China, I love you!

I haven't been updating my blog :'( I have been in & out of the country the last few weeks, & there are so many things I wanna write but had been procastinating... Now there are so many entries I should write that I really don't know where to start anymore... :p so I shall start with where I left off previously - my China trip with my family!

I love my family!

& my mummy!

James is eating a sparrow! He's so gross! Hmm... ok... I ate too... taste like chicken meat actually. A word of advise - never look at the sparrow's head while eating it cause it'll makes you feel so much like a guilty sinner!

So many red lanterns hanging on a single tree!

Merlion in China?! Yup, at Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park!

Wuzhen Water Town.

James & me at Lei Feng Ta (where the legendery White Snake was held by Fahai the monk)

Like those Taiwan drama? Even the wind is blowing favorably at the cloth!

t At the famous Zhong Hua Gate.

Three Kingdom.

12 of my family members went to China-Jiangnan for a 9 days holidays in Nov, & surprisingly, I fell in love with China in ways I never thought I would. I used to be prejudiced against the Chinese, & I thought them to be overly patrotic & backward in their thinking & society. But I was so wrong! Many parts in China today are advancing faster than Singapore today (except the toilets definitely). The night scenery of our CBD can never be compared to those of Shanghai. The lights consumed in Shanghai alone to light up the whole city is equivalent to a year's electricity consumption of a town with a million population. That's how extravagant, but beautiful the city can be!

A glimpse of the beautiful Shanghai.

The Oriental Pearl TV Tower - we ascended to 266 stories tall!

But what touches me or impact me the most in this trip is the story behind the Yangtze-Nanjing Bridge. Jiangnan produces mainly perishables e.g. tea leaves, agriculture products. In those times, Jiangnan can only depend on ships to bring their products over to Jiangbei to trade. As Jiangnan rains heavily 2/3 of a year, hence causing no ships to set sail in the rain, & each ship journey takes at least 12 hours, many of their perishables were spoilt by the time they reached Jiangbei. The only solution is to build a bridge to facilitate trade between the 2 states.

The Yangtze-Nanjing bridge. A bridge with a story.

Nanjing had just suffered the worst crisis then - the Nanjing massacre. The rest of the states in China were also in one of the worst economies with the many years of famine. China government then was also penniless as Jiang Jianshi had just fled to Taiwan, taking with him almost all the money in the government reserve. Penniless, the government turn to foreign countries for help in building the bridge. Many countries said the bridge can't be built - the current of the Yangtze River (the 3rd longest river in the world) is simply too strong. Russian offered to build the bridge with the condition of the Chinese paying tax to them for the next 99 years. When China refused to believe the bridge cannot be built, many countries jeered at them, saying the Chinese are Asian weaklings and they can never built the bridge.

To prove that they are not Asian weaklings, the Chinese gave up many years of their salaries to contribute to the fund of building the bridge. 100,000 people worked as free labours to build the bridge for years. However, it was no simple task. The most challenging part was to hold the foundation down into the river bed as the current was simply too strong. Even before the brick could reach the bottom of the river, it was already swept away by the current. With no advance technology 50 years ago, many people chose to sacrifice and jump into the river to hold those bricks firmly into the foundation. At least 10,000 people died while building the bridge. Many more became disabled or sick. When the giant countries saw that the bridge were built, they said the bridge would collapse within 30 years. Today, the bridge is still standing tall close to 40 years later. The Chinese had proved to the world & to their future generations that they are no Asian weaklings. This is the spirit behind every Chinese.