China Trip 2018

The 2018 China excursion is traveling to Beijing, Xi'an, Ningbo and Shanghai.  

20 excited students from Year 5 and Year 6 are off to China to visit many amazing Chinese cultural, natural and historical sites and attractions, as well as to visit our friends at Nine Dragon Lake Primary School in Ningbo.

On Friday 21st September we left Ironbark Ridge at about 7.30am on our bus to Sydney Airport. Here we are at the departure gate at ready to go...

... and the mandatory 'silly face for your parents' photo :)

After a bit of a sleep-in we jumped aboard our tour bus and headed through the crowded city streets of Beijing, marvelling at the many overpasses and underpasses, crazy-architechtural skyscrapers and endless tall apartment buildings.

We reached Tian'anmen Square and learnt about its place in the design of Beijing-Peking. The first gates are an amazing part of the old city outer wall.

The Kung Fu show elevated us all with the input and dedication to the content. Whilst watching this amazing show we learnt a few moves along the way. The Kung Fu skills these men and women had were outstanding when they were in the spotlight. Kung Fu? Please, no one can do it like they do!
- Hannah W

The section of the Great Wall of China we climbed today is to the north of Beijing.  

The Great Wall is a challenging walk as we all know. It was hard to
keep going and reach the end if we wanted to. Overall we had lots of fun, laughter and sore legs! Also we did take lots of photos as shown here.

By Eden

I was first up the wall and the first down. It was really fun but my legs were so sore and tired. There was a really good view at the top. There was also a shop halfway that was cheaper than the one at the bottom! The views were great all the way up and there were heaps of people. Tom and I made it up in under 45 minutes, and about the same for the way back down.

The pandas were amazing... and so cute and funny with their cuddly faces and lazy personalities.
Then we headed up to the monkeys and they were probably the cutest thing ever - always running around, fighting with other monkeys and falling on top of each other. They were just so adorable. But the pandas were definitely the highlight of the zoo day!!
- Hannah A

Bullet-train trip

On Monday the China school trip left for Xi’an from the capital of China, Beijing. As we got onto the train we had a slight dilemma, we walked all the way to carriage number 11, but we never knew we had to put our luggage on carriage number 9! So we walked all the way back to number nine, put our luggage on and got back to number 11 (FINALLY!). Another issue was seating: we had allocated seats on the train that were a bit confusing. We finally found our seats and sped off! The train reached speeds up to 307km per hour, and Mrs Pratt gave us a riddle for those who choose to accept it... "A man is reading a book in his house, he hears a loud BANG and goes upstairs, turns the light on, and is shocked to see what’s outside. What did he see?"
Then we arrived in Xi'an and went by bus with our guide, Wendy, to the Holiday Inn Big Goose Pagoda. The rooms are luxurious and huge!!! Now I’m lying in bed typing this.
- Lucas

** "Hey Lucas... What was the answer to the riddle, anyway?" - Mr Thomson

As we drove through Xi'an to get to our dinner we could see amazingly beautiful lights on new modern and old traditional buildings.

When we got to the place where the terracotta warriors are buried we went into a special shop to meet the actual farmer, Mr Yang, who found the first warrior remains. I got a selfie with him and have it on my phone to prove it!
So Mr Yang was a farmer with no education. He couldn’t write or read. His family were poor and they were sustained by the crops he grew. One day Mr Yang was digging a new well to get water from the ground when he hit something hard. He was suspicious and kept carefully digging. There in front of him lay a couple of clay models also known as the Terracotta Warriors. He realised that what he had found was very valuable. The land he once owned is now government land but Mr Yang was paid well for it. Since he did not have to farm any more Mr Yang taught himself to read and write the difficult Chinese characters. Mr Yang also sells his book that he has written. He personally signed a copy that Mr Thomson and Ms Pho bought for Ironbark Ridge.

