them in boxes for easy check-in when we return back to Singapore. We were given those food testers so that we could choose whether to buy the pastry. We were told not to eat a lot of those food tester as we were going to have our dinner afterwards, but oops, i couldn't resist myself as it was so nice... Haha my classmates too:) But I manage to control myself before I had my stomach half filled with those pastries.
Next we had dinner in a restaurant. Oh I really liked the food. Guess what? We had 小笼包!!!! We had different flavoured 小笼包。I liked the Oolong Tea flavoured 小笼包 the most as the taste was unique and delicious.
The night ended with our cries as unpleasant things happened the night before. We had a short debrief session and thanked one another for what they have done, but the topic slowly drifted to our experience the night before in the hotel. I shared my experience of the bed shaking when I was sleeping. I did not mean to scare them but I really felt it and it was not just for a short while but quite a long time(until I fell asleep because I ignored it thinking that it was just a minor earthquake) This morning I asked around whether anyone felt any tremors but no one did. So I felt goose bumps and I was really scared and did not know what to do. I did not want to trouble the teachers nor Uncle Jeff and thus did not tell this incident to them. It was until my other friends had weird experiences as well and I spilled the incident. So for the night, we had 4-6 people sharing a room and I felt really heart-warming. My friends were comforting one another and offering rooms to one another. Thank you guys:)
Tiffany- I'm not particularly fond of long reflections... so here goes nothing.
Shih Fen Old Street. It was a legit Tumblr image to me. The engine train released gas into the air, the shops were modest and plain, the trees were in plain sight and the bridge connecting everything to give off a vintage vibe. It was there when i finally released my first sky lantern. We wrote our well wishes and hoped for the best. The lantern was very hot though. Even now, i can still remember the immense heat on my fingers. I really liked the meaning of the sky lanterns. They reminded me of the Disney movie Tangled where the villagers would release sky lanterns every year on the princess' birthday, hoping that she would return. And Rapunzel was attracted to the lanterns so much so that she just had to venture out to watch the lanterns in person. I, too find the sky lanterns very fascinating and can't help but wonder what people used it for in the past. I guess to pass messages during a war? But i'm not really sure.
Next, the Sun Yat Sen memorial hall. We were so lucky to witness the changing of guards! It was so cool. But i pitied the guards a lot. They has to stand still for an hour. And standing still meant:
no blinking
not moving anything
no weird facial expressions
There was this guy in a suit walking from one guy to the next, helping them to feel as comfortable as possible, not that anyone could be comfortable in that position. The guards on duty could talk to the guy in the suit. But they mouths were closed and did not move AT ALL. It sort of reminded me of puppets. i wondered how much money they earned and why they would do that job. I guess it is an honour to guard the Sun Yat Sen statue. Their marching there was so different from Singapore's and definitely much slower and confusing. But it was cool, all the same.
i have learned that Sun Yat Sen is an incredibly cool guy, He was good at literally everything and is considered the father of modern China. His grades were amazing and his theories even better. it definitely helped me understand my history lessons a little better.
The national palace museum was so packed, like sooo packed. But it was so worth it. Each piece of art or artefact had a story of its own. And certain stuff that we learned in RV Lit was shown in images there. It was tiring but very fruitful and fun.
Highlight of the night-- xiaolongbao. Firstly, the legit chinese tea. i didn't have chinese tea in a while and i forgot the heavenly taste of it. Secondly, when tea is combined with xiaolongbao, it tastes so good i can't even describe it. You just have to taste it. I felt that it was the perfec way to have our last dinner in Taiwan. Thirdly, since we were there so late, the restaurant was empty except for us. (: which meant that we could make a little bit more noise. [insert weird evil grin]
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