Friday July 7, 2017
The teachings of Confucius were of balance between light and dark, where you would use earlier years to learn and make friends, as opposed to later years around fifty years old and where you would pass on wisdom and knowledge gained through life. The way Confucius saw life is that time doesn’t stop for you, thus, we should all live life day by day. Laozi, another philosopher, saw life as an opportunity of new beginnings, change and unity. In an ideal world, he would rather all people co-exist with total peace. His theory of ruling with an action is similar to America’s model of government. Sunzi, our last philosopher, had a theory to assess and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your enemy and then develop a strategy to cripple your enemy by any means necessary. This is the information that we learned from today’s seminar “The Teaching of Confucius, Laozi and Sunzi.”
During our tour of the Hangzhou Wanxiang Polytechnic campus, we visited a room with a tremendous set of model trains, perfectly built with much detail. The model, in total, took 2 to 3 years to create and finish. There were so many details in this model that the model train even stopped at the station like a real train would! If that isn’t cool enough, on the other side of the train station, there was a power substation that’s designed to appear to be a part of the model. In short, it serves as a power source for the train! With this much excitement, it was hard to contain our content.
The most exciting part of the day was when we were told to get our aprons on and get ready to make traditional Chinese dumplings! As the chef showed us how to make the dough, roll it, flatten it, stuff it and lastly seal it, everyone gathered around ready to make our food for the night. We split into 3 separate teams and took on different roles of the dumpling making process. As we used teamwork and communication, we got the job done. We all had a blast and loved every second of this great experience. After finishing the dumplings, we all sat down to eat all of our creations with joy and happiness.
~Devlin Collins & DeAnte Davis