We visited ‘Pit 1’ first where there are three sections. The first section is where the warrior statues are complete and placed in ranks and columns. They are trying to restore the original colour to some of the statues. The second section is where the warrior statues are all broken and still half-buried. Down the back in the final section it is higher and the re-built warriors and horses are placed away from the front ones because they are made up of many broken pieces like jigsaws and possibly not original. Every warrior is unique.

Pit 2 had lots of chariots, horses and generals but most of it still needs to be revealed… Pit 3 has warriors arranged like in the first pit but it is much smaller in size. Our tour guide, Wendy, told us that there are four pits, and one is called the ‘Happy Room’, also known as the bathrooms! A few of us visited Pit 4 :)

Fun Facts:

1. When making any models out of clay you have to leave a ventilation hole to let the hot air out so it can dry with cooler air. For the warriors, that’s why they made the head separately to the body. All of the warriors and horses are hollow.

2. Tallest warrior: 2m
Shortest warrior: 1.78m
Lightest: 100kg
Heaviest: 300kg (usually a General)

3. Vangard = front ranks of warriors, not wearing any armour

- Ayushvi

It took about an hour to drive from the Terracotta Warriors but most people didn’t notice because we could play lots of games and the landscapes and buildings were very interesting. When we got to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda I realised that my shoelaces were untied. I was starting to think I have a curse of having untied shoelaces!
Our tour guide told us a story about why the place was built and why it was named the Big Wild Goose Pagoda. Hundreds of years ago, somebody went to India to get scripts and information about Buddhism. He got hungry on the way and prayed. Some wild birds appeared and one fell for him to eat - a goose! We had 20 minutes to explore what they were doing at the pagoda. The first thing I noticed was the smell of smoke from incense that was being burnt. The group that I was in went to the chanting from the worshippers at the Buddhist temple. Then we went to look at all the different gods in Buddhism such as the god of wealth. Everyone listened to a talk about calligraphy which is drawing Chinese characters and names. We also looked at all the drawings that artists made. One of them was a road with the Mona Lisa effect (it follows you around.)
- Alfonso

We are having a fantastic time and everyone is happy & well... but the wifi is not being kind/quick for us here in Ningbo and we've had two very busy days in a row.

We will upload more images and stories as we get time and bandwidth :)

On Thursday we went to our sister school in China, the Nine Dragon Lake school. It was a lot of fun! The students greeted us with a red neck tie as a sign of them giving us a warm welcome to their school and that they hope we enjoy our stay. After that we got to meet our special Buddies. We got to know them a lot and it was interesting. We exchanged gifts and practised talking in Engligh and Chinese. The students taught us cooking, art and music on the first day. During lunch, so many people came up to us to get us to sign our names on their books and on paper. In the end, the first day at our friendship school was amazing!

- Cameron :)

Today we went to Nine Dragon Lake School (our sister school). We made sweet dumplings, did art and did music.
The first thing we did was making sweet dumplings. We made them using a dumpling mixture and a sesame filling. We got to eat them afterwards, but I didn't like them unfortunately.
The next thing we did was art. We learnt how to use thick and thin paint brushes with light and dark black paint. After we learnt how to paint we painted we painted a picture of a panda using a mixture of light and dark black paint.
After that we went to the music room and learnt how to play the Chinese flute. The Chinese flute is not like a normal flute, but it's shaped like a banana with a mouthpiece on the top of it. There are different sizes for different pitches. Eventually we learnt the vital notes required to play a song, then we played the song with our buddies.
- Rupak

Today was a jam packed day. We had the opportunity to dragon dance, make chinese tea and do some calligraphy. Being able to experience schools in China with our buddies was fantastic. Once this amazing day had ended we had to say goodbye to our buddies. It was sad but nice to say goodbye. We all wish we could do it again!
- Sienna S

Water-town in Shanghai

After lunch we found an underground market area with great opportunity to bargain with the shopkeepers in Chinese... and we ended up buying some fun stuff like: