Far East day at the Hebrew University… (after)

(About the Far East day announced here)

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Last part of the evening, I was sitting 2nd row from the back with the students studying Japanese, and behind me were some Chinese reporters that came by to cover the weird event in which a bunch of Israelis were singing Karoeoke songs in Chinese and Japanese, dancing to Asian tunes and performing Asian martial arts. With my current level of Chinese, I couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, but from the little that I did managed to get, they were having an amazing time. Can’t imagine how I would feel seeing something about Israeli culture performed by Chinese/Taiwanese students in Beijing/Taipei.

(Small note: Feeling what I do for Taiwan, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad that the Taiwanese consulate weren’t invited, yet I was explained that inviting them in previous years has caused a massive political problem with the Chinese. Sucks. That whole situation is just ironic, isn’t it?)

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I’ve heard different opinions from different folks as to what went on before the main event. I took part in the lectures part, and even though some of them were not exactly what I have hoped for, like that really quick slide-show in the dark about Japan and those very few words about a relocation at Amdocs, all the lectures got me thinking one way or another.
There was that very sad lecture about the situation of the Chinese foreign workers in Israel and the way that the west exploits those poor people, the fuzzy explanations about Chinese medicine through an historical overview of the different dynasties, and the wonderful trip-story from the very funny Elad, who also displayed very impressive tonal-Chinese while hosting the main event. Even the “main lecture”, as termed by the Hillel House folks, about comparing the two ancient Chinese and Jewish cultures gave me a new perspective and raised a few interesting issues.

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Keypoints from the main event :

• Chopsticks competition between China (Mr Zhang!), Japan (the Japanese teacher’s wife), and the “People’s republic of Israel” (Gidi, head of FarEast division). They all had to move tiny marble like sticky stuff from one side of the hall to another, using nothing but chopsticks. The Japanese folks won with their precise method, the Chinese folks took shortcuts and didn’t care that some fell on the floor, while the Israelis were still trying to figure out what those chopsticks were.
• Gidi, after giving away scholarships, was telling us about the 5 million dollars contribution to build a FarEast center at the Hebrew University. Not bad…
• A nice display of Kong-Fu and Tai-Chi. I especially liked the ones performed slowly, by those dressed in traditional martial arts clothing.
• Assaf’s unbelievably hilarious imitation of Lin’s classes.
• The cool videos from the Chinese classes and some very strange Israeli humor video performed in Chinese.
• Second year students of Spoken Chinese singing an “acoustic” piano based version of “TongHua” (Fairy).
• 3 students - David, and two from 2nd year - dancing beautifully with Lin.

Absolutely wonderful.