Day 23

Today we have our IS lesson and it is the last lesson of the module. The lesson was on the Chinese philosophy. The lesson was supposed to be separate into two parts, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Our lesson started at 9am. This is what I learnt. The history of Chinese philosophy date back several of thousand years. One of the main philosophies is Confucianism. It represents the collected teachings of the Chinese sage Confucius, who lived from 551 to 479 BCE. The philosophy concerns the fields of ethics and politics, emphasizing personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice, traditionalism, and sincerity. It continues to have a major influence in Chinese culture. Some of the major Confucian concepts include being humanity loyalty, filial piety, ritual. Taoism is originally a philosophy which later also developed into a religion based on the texts the Tao Te Jing. Most of Taoism's focus is on what is perceived to be the undeniable fact that human attempts to make the world better actually make the world worse. Therefore it is better to strive for harmony. We also learnt Mohism which is founded by Mozi, promotes universal love with the aim of mutual benefit. Everyone must love each other equally and impartially to avoid conflict and war. Mozi was strongly against Confucian ritual, instead emphasizing pragmatic survival through farming, fortification, and statecraft. Tradition is inconsistent, and human beings need an extra-traditional guide to identify which traditions are acceptable. However, as most of us wanted the lesson to end early, instead of continuing the lesson in the afternoon, the whole lesson ended at 12pm.

My Reflection

I really do thinks that we are taking everything for granted in Singapore. We are always assuming that "Cars will not hit pedestrians and pedestrians always come first than traffic rules". But here in Wuhan, it is of a totally different case. Not only will the car hit pedestrians, the car will also drive off despite having red traffic light, indicating STOP. I had witnessed that the pedestrians had to literally run for their lives even though the traffic light is showing green man walking as there were cars which would just run you over without stopping at all. Hence, my conclusion is that the traffic condition in Wuhan is really bad. However, I think the people here and the drivers must have got used to this. Living in Singapore is indeed fortunate and I would never ever know that such things actually will happen in another country as I had always thought that this was just the basic common sense.