We have been stayed in St. John’s Queens Campus a week now.
This is a very beautiful campus with a strong international atmosphere. I have
noticed that staffs work in St. John’s and students study in St. John’s are
very diversity who are from all over the world. Of course I saw quite a lot
Chinese students, but in this blog I am going to talk about the Chinese
Building in the Queens Campus.
It is a typical ancient style Chinese building named “Sun
Yat Sen Memorial Hall”. Some of you keep asking me who this person was and how
do I pronounce the name. I struggled, because “Sun Yat Sen” are not Mandarin, I
couldn’t pronounce it properly nor tell my classmates who he/she is. Until last
Friday, I checked online, I have the answer now! “Sun Yat Sen” was “a Chinese
revolutionary and first president and founding father of the Republic of China”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Yat-sen).
The spell of “Sun Yat Sen” is in Cantonese which is the one of the Chinese
languages I am not familiar with. The
Mandarin (which is the official language in China) spell of
his name will be “Sun Zhong Shan”. However, there is one thing in common that
is we put surname in front of first names. So “Sun” is his surname and “Yat
Sen” or “Zhong Shan” are his first names. The same as my name, people in China
call me “REN Xing”, not really “Xing REN” :P. Back to the “Sun Yat Sen Menorial
Hall”, I felt so great to see a traditional Chinese building in St. John’s
University Campus where I attend the Pre-Academic Program with all other
Fulbrighters! One thing I noticed that the two stone lions both have the same
balls under their paws (Picture a).
Picture a
However, sometimes, people try to distinguish two lions by
giving them a ball and a cub to differentiate the lion and the lioness (Picture
b).
Picture b (source from: http://t3.baidu.com/it/u=2508262137,218212112&fm=0&gp=0.jpg)
Do you see the differences? There are more to see in China! All
of you are more than welcome to China, I will be a good guide ^_^!
Very interesting! Thanks for the info. I like the ball and cup thingy, I did not notice so to be honest. So we have two lions over here!!
ReplyDeleteI personally believe it is one of the nicest buildings on campus! Thanks Xing Xing! :)
Yes, thanks. Your post shows how important it is to have a guide when looking at art or architecture if we really want to appreciate it fully. Although the building certainly stands out on the campus, I like it, too. It's fun to have something so bright among all the duller brick buildings.
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