kite festival

Today, I went to a kite festival which is one of the most common semi-civil activities in Nanjing even China with Kevin.
Flying kite used to be one of the most important even in China. People usually fly kites in spring. A famous modern time writer Lu Xun also wrote a prose named kite. There is a sentence in this article says: Kites are children’s toys, toys are children’s treasures. I used to think it is really silly and baffling, but I realized that I have totally already understood the meaning of the entire sentence, when I saw these children’s cheerful smiling face in the hot wind of early summer.
Kite Flying festival were organized almost ever weekends from early spring to the late fall. Every weekend with big winds, people who live near this park likes flying kites will take their favorite kite to this place not only having fun, but also have a competition sometimes. The winner for this week is a lean old man who looked had glory in the past. His entire arm, especially the right one didn’t looks strong, but it does was very powerful. It was powerful enough to hold the string which I was hardly to hold easily and controlled the way the kite went with noticed the direction of the wind, just like the sailor who takes care of the sail in a ship.
The festival is not very long. It started when the sun turned to orange, and ended when the sun hided himself behind the horizon.

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Church

During the Christmas holiday, I went to the preachment in the Church of Mochou Road.
That was my first time join the religion event and I was late. I came into the church during when people are sing Christmas songs in the front of the church. Almost all the seats have someone on it, and I was hardly found a seat. What I could do is to stand there and listen to the songs and pastors’ words. A few minutes later, came me a pastor and asked me if I want to go upstairs to have a sit. That what I extremely want to do, have a seat and enjoy my first religion event.
The next part of the preachment started with the drama which about things happened after the Chris’ birth. The lines they used were old English with a lot of terms which I almost couldn't’t understand any of their sentences. Luckily, the small red self-printed books have all the Chinese lines of the drama on it. The drama’s general idea is after the born of Jesus, three sage gave him frankincense, myrrh, gold as the present and bless him will grow healthily.
Even that was my first time join in a religion event, but I could still felt the solemn atmosphere in the church. Atheism always said that religion the tool that the tyrant used to control the mind of public, but what I think is, the event like that really could help people free their mind and had mentally relaxation.

Drama

A few months ago, during the Christmas holiday, I went to Shanghai to watch a drama named the Mousetrap which was transformed from a well-known detective story written by Agatha Christic, not one of, but the best detective story writer.
The drama started at 8:00 pm, at the Shanghai Drama Theater. The weather there is below the frozen point, but I didn’t felt cold at all. That was my first time watching the drama. I was so excited about it.
The theater is not the traditional one, which I usually see. The seats are around the stage like a square instead of in front of the stage. On the other hand, there was no clear line of demarcation between the seats and the stage. We were a part of the drama, like the set on the stage. The actors were not far away from us, they stood in front of us, made me like I was a role in the drama, but nothing to speak. That was I have never seen, even heard before.
The drama started with the dark silence in the stage, though the time past, the story was more and more close to the time of climax. The atmosphere of nervous fluctuate in the theater, after the gush of truth, came the end of the crime and the story. What I think about this drama is that if I could use the curve to illustrate the story, I will use wave of heart which is up and down very often.

Video for Biking club

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Work experience 2

During last few weeks, I worked as a video editor in the Nanjing Military Region, which made a TV series named The Undercover General. The first day of the work, I spend most of the time on sitting next to one of them and study the skills and knowledge, which I have to know for the next few days. They are so many big differences between the pro person and students who makes video like me. At first, the computers they use usually connect 2 scream together then they could see more part of the video and it will be much easier to editing. On the other hand, the software they used are much professional than the Ulead Videostudio which most of students like us usually use.
At the first few hours, I was totally doesn’t understand what the person sat next to me was talking about, I really didn’t know what he was talking about. That was the most difficult time during the whole work days. For my surprise, he didn’t get mad even though I don’t understand. He helped me instead of yelled at me. I didn’t learn very fast, but I keep doing, which also means still learned not that less.
After a few hours, I finished the basic thing I have to know for my future, but what happened is after I finished it, all the part that will use these were all finished. I finally have nothing to do, so the leader of the office asked me to fix the script clerks’ working mistakes, which was watching all the parts of the video and check if the first script clerk had recommend all the things like in what time who picked up the stone from where and did what to that stone. I did these kinds of thinks for 3 days. Thanks the first script clerk, he was very responsible, it was great that he finished almost all the works that he suppose to do. I just add a little details that he forget about the video, which also means I had a easy work.
A few days later, the really challenge came to me. I was told to be a editor assistant, which will means I would finally do the work of editing. Seriously, this is very hard. Firstly, the video are not in the correct order, which should be the same as the scenario, so I have to read scenario once and once again to help me put them in order. On the other hand, the photographer used at least 3 video cameras in one set, in different directions and angels, and also when the actor failed once, they shoot again, and I have to choose the best one with excellent directions, angles, and even the actors’ emotion. These were the entire element that I have to think about during the editing.
I think not everyone has a chance to do this kind of work like me and get the experience, so my experience is extremely important for me.

