Yesterday morning we went out to add the finishing touches which only took about half an hour. We then went back to the studio to discuss the plan of action for our next design – we have a meeting with Mr Du about this later.
Whilst the judging was taking place we went into the city again. We went back to Central street as Imy hadn’t seen it with us last time. As a celebratory treat for finishing we went to KFC for lunch! Imy and I were quite impressed we’d got over half way through without going there! It was much the same as back home except they serve rice too, however we all decided we’d give that a miss for a change! Afterwards we walked down to the Flood Monument and to see the frozen river again. It was sheet ice this time and a whole lot more slippery than the last time we visited.
At 4pm the closing ceremony started. Our seats were right at the front behind the judging committee so we had a good view! Lots of it was translated into English but the speeches weren’t, so we weren’t quite sure what was going on the whole time. It kicked of with some music played on traditional Chinese string instruments which was quite impressive. This was followed by some less impressive Russian hip hop dancing that involved a lot of hair shaking. Daizhong had a quick nap during this and we caught one of the judging panel on his phone so it looked like the music was more popular all round!
When we were told to go and stand at the back because we’d won an award, we weren’t really sure what was being said on stage and we’d heard them say they were giving out third place prizes so we were delighted when this changed to second just before getting to us! Mr Du’s team received a first place award and another for being one of the top three favourites between the competitors. They received 12 votes for this (and the other winning ones 9 and 11), we got 5 so didn’t do too badly!
We finished the day by going for dinner at the hotel on campus with Daizhong, Anderson (another tutor that has helped us), Professor Su (the Head of Industrial Design here), two of Mr Du’s students that helped with our sculpture and our two volunteers, Warren and Fisher. It was a lovely meal and a nice way to end a successful day and our time at the University. There were even pancakes for pudding which, considering the Chinese don’t really do puddings, was a pretty good end to the meal!
