Day 8 - Surprisingly Wuhan Posted by SuperJuniorF , Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 10:57 PM, in

Just a random picture with a little wuhan girl I took today ^_^

On this rather relaxed day, I started the day by cleaning up my room and organising my belongings especially my clothing. I realised that having my belongings all over the room is not helpful when I wake up late because I will have to find my belongings that I need in a hurry and it will cause me to forget some items. The situation is similar for me whether I am in Singapore or Wuhan. However because I have limited space in the dormitory in WUST, I must make sure that my things are in place so that I will be able to fully utilize the small area.



The class ended at about 12pm after spending 3 hours in class doing assignment 7 alone and practical 3 with the help of Noor and Ms Neo. Normally in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, if my classs ends early, I will usually stay in school to do my work rather than going home. However in WUST, because I am staying so close to school, I will usually go back to my dormitory after lunch. This is because doing my work in the dormitory in WUST is very comfortable as it is warm and cozy. Thus in WUST, the probability of me being in my dormitory after school ends is high. ^_^

Today was te first time in WUST that I entered the canteen with no people at all! It was something unusual because normally when we eat lunch at 11.30am; there will be so many people! The canteen was empty because it actually closes at 1.00pm. Luckily for me and my friends, the fried rice stall was still open, so we ordered fried rice! What I noticed was that the portion of rice given in WUST was twice as much astherice given in any Singapore stall! Good thing I have a high metabolism rate. This means I can eat more without having to worry much about growing fat! However, most of the girls who ordered from the stall cannot seem to be ableto finish their food. In my opinion, I think they should ask their customers whether they want their of rice to be cut down. This way, it is a win-win situation. Customers get to finish their food, the stall owner saves cost by cutting down on the food wasted by their customers.

So after lunch and doing some of my school work in the dormitory, I and my friends headed off to a well known place mainly in the United States, Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart have a wide range of things from electical appliances to raw food to children's play toys. Wal-Mart in Wuhan is similar to the Giant in Singapore. So before entering Wal-Mart, we decided to grab a bite and have dinner at McDonalds. It was cheaper than Singapore but the variety food was lesser.

So after dinner, we entered Wal-Mart and two things caught my attention. First was the basket that is used to carry the items in Wal-Mart. It actually had the sign "=<20kg"!>

The second thing that caught my attention was that the rice was sold by grams and not kilograms! There were two types of rice and each was paid 1.70RMB and 1.95RMB per 100g. I also realised that although the difference between 1.95RMB and 1.70RMB is 0.25RMB, the 1.70RMB rice was being bought more often looking at how much rice was left. In my opinion, I think that the Chinese people here are very cost-savings. They rather have something cheap with lower quality than something expensive with better quality. I think this is a good trait that must be followed by Singaporeans so that more money can be saved for better purposes. ^_^

Reflection
There are many things in Wuhan that are unexpected. Some of them that I saw today was really surprising . They have so much food that they can afford closing their canteen at 1pm and also sell their rice per gram at such a cheap price! This is one big difference between Singapore and China. China grow their own food to the extent that have so much abundance of food whereas Singapore imports most of the food from overseas. That is why Singapore's food is expensive compared to China. Singapore's food includes transportation cost, inspection cost and many other cost causing the price of food to shoot up. This is not the case for food only but also for most items sold in Singapore. A $3 fried rice in Singapore might be very cheap to Singaporeans but in China, one plate of fried rice costs about 3RMB which is about $0.60. The portion of rice given in China is also twice the rice given in Singapore! ^_^