Resturant 2

Today I went to a restaurant named Henry’s Home to have a dinner with my parents to celebrate for my mother who had just been back from Europe.
I arrived the restaurant at 7:00 PM. Since we entered the restaurant an old waiter who had a challenge on horizontal guide us to the dinning table and left the menu to us then went back to the door. I thought his was so cool just like the butler in a castle at the age of Victoria who never say anything, just did all the things master let him to do instead.
When my father was reading the menu, I listened to the back ground music which is a very peaceful and romantic classic piano music and feel relaxed.
I like there was a great restaurant, because I had a good emotion, not because of the food. Foods there were not great but not bad. It was much different from the food we usually eat, at least most Chinese will eat the dishes with the staple food like rice. The way to eat there was also different. As all the people know, Chinese people will eat food in one big bowl or plate, but Western people will every one eat its own food in a smaller plate. Our Chinese use chopsticks to send food into our mouths, but western people use knives and forks instead.

Exhibition 2

Today, I went to the Nanjing Art Gallery to watch the calligraphy exhibition. All the exhibits there were written by a student from the Nanjing Foreign Language School named Cheng Miaoran. After we entered the hall, the first thing hit our heart is a very huge paper with 4 letters on it, Self-discipline and Social Commitment, gave a big stir. I couldn’t understand how a girl in junior 3 could write like that. There is a piece of paper was sticked on the wall with full of small words. We are all interested in it. We got close to the paper to read it more clearly. There was a small story written on it. Cheng Miaoran spend the time of more than 1 month on this 4 words. I was so admire of this girl. It was really hard to keep writing 4 words for more than a month.
The first floor of the Nanjing Art Gallery is all for Cheng Miaoran as the place of the exhibition. There are at least more than 50 pieces of art work in the exhibition hall are all of them are her masterpieces. It was first time for me to see these so many calligraphy works.
I looked around the exhibition hall with Mike and Joe, finally I found my favorite calligraphy work of all. My favorite calligraphy work is an ancient text called the Arcadia records. It’s a story about a fisherman who went a wonderful world that almost no one knows it. He was treated very well because he was the first person who came to there place in these hundred of years. The life in another world is much better than the world the fisherman lived in. This story shows the dream of people in the past thousands of years which is a world without war, disease and greed.
This calligraphy art work is written in regular script which is the form most of calligraphy art work used. It is one of the most common kinds of handwriting in the realm of Chinese calligraphy. But I just think one is the best one, even I don’t have any reasons. It much likes the original Chinese calligraphy. This kind of script is used by most of Chinese. People always said: we could know the writer’s characteristic from the letters he writes. Maybe I am not very good at this, but I could see her put most of her effort on practicing calligraphy. Her calligraphy is definitely like a square, which is one of the most important conditions to be a good calligraphy work.
In conclusion, calligraphy is one of not only Chinese traditional art but also one of a big treasure in the world’s art. As the students of the Nanjing Foreign Language School who is going to face the whole world we should put more of our effort on getting the knowledge about China. We even should spend some time study these kind of art so we could let the world know Chinese Art better.

