Today we turned in our first stories for the class website, so most of my day was spent working on that. Finally turned it in (turns out this writing thing is kind of time consuming) and I’m pretty happy with it. I’m learning more about “structure” and “direct quotes” and “writing things that people might actually consider reading” and stuff like that. Excellent. The stories are still being edited, so they aren’t actually posted yet, but I’ll let you know when they are.
We also got to take a tour of the Supreme People’s Court, the highest court in China. We met with the Chief Justice (top dog) and some high-ranking judges under him. They gave us an overview of how the court system functions (it’s a little different from ours because there is no jury system and the court does not do as much interpretation of laws). It was really cool to get access to something like that, but by far my favorite part of the meeting was the décor. We sat in a big open room with two circles of chairs. The Chief Justice sat at the front of the room, and all the other chairs spiraled out from his seat to indicate his rank. The chairs were these fat, overpadded recliner-type things, and were covered in white doilies. Seriously, like macramé was involved here. It was bizarre. As if someone’s grandma had decorated the highest court in the country. The meeting was interesting, but it was difficult to understand some of the other judges who spoke, and we were definitely getting a lot of “the-government-does–everything-right-and-we-are-all-very-happy-thank-you-for-coming-to-visit” answers that we hear quite often from officials and even from everyday people. Little constant reminders about where we are I guess. It was easy to tolerate at the court though…I just leaned back in my La-Z-Boy and crocheted a placemat.
We also got to take a tour of the Supreme People’s Court, the highest court in China. We met with the Chief Justice (top dog) and some high-ranking judges under him. They gave us an overview of how the court system functions (it’s a little different from ours because there is no jury system and the court does not do as much interpretation of laws). It was really cool to get access to something like that, but by far my favorite part of the meeting was the décor. We sat in a big open room with two circles of chairs. The Chief Justice sat at the front of the room, and all the other chairs spiraled out from his seat to indicate his rank. The chairs were these fat, overpadded recliner-type things, and were covered in white doilies. Seriously, like macramé was involved here. It was bizarre. As if someone’s grandma had decorated the highest court in the country. The meeting was interesting, but it was difficult to understand some of the other judges who spoke, and we were definitely getting a lot of “the-government-does–everything-right-and-we-are-all-very-happy-thank-you-for-coming-to-visit” answers that we hear quite often from officials and even from everyday people. Little constant reminders about where we are I guess. It was easy to tolerate at the court though…I just leaned back in my La-Z-Boy and crocheted a placemat.
No comments:
Post a Comment