Day 7 – Painting the Lantern

Today’s Programme
Morning	To create folklore craft - Lantern/Knot
Afternoon	To learn Chinese
Evening	Introduction of the trip
Hotel	Crown Hotel, TaiChung

That morning, we had to paint the lantern. Before we started painting, they told us the history of Lantan festival. The story says …

Once upon a time, a man fired a bow to the sky and it shot god’s bird. The god was upset and commanded his guard to burn the human world. The guard came onto the earth and saw firecracker that was being lightened by villagers. So, he thought that the human world already burned. Thus, on the fifteenth day of the first Chinese month every year, we will lighten the lantern along with firing the firecrackers to pay respect to God.

Painting the lantern is easier than paiting the kite on the day before because it was made of paper, but we had to paint it softly because the paper is very thin. Like yesterday, I started with blue, but I was more creative. I made various blue tones and paint a tone onto a round of the lantern, from head to the middle, then from rear to the middle. The middle part of the lantern is the hardest place to paint because it’s wrinkle. So, I painted only deluted blue there. I waited until it was dry and thought of something more creative, but the time was up :-( I didn’t know what to do. So, I only wrote my surname in gold as it’s better than nothing.

Done with painting the lamp, I went down to another room to knot a bracelet in Chinese style. This one was easy ‘cos I’ve learned how to knot this pattern since I was in grade 7. I finished it very fast and requested LaoShi to teach me how to make mobile hanger, but she didn’t teach me and said it’s too hard to finish it in a short period of time :(


We also had Chinese class. I was wondering what we have to learn. They actually taught us the vocabularies that’s needed for shopping like names of places, snacks, and how to bargain. Then they took us to Miao Qiang Guang Chang again to sing an old song called “Di Yi Zhi Wu”. I had fun ‘cos I knew the song, but I believe the others didn’t have fun ‘cos they had never heard of it and there wasn’t actual music. While we were learning, P’Arm, Louis, and some Fu Dao Yuans showed us how to dance as we were supposed to learn how to dance along the song in the day after.


Done with the singing, we were gathered to the classroom to listen to the funny grandpa that we met in TaiYuan. That day, he only talked about Taiwan Vs. other countries. It was like he tried to convince us to recognize Taiwan as a country, not as a part of China. This time he talked very long (I had naps too). It was a bit boring until he asked us to shout that "Chinese is the name to be pround of" several times.

In the evening, they presented the VDO of the places we were going to visit. I was so excited ‘cos I was very bored. I had to be in class every day since I was there.

Done with the VDO Presentation, people went to Yue Shi (=night market) for shopping but I wasn’t interested in that. So, I decide to go to the supermarket nearby instead. It’s like normal supermarket mall in Thailand. It was big and had everything at acceptable prices. There were lots of movies I wanted to buy too, but I didn’t buy any ‘cos it was only the VCD without sub-title.