新加坡风俗

now i know how my french teacher felt.

新加坡风俗是政府机构在财政部之下。被重新组成在2003 年4月1 日, 新加坡风俗主角代办处在商业帮助和收支执行事态上。它负责还对执行措施风俗和商业执行包括那些与自由贸易协议和战略物品有关。

sure makes a lot of sense! i needed to translate the singapore customs website into chinese, for lack of a english-chinese dictionary, decided to try babelfish. just like how we did for french assignments =P aww poor mademoiselle!

so the story goes:
during the mayday holidays, a group of americans decided to go near mount everest and protest, campaigning for the independence of tibet. yes, so the chinese govt decides that they need to station people everywhere to check foreigners really strictly from then on, and require a guarantor agent and daoyou tourguide to follow these naughty foreigners (well, the visa is called an Alien Pass) everywhere they go. thus making free and easy tours of tibet near impossible. yay!

lazybones

Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and be wise! Even though they have no prince, governor, or ruler to make them work,
they labor hard all summer, gathering food for the winter.
But you, lazybones, how long will you sleep? When will you wake up? I want you to learn this lesson:　A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest –　and poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

Last Sunday’s message on Proverbs 6:6-11 reminded me that our past 3 months could be so aptly summarized as an extended holiday! need to take a lesson from the ants and start catching up on lessons :P paiseh to keep saying -err don’t have- whenever my mum asks if i’ve classes the next day.
spotted at xiushui shopping market - no wonder the sales people sound the same. looks as though it was only made for you! (and you and you and you and you) and when they say 下次再来喔, it gives u a nagging suspicion that you most prob got fleeced...



caught a tragedy 话剧 <<骆驼祥子>> at the 首都剧场









yummy! all you can eat jap food -not confined to sushi- buffet for 68yuan.








one of the few times we laboured for our food - making jiaozi under jasmine's instruction =)
















haha looks like a 变态 foto :P

but if i’ve learnt nothing else here, i’ve learn more about God’s nature, God’s righteousness, God's gospel. funny thing, given that i missed several Sunday services cos of traveling :P maybe the northern sun that rises at 5plus am is a good thing after all!

Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight, declares the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23-24).

fall in love with china at simatai =)

sometimes a 6hour bus ride for 3 hours of fun is worth it...
when it's just awesome to be surrounded by mountains! 崇山峻岭, 蓝天白云 (ermm about as far as my chinese goes) at simatai 司马台 Great Wall.
although that always puts me out of photo-whoring mode cos photos would always be too disappointing!

had a lot of fun with our good company =)
one of the biggest lessons here is to thank God for community.





he's 77 years old! and this was already pretty far up Simatai. uncle & auntie, you rock!





Simatai is some 130 kilometers to the north-east of Beijing. About 500 years old and one of the less restored sections, one website claimed that we'd have to go on all fours to climb up this rugged Great Wall! But it was quite a relaxing climb UP (downwards kills yr knees&toes), prob because we could only go up to 12 out of 16 watchtowers - and then peer at the rest through little holes...

heading for the roof of the world!

what is china without the bicycles rite? been having fun hitching rides on jasmin's bicycle n borrowing it for a qinghua tour. we were sooo tempted to buy a bike to complete our china experience. BUT time is running out! we have 4 weekends before the exam weeks :( and then it's home to 7% GST :(:(




but before that - we're heading for the rooftop of the world!!!
plans for semester-end travelling keeps changing and very much uncertain, because
1. people -including me- keep changing their mind or just have no plans
2. china uni's have no idea when their exams will be, it's useless asking the prof/classmates, so that makes it pretty hard for us to plan and coordinate across the different beijing/shanghai uni's and to singapore frens joining in (thank you Best Friend for being so patient about the uncertainty).

tibet was the -only- "plan" before 12 of us law pple started out in february. but the emails, even a macdonald's meetup wasn't all that productive. so we went ahead with our mini-trips first. after jiangnan's 5 eventful train trips, i got train phobia! after inner mongolia, spending half the time sitting on the bus to get to ulu breathtaking places, i got bus phobia! and maybe after watching 2 seasons of Lost, i'm getting plane phobia! but u can't exactly sail to tibet.

wanted to go to chengdu-sichuan to see jiuzhaigou - apparently where they filmed Hero and all the artsy out-of-a-painting scenes. but seems that that's flooded with tourists (esp erm domestic ones) all the time which can be pretty sha feng jing 杀风景, and prob have too many expectations after looking at pretty pictures of the blue/green/red/yellow dreamlike colors, which is mostly in autumm.

and yes! happened to talk to Xuanrong who actually went there before the railway was even built - he took a 4 day bus all the way to Lhasa. that kinda makes the 48 hour train (board on the first night, reach on 3rd day morn) ride sound somewhat better. 48 hour train ride to the rooftop of the world!
maybe it only sounds exotic. maybe it's a pilgrim's tour with so many lama temples, etc (Lhasa means "holy land of Buddha"). maybe the high altitude sickness will be so bad i just can't wait to get out of the place. but i'll keep wondering if we don't go!!

