Dragon Boat Festival

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So I've returned from Kunming to attend the famous Dragon Boat Festival! Our Chinese partners took it upon themselves to guide us around Xixi wetlands and show us the Dragon Boat Festival. The original plan was to have a picnic and then go to the Xixi wetlands to watch the race, but after finding out that the race started at 12 and not 1, those plans changed. We grabbed some street meat and jumped in a cab and raced off. We were all lightly clothed because Hangzhou has been hit full by blast by summer. We bought some tickets and had to walk for a long time before we found an area that wasn't too crowded, but it was still fairly difficult to see. Right as we were passing over a bridge, one of the boats took in too much water and sank. Despite my attempts, I was unable to get a picture of a sunken boat. Anyway, here's the gist of the race:

There were a ton of boats in the water, all man powered. The bridge we were passing over was considered both the start and finish line. It wasn't really a race between boats on the water at the same time, but it was a race to see who could get finish a lap the fastest. We happened to be stationed right after the bridge, so all of the excitement and energy was lost. John and I wanted to see the real action and so we left the group to go find a better vantage point, which was difficult considering how crowded it was. After about an hour of craziness we went off to have a boat tour. The tour was nice and tranquil, but we were still uncomfortably hot. A couple of people had to go early, and the rest of us were getting hungry, so we headed to West Lake for some food.

The Chinese students took us to a restaurant with authentic food from Hangzhou. We had spicy tofu, duck, fish, potatoes and onions, some kind of sweet bread thing, sushi consisting of pear,salmon, and horseradish, the festival food with rice inside of banana leaves, all kinds of good things. A good day, a good dinner, a good video, and a decent travelblog. Enjoy the pictures and first ever video on my travelblog, starring the American students and some of the Chinese students in our group.

-No Knee Mcgee

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Photos

Lady with a Gun
Carrying around a fake gun is totally OK in China due to the lack of people actually owning guns. This wouldn't fly in the US.

Engrish 1
This place was another goldmine.

Passageway for Wen'Er Road
I'm going to leave this one open to interpretation.

Wetland Stream
Nice and peaceful... for now.

Dragon Boats!
Tan and I were tempted to steal one and compete in the Dragon Boat Race with it.

Stupid Looking Dragon Head
Looks like that girl is about to get eaten.

The race!
And finally, it begins. This is a good picture of the guy at the end of the boat. Each boat had a fat guy at the back who would squat to push the boat up and out of the water to minimize the amount of water leaking into the boat.

So disorganized
The place where we first watched the race was right after the lap ended, so the racers were relaxing and not going super fast.

The Need for Speed
Tokyo Drift

Crowded
We had to walk all the way to where we couldn't even see the racing part of the race, and even then we couldn't get a very good view.

Sunk
The guys in red were soaked because their boat had taken on too much water and sank. I didn't get any pictures of the underwater boat, but one of the main attractions of the race is to watch people go really fast, take on lots of water, and sink. One person on each boat is designated to remove water.

Dragon Head
Derrrrrrrrrr

Festival Food
So this is the favorite food for the festival, but I don't remember what its called. Its sticky rice wrapped in a banana leaf, with something sweet in the middle. The story is that somebody died in the lake and the Chinese didn't want the fish to eat his body, so they threw these in as a distraction.

Boat Tour
The dragon boat festival was followed by a boat tour around the wetlands.

Boat Tour Guide
Should've asked to take a picture with her.

From the boat
This is the picture that's supposed to make you feel like you were there.

Another boat
We always wave to other boats to try to elicit some response, but usually fail. Chinese people are shy.

There is water under there
A serious concentration of lilies or something.

Comments

[Swannie]

Oh noes
The video doesn't work for me. It says "video not found or access denied" In another news, I enjoyed your pictures!

[Swannie]

Hahahaha I guess that's a creative way of throwing around your weight.

[Swannie]

It's called "nongzi!" My Chinese teacher gave us some since they don't have any formal celebrations of the Dragon Boat Festival here.

[Swannie]

Woooow, that's so cool!!