Today was the last day of classes. Claudia gave her final lecture to us. Today’s lecture was mainly about the Media. Once again, we learned that there is a lot of bribing going on. The government has a lot of control of the television media in China. This means that pretty much everything needs to go through them before it can be aired. They don’t have a lot of controversial government topics on the television at all. They are getting a little more controversial due to the Internet. The Internet can display all of the top corruptions going on in the government. We also learned that printing newspapers in China is a growing industry. This is one of the few in the world. Everywhere else in the world is switching to the Internet when it comes to newspapers. After going over the media, we reviewed every that we talked about throughout the classes.
Immediately after class, we hopped onto a subway and went to the Lama Temple. This is a Buddhist temple in the middle of the city. The buildings inside were similar to the ones we saw in the Forbidden City and Summer Palace but they were a lot smaller. What was really neat about going was that the temple is still in use. We were able to walk around while we watched people pray. It was really neat to see a religion that you don’t see in the U.S. They burned a lot of incense and knelt down on benches and sort of rocked up and down. I really like seeing other cultures and it was really neat to see another cultures’ religion. They also had a few massive Buddha. The coolest one was sixteen feet tall in a standing position. After the Lama Temple, we went back to the Pearl market to do some last minute souvenir shopping. This was my least favorite market of the ones that we went to. The people at this one do not leave you alone. They also grab your arm and don’t let go unless you walk over to their stand. This was one thing that is different than in the U.S. You would not be able to just grab someone to try and sell them something. You could probably get in trouble for that.
Our final scheduled event was the farewell dinner. The dinner was delicious. It was nice knowing that we were going back to America the next day, but at the same time, I wanted to stay longer. It was kind of sad knowing it was the last time we will probably see some of our Chinese group leaders (Vivian, Ruby and Claudia). We also had a good group who were vey fun to hang out with. China was a neat country and Beijing was a neat city. I would not mind going back to China but maybe visit a different city.