Ni Hao. On the 13th of August my classmates and I went on an excursion to the Chinese Museum in Chinatown in the city.
When we arrived we had a quick stop to a shopping centre nearby that had a lot of tiny looking restaurants. Most of us had lunch there. Then we entered the museum and had a guided tour. During our journey we made stops to observe the ancient items used in Australia by the Chinese when they arrived during the gold rush days. We also came across the time of foot binding. Chinese foot binding seemed a very cruel thing with the injuring of young girls feet that were folded over and remained bent forever. Foot binding was also known as ‘lotus feet’ and was the way of preventing further growth of the girls’ feet. It was considered a sign of beauty to have small feet. In the tenth century food binding was widely practiced.
Throughout the tour we discovered: early Australian History, information about the gold rush, Chinese Festivals, immigration, Chinese performing arts, language, well known immigrants and we walked along the huge dragon that is used for Chinese New Year and Moomba.
We highly recommend you visit this museum if you haven’t yet. Thanks to Ms Wooles, Mr Ding, Mr Hewitt and Maxine for organising this excursion and for coming along with us.
Julia Malu and Alisha Aktar 7E
