Dragon Boat Festival and World Cup

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Hello everybody, happy fathers day to all dads out there! Here is a weekly update:

DRAGON BOAT FESTIVAL:
Wednesday was the Dragon Boat Festival, which is a very important holiday here. It's based around an ancient Chinese love story that ended with one of the lovers drowning. To celebrate the holiday, the local people build boats shaped like dragons and race them at XiXi (pronounced Shee-shee) wetlands, which is only 15 minutes from our college.

Some of our Chinese friends took us to see the races at the wetlands. It was interesting, but it was 90+ degrees outside and as humid as anywhere on Earth I have ever been. Like many tourist attractions in China, there were 100 times too many people crammed in as well, making it difficult to get photos. Regardless of all that, seeing the races was certainly entertaining. The boats go in every direction with no rhyme or reason, and I can't imagine they actually declare a winner because I couldn't find any sort of route, starting line, or finishing line. But the people rowing the boats are very serious about it. In each boat there is a drummer with a huge drum, and the rowers row on his beat. They row so fast that the boats take on huge amounts of water, and we saw quite a few boats sink completely. Its loud, chaotic, and very entertaining to watch (if you can see through the 10 million people in front of you of course).

WORLD CUP:
As I'm sure many of you know, the World Cup is a HUGE deal every place in the world except the US. So naturally we went out to a bar on Friday night to watch the US play Slovenia. We extremely loud, extremely patriotic, and extremely enthusiastic. There were many Chinese natives in the bar watching the game as well, and they found us highly entertaining; I don't think they had ever seen such enthusiasm before. The entire 3-story bar erupted into total chaos and mayhem after both USA goals, and everybody had a really good time even though the game ended in a tie.

EXPO:
As I mentioned last blog, we traveled to Shanghai for the World Expo this weekend. I'm going to write another blog specifically about the expo, so look for it tomorrow or the day after.

David S.

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Comments

[Heather]

I really loved your photos and post about the Dragon Boat Festival. Looks like a really cool event to attend. I'm looking forward to reading about the World Expo. I've heard mixed things about it all. My blog is looking for travel photos, reviews, etc, to share. If you have the time, check it out at dirty-hippies.blogspot.com, or email us at [e-mail]. Continued fun in China! Heather

[anonymous]

"It's based around an ancient Chinese love story that ended with one of the lovers drowning. " wrong! It's because Qu Yuan, a very famous poet.

[dcsimps2]

To anonymous:
Not sure who you are, but you are indeed correct. Poor fact checking on my part