20 Apr, 40 Mandarin learners from more than 10 countries had a rich and meaningful day at the Chinese culture experience center Half Side Mountain, Xiangshan. The Mandarin learners tried to use Chinese language to communicate with local people and had a vivid understanding about the life of Chinese people in the fish village.

In order to acquire skills of making local dim sum, the participants tried every method to communicate with the cook. No matter hard or easy, they successfully made dim sum and had a taste of their own work.

As Xiangshan possesses long coastline, boats and ships are extremely important for people’s life. Though modern machine replaced handwork, people are still proud of making fine wooden boats by hand.  We appreciated the exquisite handcraft of ship model made by Mr Sheng who is the master of the wooden ship intangible heritage culture. Under his instruction, Mandarin learners used the pieces of wood to make the simplest boat model. Unfortunately, it was still a hard work and nobody could finish it on the day.

Then, all the participants worked together and planted 10 cherry trees in the rain. We hoped that next year when we come here again, the flowering cherry trees would make up the hill.

Participants reflected it was an innovative and impressive trip, as it made them being more passionate to study Chinese and further understand China.