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Published: April 20th 2009
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This afternoon the Scottish University students were invited to a Scottish Ministerial event at Beijing Jiatong University. The event was in connection with the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and their involvement with China. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong learning, Fiona Hyslop spoke at the event about strengthening links with China and the Scottish Governments aspirations for future engagement. She announced a new scholarship to encourage more Chinese students to study in the UK and plans for future research.
We had the valuable opportunity to meet with Chinese students who will be moving to study in the UK. They were so excited to meet us and extremely friendly. I think I made more Chinese friends in that one afternoon than I have in the past 2 weeks! It was a great opportunity to exchange opinions and experiences of being in a student in Scotland and in China.
I met a Chinese student who was presented with an award from Fiona Hyslop for student of the year. The student is currently studying an HNC in China and will be coming to study in the UK later in the year. She told me that she comes from the countryside and
a very poor background. Her family have to use every penny they earn to pay for her education. She hopes that she can get a good qualification and eventually a good job so that she can support her family in the longer term. It was such an inspiring story, it was clear that the award meant so much to her and her family - it was truly deserved.
In the evening we went on a group trip to the Peking Opera. The performance lasted just over and hour, which was long enough! It was very entertaining but there is only so much high-pitched screeching you can listen to! Our tickets were already paid for but a few of us decided to upgrade our seats. We got to sit around tables nearer the front and were served jasmine tea through out the performance. Have a look at the photo to see how it was served - it was quite bizarre!
I found the face makeup totally fascinating. When I was an art student I did a piece of work about the Beijing opera and colour symbolism, so it was an absolute dream to see it first hand. We were
even allowed to watch the performers get ready! I found myself immediately knowing if the character was a hero or a villain from the moment they entered the stage. It was really fascinating to see how they communicated this visually (no one else around the table seemed that interested!). Generally speaking: red represents loyalty, black represents bravery, white represents sinister, yellow represents fierce and purple represents a noble character.
As soon as we arrived home we started getting ready to go to The World of Suzie Wong. It’s one of the most famous bars in Beijing and was a very strange experience!!! A few things happened.. ……a woman tried to sell me, we met a man called Dragon who claimed to be a world famous hip hop artist and we met a friend of Fiona Hyslop. It was such a bizarre night!
We also popped into another club just to see what it was like and every one was dressed as astronauts; we quickly left! On our way out a Chinese man with a guitar called us over (he noticed we were westerners!) and gave us a rendition of “take me home, country road”. We decided to be
friendly and call more Chinese people over and had a wee singsong in the streets of Beijing. It is one of my most happiest moments in China - I want to live this life forever!
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