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Dear Zhou Ying and Lu Xiaoyi,

Sure! I believe that we can have a lot to talk about in the future, not just writing. And likewise, we also expect the next opportunity like this time to have more interaction with you. May you best wish!

Yours,
He Xinyu, Dong Shijia

Dear Ahaan Bagwe
We are revising our paper, and if we have the opportunity, we would like to hear your valuable opinions again. Due to time constraints, you can also add my WeChat account if you don’t mind: lxy18861909522. Of course, if you don’t have WeChat, you can send me an email. My email address is: 22977867621@qq.com. I am looking forward to your message. Have a nice day!
best,
Xiaoyi Lu, Ying Zhou.

Revised essay
The ideal fence
There are countless people who have ideals, but few of them succeeded. When faced the fence of the reality, who can break through it and who will be trapped in? Persevering in changing the world or being changed by the world? Different people have different answers. Today's film review is about two woman’s different attitudes toward the ideal fence.
About the Chinese movie And the Spring Comes, it was directed in 2008 by Changwei Gu, a famous Chinese director. Jiang Wenli, Li Guangjie, Jiao Gang and other starring actors performed a story about artists in a small town in northern China in the late 1980s and early 1990s. When it comes to Mona Lisa Smile, it was released in the United States in 2003. The time line of the story was in 1953. Katherine, a teacher who was graduated from the open-minded Berkeley University went to Wellesley Woman's School to teach art history. The film was talked about the story that she boldly challenged to the outdated teaching system with her ideals and enthusiasm.
Under the huge impact of the economic wave in 1980s, "Beijing" seemed like a seductive magic city to youth people at that time, it represented dreams and happier lives, where was Wang cailing’s dream take root in. Wang was a critic teacher of music in a normal university and she was an opera addict though she was ugly. Wang had one ultimate ideal: hold a Beijing household registration and then sing in Paris Opera. In that era of spiritual and cultural infertility, her opera was hard to be appreciated by others, while Zhou Yu was appealed to it, he begged Wang to be his teacher to teach him operas. As time went by, Wang was enthusiastic about Zhou Yu's friend, who was an amateur painter, Huang Sibao. She gave Huang all her sincerity and love in the end but in exchange for his insult in public. She committed suicide, but failed. Then she met Hu Jinquan, a ballet dancer who wanted to marry her to avoid the secular world, and she refused. Finally, Hu ended his connection with the world in a self-destructive manner to retain his insistence on ballet.
Hu Jinquan is a mirror that makes Wang know that her future is in vain. Later, after being cheated by Gao beibei. In despair, Wang chose to adopt a child to live an ordinary life in the small town. Her opera dream was died and she had to shake hands with reality to make peace.
In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, Wellesley Woman's University, ostensibly imparting knowledge to students, was actually cultivating a virtuous marriage partner for men. Katherine dreamed of making a difference here. But at the beginning, her teaching work was not easy. She found that the female students here were proud of being "married". Everyone's ultimate ideal was to get married and had children to form a family. Today, American woman's freedom of thought and economic independence give people the illusion that this has been the case in developed capitalist countries as always. Although the status of women in the United States gradually gained attention in the 1950s, feudal ideology in the upper classes was still very serious, and it took 60 years to develop into what it is today. As we know, 1960s was the time when the second wave of woman's liberation in the United States broke out and 1953 when feminist thought was still in its infancy. The content of the movie was to get rid of the concept that women were affiliated with men and pursued true equality.
At the end of the Chinese movie shows that "This scene is dedicated to Wang Cailing." Actually, each of us is Wang Cailing, and there is no one escape for either of us. This is your lot, you must bear it. In that small town, Wang and Hu’s ideals are their burdens like sixth fingers. They are freaks like fish bones caught in people’s throats in the city. In fact, rather than appreciating art, Wang is addicted to the successful fantasy dream and cannot find a breakthrough. She was trapped in the fence and doesn’t know that. She had personal vanity about her talents and deceives herself. Art is only a tool for her to touch success. There is no doubt that Wang Cailing was been trapped in the fence of reality. Compared with Wang cailing, Katherine broke through the “fence”, not only she insisted on her ideal, but also she changed her students.
About the expressions of two movies. And the Spring comes used two scenes of cycling. The first scene is a crowd of people walking across the road by bicycle and the radio was broadcasting, this seems to suggest that people are constantly being squeezed into the gaps of the times. The second act is that when Wang Cailing was deceived, she struggled to retrograde in the wind, which showed that Wang was in a difficult situation. In addition, the mirror has been used many times in the film. Every time Wang sang, we can see she in the mirror. Wang Cailing is an admired artist in the mirror, but outside the mirror she is a scandal in the city. This shows that Wang’s ideal is illusory and will not be realized. Furthermore, the close-ups in the film are also very exciting. Whether it is a close-up of the pavilion at the beginning of the movie, a wheel-like paper tape played by Huang standing in the courtyard, or a close-up of mosquito coils are about to fall to the ground when Wang commits suicide, all of this indicated the character's psychology. Last but not least, the director's use of music in the film is also very wonderful. "Mu Chun", Wang has sung many times In the film, shows Wang is eager to achieve her ideals. "But in this sad and painful moment. Why, oh, why, God. Why are you so cruel with me?" also hints Wang’s destiny.
When it comes to Mona Lisa Smile, the symbolic is meaningful. Firstly, it is about the title of the film. The smile of Mona Lisa is symbolic as Mona Lisa is undoubtedly the most famous beauty in art. Use this name for the title because the protagonist was a beauty and she taught art history. Secondly, Mona Lisa's smile is a mysterious smile that has caused countless people to think and explore for many years. The heroine's attitude to life is very different from the traditional atmosphere in Wellesley, which also means that in that environment no one can understand her way. Thirdly, Mona Lisa's sacred status in art is also showing the heroine's status in the film. From a modern perspective, the educational ideas of other students, teachers, and the school in the film are old-fashioned and outdated; and the heroine's insistence on self and the advocacy of freedom represent the way forward for the new generation of women.
After watching these two movies, we thought a lot. For one hand, there are no fixed standards and formulas for happiness. Everyone is Mona Lisa. For Katherine, she left the Wellesley Woman's University which was incompatible with her and also her mind moved the students and illuminated the way for their future. This is the happiness pursued by Katherine. We don't just live for the ideal, nor just live numbly. Only by grasping the meaning of happiness can we own happiness. After all, we need both poetry and distance. For Wang Cailing, she lost the success that opera might bring to her, but gained ordinary earthly happiness. When she was awakened by firecrackers. When she read the story to her daughter and took her to Tiananmen Square to plant the seeds of dreams, these happiness Isn't it true? Instead of pursuing the vanity and material conditions brought to her by art, earthly happiness may be easier and more accessible. Every spring comes as planned, and her dreams are born again.
From another hand, we should treat art with a heart of innocence to art. We should have our own thinking about art, not just obey the views of scholars. After all, a thousand people have a thousand Hamlet. What Wang Cailing loved was not art itself, but the success and fame. She overestimated her strength, deceived herself to satisfy her vanity, and eventually her ideals burst. In contrast, Katherine clearly knew that art was connected to her own soul. Even if the students in the university did well job in the exam, they just memorized the artwork according to the teaching materials. In the end, they really understood how to appreciate the artwork under the infection of the teacher Katherine. Art brings not only the pleasure of sight and hearing, but also the joy of the soul.
Furthermore, regarding marriage, age should not be a tool to force women to marry. From the perspective of mainstream thinking in today's China, the "leftover girl" has become a social problem, and parents even ridiculously believe that they would rather have a divorced daughter than a suitable unmarried daughter. If a woman is not married at the age of 30, no matter how good her job or income is, she will be labeled as a "loser." In the movie Mona Lisa Smile, the newly graduated female master is a "life winner" whether or not she has a job if she has a son and her husband is a handsome and wealthy man. It seems that "married" means that you have succeeded at least one step, while being unmarried at the right age is the one voted down. Just as Katherine says, women can own family and career both. Women should not sacrifice themselves to become housewives but be clear about their pursuit of life. Marriage is not a grave, but two people who love each other to help to achieve their pursuit of life.