Sports

Playing tennis is not like hitting flies with a plastic fly swatter. It is harder, more meaningful an absolutely more elegant.
If you want to be good at playing tennis, you need not only physical strength and perfect skill, but also never afraid of athletics and brave enough to face you competitor. When you hold a racket standing on this sacred field you responsibility and obligation is to fight, my coach told me like that before my first lesson. In conclusion you sprite and conviction are the key to win the game and get the honor.
Before I played tennis, I thought all the tennis player were very silly. Why they need to run to almost every corner in the field with a huge cumbersome metal swatter as fast as they could to hit a big green round fly. But when I learn it for a few months. I thought I could understand a little. Running on the sunshine, under the sun is not only their fatigued body but also their hearts’ strong beat.
Learning tennis was very hard and need to speed a lot of time, especially in summer: even training in the morning, the temperature in the outside is still hot. At noon, the outside is the Hell. The cement ground is hot enough to cook eggs. Training in that temperature I thought I was going to melt. Because of that kind of weather, I could drink about 2 liters water for every 2 hours’ activity and my clothes will all wet.
I admire, I almost want to give up for more than 10 times, I have so many reasons can be used as a pretext, just like my knee was hurt because of playing tennis, by the way, it is true. I also could say: I don’t have enough time for study. But now I still stand in the middle of the tennis field weekly. Someone said: harder the work is, the better the worker will be, worse the environment is, sturdier the survivors are. Standing in the tennis field is the bad environment for me and if I want to be survivor, I must face the difficulties and keep fighting with them.
Learning tennis is very useful, because when players are playing tennis. The first is could make player feel relax, especially when you are angry with something. You could go the tennis field to fit the ball as strong as you want and imagine the ball is the thing makes you angry. It is an easy to below off, especially when you stroke and smash the ball. Tennis is an elegant sport, there is a net between two half fields, so physical touch will not happen, even hit the ball must use the racket, so players will not get hurt easily. Even a middle-age person could join the game; on the other hand, I have never heard a 60-year-old people are good at playing basketball or football.
In conclusion, tennis is a very good sport for people in any age. Everyone could enjoy it.

Club activity article 1

In this school year, I joined the biking club. This club was created this year by David in 10-d.

In the autumn of 2008, I went to the General Mountain. It was a very meaningful activity for me. In some ways, this is my first time. I used to ride around the thousands islands lake, it was much longer, so I thought the journal to the General Mountain must be very easy for me. But finally I realized this was the first time for me to ride in the city even in the countryside. The journal to the General Mountain became a nightmare for me.

At the beginning of the journal, I didn’t ride very fast; I ride in the speed for a long journal instead. Soon after, I found I became the last one of all the other members in the line. Then I realized I must catch up with them or maybe I will lose my way. I started to admire them. They had much more experiment on ride in the city than me.

After a long time ride, we reached the countryside, the foot of the General Mountain. We stopped to have a short time rest. During the rest, the leader of the biking club gave us a warning: after a few minutes we will reach a steep slope, we should now ride in a very high speed to use the inertia to rush to the top of the mountain or the next few miles will be the Hell. Everyone were excitedly change the gear of their mountain bicycle. All of us were like a rocket with full of fuel. After the leader’s loud shout, all of us were like a hungry tiger rush to the prey. The way to top of the mountain was really very steep. I can’t image this rode in built for people. I admire I can’t win in the war between me and the slope. I stop to push the bike in the middle of the way to the top. Finally, I stand in the top the General Mountain; we look down at the Nanjing, laughed with our heads raised, our body in full of our proud and I believe our laugh must be heard by a lot of people.

This the the picture for Game Bar .

Work experience 1

On 20th and 21st of January during the winter vacation, other students and I worked in the Nanjing Popular Book mall. I tried my best to change my knowledge and experiment into skills and mixed the theory and practice. I followed the rule, never late for work or leave early in these 2 days. Putting all my effort on deal with problems during the work time. All of the employees thought I was a good worker and I also found my shortcoming. During these 2 days, I worked for education book part, especially books for junior school students and books for a big text, also including some parts of books for elementary school students. The knowledge we learned from textbooks truly came to our life. We also learned different sections of the work in bookmalls. We conscientious studies from employees who had a lot of working experiment, truly understand the responsibility of salesperson and helped customer.

On the first day of our work, I wore the uniform of the Nanjing Foreign Language School. At the very beginning, I put books in order, so customer could find books much easier. After a few hours, I found some customers who looking for books for a big text came to me ask me to recommed them some useful books for their children. I thought there were all so many employees there why they just came to me, a student? Another employees told me these customer saw my school uniform. The customers know the NFLS is the best school in Nanjing, so they thought I must be a very good student and knew what kind of books are useful and meaningful. If they know books’ name but can’t find it, I would tried my best to find it. Then I knew what types of book the customers want, so I recommed more. When they were wandering, didn’t know what to buy, I asked them what kinds of book they need, then I tried my best to accod their wishes.

The second day’s work was still hard, I was asked to bring more than 500 books for one showcase to a big table and put them in order. I spent more than an hour to finish it. I helped customers who came to me at the same time.

