Arts and design

The excursion to the Nanjing museum
On the 7th of the March 15, 2009 in the afternoon, Sam Genesis and I visited the Nanjing museum; it is located at the southern foot of the ravishing Purple Mountain, inside Zhongshan Gate, near Qingxi River. The whole area is 33482m2. We chose to go there because that is a comprehensive museum of art and history; from it we can know more exact information of the change of culture, art, technology, history of my country.

The whole museum is very big and commodious, and it is separated by two floors with several parts, like the ancient Chinese jade exhibition, Chinese ancient gold and silver wares hall, ancient Chinese lacquer hall, Chinese brocade and embroidery hall, folk art, ancient Chinese porcelain room, and the ancient Chinese painting hall. Firstly we visited modern art sculpture, at the entrance of gate; I saw some pair of latest artifacts, like the sculpture of the cattle, which were made of pines. Manger told me use the pine as the materials can make it endure in air for a longer time. Furthermore this year is the year of cattle. In Chinese tradition, cattle are the emblem of the prosperity, power, and luck. They think make the sculpture of cattle could be very prevalent in the year of cattle. Through the whole art work, I thought that is an excellent work, through the texture, it looks very smooth, and exudes the solemn temperament of cattle. From the details of it, that is quite vivid, and picturesque。 At that time few of us could resist to temptation to touch it. In the whole modern exhibition, nearly all the statues were about cattle, but they represented the different kind of work, some were made into lamp, some were made into made into decoration, some are used for storing the food. Suffice to say, cattle has become a “hotshot” in people’ mind.

Later we visited the ancient artwork, most of them made of jade, gold, sliver, jewel. But one truly attracted me was a pair of bell set. It was made in warring states period, about two thousand ago, it was made of copper. Inevitably, that is used for making the music. I highly appreciated it not because its rare materials, instead I was impressed by its ways for using. Before I read the guide book, I even can’t imagine copper could use for making the music, each bell has the different size, structure。When people knock them each of them they will emit the specific tone, voice. When you knocked then consecutively in size order, a magic music will impress your heart! I like this pair of bell set best, meanwhile I got the vicarious thrill because I thought how intelligent，great our ancestors were! They used the mediocre material but made an immortal art work! Then we also saw some other preeminent work like: Double-fish-shaped vase in three colors, sliver-threaded jade suit, gold beast, gold cicada on the jade leaf etc.Through this traveling, I was deeply impressed, and felt the whole art work is the crystal of people’ intelligence, creativity. I thought if all of us think more, create more, probably centuries later the world will be ripple with the Edison.

culture awareness

The taste of French food
On the seventh of February at noon, Sam Genesis and I go to a French restaurant to have lunch. After the thorough comparison of the price, location, taste etc. finally we decided to go there, exactly except the gooses’ lung other kinds of food should prone to our flavor. The restaurant is christened “French dishes” it is located on the 51TH HAN KOU ROAD.
For my first sight of it, the commodious environment, luxurious service, fragrant atmosphere which I have imagined vanished right away. Exactly it is quite small, but the environment, service is decent. The small restaurant has two parts for entertaining the customers, one could be seen directly from the outside, and the other is hid beside the counter. Surprisingly, more foreigners were willing to have meal at “French dishes”, self-evidently my intuition told me the food should be quite delectable and tasted memorably. After glanced e menu, I ordered a bowel of leek-potato soup, a share of fresh bolognaise noodles, and the roasted apple with cinnamon. I ordered them because I found these foods are rather distinctive, and bristle with the mystery, in one way, I like it because I have not heard it before. For the Sam and Genesis they preferred like the spicy and hot kind, before the eating, we looked around the environment carefully and curiously. We found the factors for restaurant to attract the consumers are not merely how big it is. More importantly, people have their own preference for it taste, the attraction of the environment, and whether it has a balmy environment for eating. In this restaurant, manager seems more astute, for instance he disposes the magazines, the latest newspaper, novel, and create a melodious music for people who are waiting for food, in this way, it is easily for people to kill the time, and mentally they have more inclination to have meal at the same restaurant again. During the waiting, I encountered a foreign couple, they looked vey convivial, by etiquette I greeted to them, they beamed at me and we began to chat with one another. Through the talking I knew the diet difference between China and their country Britain. For example in their country people used to use fork and small knife for eating. During meal if you make a cross by fork and knife on the plate, it means you have finished it, and during the meal people eat quietly, they don’t like make the noise by gobbling the food, or using the tools.
About 15 minutes later, we began to eat food! Inevitably the cuisine of the leek- potato soup is totally different than Chinese. For it ingredients, it added more cheese, butter, mashed potato and less salt, oil. The soup let me recall the original taste of the potato, leek. Although the taste is not totally cater to my flavor, but it is acceptable and smelled fragrantly. Later I ate the fresh bolognaise noodles; this food is originated from the Italy. The whole ingredients were made up of pepper sauce, meat seasoning, sugar, little salt, leeks, noodles etc. before the eating just from the optic and smelling sense, it was attractive enough to make you drool over it. The noodles were more al dente which let people to relish the eating more relaxedly and have the better emotion. The final dessert was the roasted apple with cinnamon. That was my first time to know except eating for fruit, apple also can make a meal. After the cutting it rivulet of juice slowly flow down. That looked so cute; I even didn’t want to eat it! However in general I found this food should have some upswing, because it had excessive oil, which is totally detrimental for our health. While people enjoy the food, it aims to make our physical body worse…
In general I think eating the meal at this restaurant is a good choice, relatively speaking the food is cheaper, for most of the food. They are still very healthy and palatable.