Shaoxing is known as an ancient water village. Here you can see all the houses lining a little river:
A sketched out map of all of Shaoxing's intricate waterways
Shaoxing's also famous for its calligraphy, with several well-known calligraphers coming from this city. Jay (our resident director) told us this legend about an old woman who was selling fans that no one wanted to buy. Wang Xizhi (one of the most famous calligraphers ever) saw her and decided to help her out by writing a character on some of her fans. He told her to advertise that he had written the character, and she then was able to sell the fans for a huge fortune!
I think this picture's interesting because you can see a rural house in the foreground and a huge skyscraper in the background. It's so strange how these two can co-exist so close to each other- there must be a huge distinction between how the local people here live/think vs. those in the city.
It's very picturesque here. We took a boat cruise around the East Lake- counterpart to Hangzhou's West Lake.
We also had fun playing in these giant hamster wheel-like rafts in the water! You try to stand up and roll them forward. Most of us were really bad and kept falling, but I was actually not horrible. :) The other little Chinese kids who tried were all masters at it.
Shaoxing wine is often used in cooking! We got to taste some in a wine making factory. It tasted a bit like soy sauce mixed with a strong wine, but the soy sauce taste somehow dampened the wine flavor, so it was easier for me to drink.
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The main thing we did in Shaoxing was take 3 days of calligraphy classes from a renowned calligrapher Yu Laoshi. Yu Laoshi taught us about the history of calligraphy and then did demonstrations before we got to practice on our own.
I thought it was pretty hard because you hold the brush in a different way from how you normally hold a pencil or paint brush, so for the first couple days my hands were uncomfortable and would tire easily.
I kept most of my pieces. Here are a couple I made:
After our calligraphy class, we had a "final exam" where we each had to pick one character to write, and we all wrote them on the same page (so no redo's!). It was really intense because our teacher invited 15 or so Chinese people including families and kids to watch us, so we were all nervous.
And here's our final piece!! Guess which character is mine?
Before we left, we played this funny game that Wang Xizhi used to play with scholars he'd invite to his house. He was not only a great calligrapher but also a talented poet. They'd sit by a small river, and when a small wine cup would float to them, they'd have to drink the cup and then recite a poem they made up on the spot (of course for the Tufts version, we didn't have to drink the wine- remember most of us aren't 21 yet...). In the original game, if you couldn't made up a poem, you had to drink 3 whole glasses of wine! (Of course we didn't do that either) It was fun and we had to use our creativity to think of poems in Chinese, although most of us prepared a poem prior to starting the game. No one wanted to risk whatever would happen to them if they couldn't think of a poem on the spot!
Here's mine:
绍兴：
从水下, 起来了个古老城市
在发展的同时农村坚持站着
工匠刻个章, 外婆失望地卖扇子
我对绍兴的印象很深刻
Translation:
Shaoxing:
From under the water rose an ancient city
In the midst of development, villages remained standing
A craftsman engraves a seal, grandma hopelessly sells fans
Shaoxing gives me a deep impression
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