During the my work time, I realized to treat customers just like a practitioner of Chinese medicine to treat the patients. The are 4 important ways: watch, listen, ask and know. We are employees, so we need to know what level the customer is, what he wants or likes. The second one is listen, we need to listen carefully to know what he need, customers are not patient enough to tell you his demand for many times, they sometimes even purposely don’t tell you what he really need. The third one is ask. The customers just know he need to buy books to solve his problem, so our emplyees need to be a planner to give customers a overall, accurate plan, so keep communicating to understand customers and thereby show the most suitable shopping list then finish the selling. The last one is know. Books are not like things such as computer, to be suitable is the most important thing, as an example, I can’t sell a TOEFL book to a 3-year-old-baby. During the selling, customers may be have some myths about buying books, so I deeply understand customers’ state, then trade with them.

This picture is the certificate to prove my work from the Nanjing Popular Book mall. The meaning is:

Michael Miao from GCA in NFLS has finished 10 hours in the the Nanjing Popular Book mall. The work started on 20th of Jan. 2009 and due on 21st of Jan 2009.

Resturant 1

The friday when it was Chrismas, Frank Wu, Julia and some other classmates and Grade 12 mentors went to a restaurant named My Place near the Hunan Road. The restaurant was in a small alley that even it was hard for a small car to drive throught it.
After walking for a few minutes without light, we arrived in Alice's Wonderland. In the centre of the dark labyrinth there was an elegant villa that covered by decoration. That was My Place.
The room we had dinner was really great. It was Victiorian style and used a lot of relief on the wall. On a side of the room, there were many pictures of famous person who had have dinner in this restaurant. It was a restaurant that mainly provide Italian food. That night we first ate the spaghetti. The spaghetti was made with onion, bacon, pepper and it also has the smell of spice and cheese. The beef taste great there.
I like there was a great restaurant, because I had a good emotion, not because of the food. Food there were not great but not bad. It was much different from the food we usually eat, at least most Chinese will eat the dishes with the staple food like rice. The way to eat there was also different. As all the people know, Chinese people will eat food in one big bowl or plate, but Western people will every one eat its own food in a smaller plate. The enviroment there was suitable to the time. The speaker there played the Chrismas songs because that was the day of Chrismas.

Wu Weishan

Ms.Hadley and us went to an exhibition called Wu Weishan’s Cultural Figures Sculpture Galley on December 4th at the Nanjing University, so we saw a lot of sculptures there, and they were many Wu Weishan's artworks(some of them were he made with his assistants).The artworks are all contemporary, but it represent the traditional Chinese life
The are also many sculptures in the outside of the hall where the exhibition was held. I walked outside to look at more Wu Weishan’s sculpture. Suddenly, I saw a sculpture Which was one of the biggest sculpture outside. It was a old man’s sculpture, its eyes just like an eagle looked at me directly seems nothing could stop him. A few minutes later I knew the sculpture’s name is Lao-tzu. It looks messy, because its surface is very rough so it doesn't look well and not as beautiful as other well-known sculptures. Actually I don't like it at very beginning, because of its ugly skin, so it didn't give me a very good impression，but finally I found I was wrong.
Wu Weishan didn't want to imitate other famous artists' style to describe Lao-tze. He just did what he wants to do. He didn't want to make this sculpture as real as possible, he just want to show this wise old person who made huge influence to Chinese culture. This sculpture was made of metal and its colour is dark brown. I just like have seen the years Lao-tzu past. It shows this sage's hard life with poor, supplanting in the government and other unfair things happened on him.
Lao-tzu's clothes looks very dirty but to be surprise, this clothes matched him very much. The Bible said when Noah built the Ark he also wear bad clothes. Maybe the bad clothes is one of the symbol of the wisdom people.
Actually, this sculpture doesn't have the body. It was empty like a room. In the inder surface, Wu Weishan carved the first chapter of Taoteching on it. The empty body means nothing. Nothing was the spirit of Taoism, and the reason why he carve the Taoteching on the inder surface means the Taoteching is the article which described the Taoism. It’s very cleaver way to figurative object to discribe the abstract concept.
Some people said the Lao-tzu’s sculpture is very ugly, the sculpture’s surface is full of scars. Yes, I admit most of the famous sculpture like Michelangelo’s David or others are all perfect. We can’t find any of scars or flaws on it, but I say there used different ways to represent. There are different but all perfect.
In conclusion, this sculpture is very meaningful and has a great value, it's one of the treasure of arts and inspire me a lot.