We hope all we can become our own Mona Lisa and find our own happiness in the ordinary life like Wang Cailing.

Reflection
At the beginning of this Border-Crossing Activity we acted a little later than other groups, because the two articles of foreign students had not been uploaded. Later, we had a timely interaction and gave feedback to foreign students and Chinese students. In terms of time arrangement, we refresh every half day or so to see if there is any new reply. However, as only one foreign student was interacting with us in our group, our enthusiasm for interaction was dampened. Fortunately, the feedback from Chinese students was timely and we learned a lot. In addition, in terms of our film review writing, foreign students also put forward some suggestions, suggesting that the cohesion of our articles need to be revised, which I think is one of the shortcomings of our articles. Although our article is very long, it doesn't feel connected, which is what we need to learn. And there are also some symbolic meanings that need to be noted in our article. I think there are still a lot of shortcomings in our article, although foreign students' evaluation of us is relatively good.
The Border-Crossing Activity undoubtedly provided an unforgettable exchange experience for our Chinese students and American students. By exchanging film reviews of the two Chinese and American films, we learned from each other different understandings of issues such as feminism, art, and how to break through the ideal fence. As undergraduates majoring in English, it is not enough for us to learn only textbook. Through this interaction, we have truly learned the difference between the thinking patterns of American students and Chinese students. Learning English is not just learning about "listening", "speaking", "reading" and "writing", but learning to use Western thinking patterns to think and compare the differences between East and West. Different thinking patterns have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, we noticed the difference between us during the communication with Ahaan Bagwe and after reading Benjamin ’s article, and we got a strong resonance. This interaction made students be the mainstay and master the initiative of learning, which is significantly different from the traditional teaching mode.
For us, this activity is conducive to enhancing intercultural communication ability, humanistic literacy and thinking ability, it helped us to find a suitable learning method for us. We also noted that American students make the most comments on the content of the article, and on topics other than writing, they tend to discuss legal and gender issues. At the same time, Ahaan Bagwe also gave us a lot of useful suggestions for the revision of the content of the article, so we can further modify and improve the content of the essay. The way of evaluating each other's movie review helps us to realize our misunderstanding of the film and to promote the communication of culture, ideas and English usage in different cultural backgrounds, then improving the writing level.
In addition, this interaction has also enhanced our register, genre awareness, and reader awareness. We collide in the real context, verify the language knowledge we have learned, and correct the wording. "Border-Crossing Activity" not only improves our English writing level, but also cultivates our undergraduates' globalization awareness, cross-cultural communication ability and critical thinking ability. It also improves our English language sense and gains understanding of language diversity, and improves the cross-cultural communication skills of students on both sides, effectively enhancing reader awareness, language awareness and cooperative learning awareness.