letter 2

About life

Let me talk about other things. Singapore’s MoE(Ministry of Education) arranged host families for us scholars, three or four students in one family on average. They are all Christians, and most of them are Singaporean Chinese. By the way, most Singaporeans have their religious beliefs. There mainly exist three religions, that is Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. For this reason, there are many public holidays about the religions such as Easter and Tuyao. Last weekend, my fellows and I were invited to a welcoming party. I got to know prayer. One sentence from the Holy Bile impressed me. It is “you should protect your heart”. No matter where I am and where I will go, I think as long as my heart is complete, my world is also complete. During that time, I came across two postgraduate students. One came from Zhejiang University and another came from University of Science and Technology. They are very excellent students. They don't need to pay any tuition here and the government will offers financial aid to them. I can imagine how great efforts the Singaporean government has put into the talent attracting.

About confusion

One senior advised us to ask ourselves once in a while that “am I really abroad?” Many fellows thought this question ridiculous at the beginning. Thinking over about this ridiculous question, there are actually many things to be discovered. I thought of a few points about why this question came out? First, if a man in a foreign country always spends his time with a group of students who speak his own language, watch videos from his own country, eating food from home, but not communicating with the locals, there is no difference from his stay in his own country. Of course, this is where he can do something. Second, for the reason of the particular background of Singapore, we are in another country but still in the huge Chinese world. The third reason, which I think is most important, is that China is in the world now. Main newspapers here like 联合早报 and the STRAIT TIMES often put up news about China as the headlines. The trade between Singapore and China is frequent and Singapore relies on external trade. China is flourishing the economic growth of Singapore. China learns a lot from Singapore also. To sum up, it is reasonable that some of us may have no feeling of being abroad. We just come to a place that is more international and modern. Here, I think I should make full use of this opportunity to broaden my horizons and enrich my life.

That is all for this time. I hope you can send me several pictures of snow? Is that OK?

Love from: JIN LIN