Today would be another 'important' day for the delegates of CSP9. We would be officially welcomed by the third-highest ranking official in China in the People's Hall. Important. Thankfully the lining up procedure would not be as complex as the one we were asked to do for the above photo.
Typically you can't enter the People's Hall, so I guess we were pretty privileged to have been able to. This is what it looks like from the outside.
We entered from the back, which looks pretty similar to the front. I pulled off a hero pose in front of the People's Hall cause I love the pimpsuit so much.
The yellow thing in my hand is the official invitation by the Communist Party of China to attend the event. Coolios. We were ushered in after a lot of group photos. Of importance to note is that we weren't allowed to carry much more than a camera or a wristwatch into the People's Hall. Not even wallets. Didn't really understand the logic behind that one, so someone enlighten me?
Anyway, the People's Hall is pretty damn nice. Plush carpets. Huge paintings. Ornate chandeliers. Marble staircases. Seated toilets.
Red carpet along the stairs was a nice touch.
So the deal today was that we would take a group photo with the third-highest ranking official in China (I don't actually know his name), and then hear him speak. Sounds easy enough. Except that Paul, the head co-ordinator, had told everyone that the whole process would take an hour. And that we would have to stand for the entire hour. Awesome. This is where we would stand.
After all 250 or so of us (including mentors/co-ordinators) got on the stand, the VIPs start filing in and we start clapping as we would. Camera crews film the entire thing. We first do the photo. Now when it comes to taking a photo of 250 people, typically you would just take the photo really far away from the stands so you could get everyone. The People's Hall didn't have that much space. So what the photographer did instead, was to use a swivelling camera which would take multiple photos as it swivelled around to photo the entire lot of us. Funky. Important to note when being filmed by this particular method: don't move your head. If you follow the swivel camera, you will screw up the photo. No joke. You can probably figure out why. So I stared straight ahead. But there's another thing I didn't think about which I think Monica or Kristina did. Blinking. I didn't realise that you really shouldn't blink for the entire thing, cause there's a remote possibility that when you blink the shot could be taken. Cause you can't tell with the swivelling camera when the shot is taken. There's no flash. But luckily I didn't and the shot turned out ok (we all got copies of the photo towards the end of the trip).
So the photo was taken, and the third-highest ranking official in China began speaking to us. And let me tell you, standing up for an hour straight is nuts. It's hard to describe, but it's just the feeling of not being able to move freely and the fact that you're on your feet and not your ass that sucks. Before we got to the People's Hall, Karen suggested to all of us on the bus that, in her experience, shifting your weight and moving your feet slightly help through long standing sessions. Apparently if you don't, blood circulation in your body can get pretty bad which leads to fainting. So while I was up there, I kept that in mind. Kept shifting my weight from foot to foot. Kept moving my feet around as much as I could. The speaker just kept going on...and on...and on...Until someone fell that is. Like out of nowhere, on the right we see someone collapse. She tumbles down from the stands and lands on the people below her. The speaker stops. The girl is escorted out, and the delegates get back on the stands. The speaker continues his speech, but speaks much faster now. See camera crews filming me. Try to look interested, and stoic. Live up to the name. We are outstanding. He finishes. Applause. Thank god it's over. We hop off the stands and proceed to the dining hall where we will have lunch. Turns out the girl who collapsed was our very own Jingjing! She hadn't fainted, like most people thought, she'd just fallen asleep while standing. Amazing. Thanks to that stunt she pulled off the group award for the most 'sleepiest' person in the group, beating out Sirui by just one vote.
Lunch in the People's Hall was pretty cool. Each table was served by a waiter. Drink of the day was definitely coconut milk, thanks to me. Like the rest of the Hall, the dining hall was pretty nice. Beautiful chandeliers.
Beautiful banner for us.
Beautiful...panda?
Seriously, that looked pretty damn out of place in a venue like the People's Hall. Looks so touristy. During the lunch there were speeches, musical performances (GO CLARA!), choral performances (JACQIE! JASMINE!), and speeches (KENNY!). The choral performance really put us onto one of the songs of the Beijing Games, 北京欢迎你 (Beijing Welcomes You). We also got to sing the CSP song in the People's Hall. I haven't really talked about this before, cause it was pretty embarassing for us at first, but CSP has a song. It's split into three parts, and is sung in the following order: Cantonese, English, Mandarin. Unfortunately, due to Xanga's limitations I can't post it here, but if you're interested, head on over to www.chinasynergy.org.hk to find the lyrics. It's under 'Downloads'. The CSP song is pretty corny, but it really does symbolise what CSP is all about, and even though we groaned whenever we had to sing it, I think we miss it more than we'd admit. That's me anyway. Funny observation: the Cantonese and Mandarin sections of the song are relatively quietly sung when compared to the English part. Wonder why?
After the lunch, we headed back to the buses. But since we were so close to our next destination, our group leaders told us that we should bring a change of clothes instead of going back to the hotel to change. The buses were to be our change rooms. And as the saying goes, ladies first. When it was our go, the ladies actually thought we took longer than them to change. Like, how's that even possible?
So anyway, our next destination was the Forbidden City. Honestly, not that interesting. It's just really big and kinda looks the same everywhere.
The cobblestones that made up the pavement wasn't exactly even - I can't believe I saw a woman in high heels traversing them. Kristina had forgotten a change of shoes that day, but she bought a pair of comfortable slippers outside the Forbidden City before entering. Don't know why that woman didn't do the same. Nuts.
We were looking for one thing in particular though in the Forbidden City. Starbucks. Apparently even the history of the Forbidden City couldn't keep out of the reach of large, American multinational companies. Or could it? We'd searched high and low for it but it was nowhere to be found. We got Li Lei to show us where it was. But it wasn't there anymore. He said it was there last year, when he did CSP, but apparently it's gone now. No more Starbucks. It used to be down there.
Our final stop for today was the so called, 'Weapons Museum'. There I introduced the concept of 'pewpews' and 'ne-yongs' to my twin. Guess what they are. Here's what the museum looked like.
And here's what we saw in the first gallery, after seeing a huge white sculpture of Mao Zedong in the foyer.
Gotta love that Commie pride.
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