他们没吃过水密桃

他们没吃过水密桃, 切一粒给他们尝尝 =)
the nice auntie at the 早市. she sells the more 'exotic' fruits like fresh peaches and cherries, whereas most stalls just have pears, apples, etc. yummy~ but i got a tummyache from eating too many fruits yestd! in a bit to cut down on the cookies/chocs/munchies... :P
she asked whether we were korean!!! hopefully cos we were sua-gu-ly whispering in english what's the difference between a 水密桃 and a 油桃. not cos of bad chinese!



the IP Office of China. notwithstanding that i'm gleefully buying dvds and whatnot, i think the IP office really has a tough job! they seem a bit defensive about their work (chinese pride), but they've had 20 years to build up their IP law to what other -western- ctys have had 100 years to do.
and their officers who determine whether u get yr patent are of masters or PHD educational level. and still stuck at a small desk doing paperwork. the chinese really have it tough!
note the grey skies. bleh~

mantou at his fave activities 1. eating up the doorframe 2. suffocating himself in the rubbish; 3. making frens and then peeing right next to his new fren - on my bed!!







A and B are broke and lay in wait by this dark path to rob any passerby. C takes a shortcut along this dark path, A and B grab her and rape her in turn, only to find that C is A's wife.

and I thought our prof was very original to come up with a funny hypo for our assignment... SH just grabbed a random casebook in the library and there it was - even the names were not changed! but this is the hardest that my brain has worked for a couple of months now - delighted to find that it is still working!!! after completing 50 episodes of 康熙王朝 and a reading list comprising books on travelling china.

someone commented that there's a lack of variety in singapore's food.

well, i can't decide whether to get the rice or the noodle or the rice for dinner leh. but the fruits are really good and cheap - had apples, pears, mangoes, berries, bananas for the wk =)

Call me slow, but this verse seems to have just sunk into me :P

that God made this world and us to partake in His glory, in fellowship with Him, but we chose not to... (our sin). God is Love, but He also is Just and Righteous.
He abhors our sin but He has promised Noah not to wipe the world clean again. The only way He can keep balance between love and righteousness, is for Jesus His Son to die on our behalf, for Jesus' blood to wash away our sins. Jesus has conquered the cross and death (the empty cross) so that we may have faith, hope and joy and abundant life even beyond our time here. God is both a loving and just God.

But who is Jesus? I remember CS Lewis wrote about the difference between begotten and created... to beget is of the same 'equal' kind, like a mother begetting her child, while to create is like human creating a sailboat model. [Mere Christianity puts it better] Jesus is God's only begotten son. (John 3:16) sacrificed on the cross. God is 三体为一的神 (trinity) Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Hope i finally got it right. but hmm i think my understanding will not ever be complete... yet.


God assures us that faith is still a process, and even for reluctant converts like C.S. Lewis, God is patient for us to continue to seek and to grow. and it's okay to struggle in that growth













pictures 1. early spring in beida 2. sunshine in nei meng

postcards from inner mongolia

northern skies~ funny how we can look left to a breathtaking sunset and right to a full moon.
















aiya! should have taken up this 大叔's offer to stay back at his 牧民家!










baaa! oops i think i'm wearing his friend's skin~ the little one i'm carrying is 2 weeks old, didn't realise she looks so strangled! but she was so sweet! gave a little bleat and just lay in my arms. i miss u!!

my wordiest post?

sometimes i think i've had more than enough of the salty food, the starchy mian/mi fan, the grey skies & dry air and feeling friendless at times, but at other times, i know i will miss china terribly!

we just got back from yet another tiring trip on mayday... this time to inner mongolia - this northen land further north of beijing was one of the reasons why i chose to come to beijing! but then again, "near" is always relative... cos we were on the minibus for about half of the 4 day trip! exhausted from that, plus a freezing night in the monogolian hut (蒙古包), and bouncing up & down, clinging on for dear life on our galloping horses. But it was all worth it i think. the vast grassland -even without its fully-grown beauty-, the boundless desert... marvel at Creation! it makes you wonder how anyone can stand living in the boring city :P

then today we spent half a day stocking up on fruits and snacks -ie.instant food/chocs/sweets/cookies- at the market+supermarket, making Junda faint at how much crap we girls intake...(btw, why don't guys snack? they dont know what they're missing out on!) there's just so much variety here for everything to feed their 13million population. from the dirt cheap range to the gasp! 35rmb toilet paper we bought :(

at nearby wudaokou, i wanted to buy some hard-to-find english books from the di tan 地摊 again but the vendor ran away from the police before i could figure out how much to bargain down! the vendors along that narrow stretch do leave the place really cramped and littered, but it's another characteristic of china that i love! fun to wonder along and see pple browsing and bargaining =P it's actually a pretty smart move to quote a high price and bargain down if the customer can - something that's probably very appropriate for a country with a large poor-rich divide and increasing numbers of foreigners.

hmm there are still some initial awkward moments when i dont warm up to pple quickly - a characteristic i dont like that doesnt go away just because you run away to china. was almost beginning to enjoy jogging by myself, checking out the korean hairdresser by myself- haha sounds so pathetic~ 这就是孤僻的慧娴~ but i know we are made to be "people people"! enjoyed this trip prob also because we travelled in a big group - 9 exchange students and 8 others. playing silly games like we did on judo japan trip =) laughter and 互相挖苦. Thank God also for bible study... and looking forward to CS Lewis seminar this sunday and 话剧 next week! i'm not not here to watch dvds in my room :P not that we can any more, with 2 cheem-chinese assignments due next wk!