About 3 months ago, I heard from one of my friends that, a course will be run in the summer term which has a trip to China. Since I had passed another interesting course which was related to the history of the Chinese gardens, I decided to enrol in this elective summer course called Suzhou trip. Receiving the first email from the course lecturer after enrolment, I realized that, it is a hard course that has many rules and regulations with strict guidelines which had to be obeyed in detail. It made me a little worried in the first step, but after few days that I completely read the course brief and guidelines I felt really about happy about choosing this course. According to the received information from the lecturer about the course members, we were a group of twenty students from UNSW, which was supposed to join a group of ten students from Tongji university of Shanghai.
 |
| Course lecturer: Dr. Stan Fung with some of the student in Suzhou gardens |
Purchasing tickets and getting a visitor visa were the preliminary tasks of the course. Finally we left Sydney on the 7th of Dec to Singapore. Two of my friends and I were supposed to fly in the same flight, but in the last moments of being in Sydney one of them missed the flight and had to change his flight to a parallel one which left Sydney an hour later than us. He joined us in Singapore airport and as our flight was a connecting flight, we stayed 13 hours in the Singapore airport. Visiting butterflies gardens in the airport was a wonderful experience for us.
 |
| Butterflies Garden in Singapore airport |
 |
| Waiting for next flight from Singapore to Shanghai |
 |
In Singapore airport
In the morning of the 8th of Dec, we flew to Shanghai. Arriving in Shanghai airport, a nice chinese student called John picked us up and we went to the Shanghai train station. It was really amazing for me to observe everything in the Chinese alphabet. All the street signs, all the shops and... I should mention that people were really friendly and kind. Anywhere which we were confronted with a problem, they helped us willingly. We arrived in Suzhou in 45 minutes after departing from Shanghai train station. After arriving in Suzhou, we went to the Guangchang Hotel that we were supposed to stay there until 15th of Dec. We met some of our friends in the hotel lobby, and we realized that we were the last students who arrived in Suzhou at that night. Sleeping for a couple of hours, we had our breakfast and the first session of the class was held in two of the hotel rooms. |
 |
First session of the Suzhou classes
 |
Preparing for class presentations
|
All of the students had to have a 9 minute presentation about collage and its techniques. Every day, the students had to do their presentation and after that we would have a visiting tour to the Classical gardens of Suzhou. It was nearly the same plan for the first week of the trip. During the gardens visit, we had to take lots of photos from gardens and then make few collages at night by the printed version of those images. Submitting every three or four collages, we had a critic session in which our lecturer Dr.Stan Fung gave us some precious comments about the works and gardens. I had a great opportunity to talk to Dr.Gu one of the lecturer's friends who gave us lots of information about the history of these classical gardens.
|
 |
Lattice design of the openings
 |
 |
Canal passing trough the Suzhou
 |
| Inside the garden |
|
 |
| Reflection on the water |
 |
Making collage during the night
 |
| All nighter |
|
 |
| Lingering Garden (my favourite one) |
We also visited the Suzhou museum designed by I.M.Pei. It is a really strong architectural work which is a successful mixture of Chinese traditional architecture with modern architecture. I was struck by the architect's comment over and over about change and trying something new. He said repeatedly that he wasn't always sure it would work, but his talent and instincts are right as this beautiful museum shows.
 |
| I.M.Pei Design |
|
After finishing collages in Suzhou, we went to Shanghai and we stayed in the Grand hayat Hotel which is luxurious hotel in Shanghai. All of us were excited to be there and after taking a short rest, we went out to have fun. One of the biggest club chains in China is Babyface. It is also one of the busiest and most popular clubs in Shanghai.
 |
| Grandhayat Hotel - Shanghai |
To talk about the Shanghai activities we had, there were about two architectural firms that we visited. One of them was Neri & Hu while the other one was Atelier Deshaus. The first one was a big firm with international profile. The architect was very smart and he had designed lots of wonderful buildings. He showed us a great portfolio of his works but as photography was forbidden in his office, unfortunately there is nothing to upload here. The second firm was a small scale architectural office with various minor but detailed and complicated projects. He was a Chinese architect with a nice personality. He also has an amazing portfolio which is full of interesting concepts. After all these visits, I realized that China is going to be one of the powerful countries of the world in terms of everything. People there are so hardworking and confident in their skills. Particularly in architecture, they are trying to change everything. As a case in point, Suzhou will be completely different in next five years or maybe sooner due to the vast number of construction sites which were working 24 hours a day. One of the strange things for me in China was the fact that, almost everywhere is smoke free. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the way that they consume their food. It is a kind of custom of sharing all the types of food on the table. Turning table is conveying this matter clearly. It was my first experience to use chopsticks for having my food. I just can say it was awesome.
