Boat Ride

Thursday in China was Dragonboat Festival. Below is an excerpt of the basics of this holiday (warning: Educational Content). The Dragon Boat Festival is a lunar holiday, occurring on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month. The Chinese Dragon Boat Festival is a significant holiday celebrated in China, and the one with the longest history. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by boat races in the shape of dragons. The boat races during the Dragon Boat Festival are traditional customs to attempts to rescue the patriotic poet Chu Yuan. Chu Yuan drowned on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month in 277 B.C. Chinese citizens now throw bamboo leaves filled with cooked rice into the water. Therefore the fish could eat the rice rather than the hero poet. This later on turned into the custom of eating tzungtzu and rice dumplings. The celebration's is a time for protection from evil and disease for the rest of the year. It is done so by different practices such as hanging healthy herbs on the front door, drinking nutritious concoctions, and displaying portraits of evil's nemesis, Chung Kuei. Just so you know, this isn’t my picture below, I cut and pasted it from the Web and I don’t want to take credit for someone else’s picture.

Back to the blog, and speaking of the blog at this moment my access to the blog is “limited”. For some reason that will probably never be explained, the blog is being blocked and will remain blocked until someone decides to allow access again (it’s not just me, it’s all of the blog sites so it’s not personal, I’m sure if they read my blog they would wonder how a nutcase made it through all the checks to get into the country). If everything else I see and experience here doesn’t let me know I’m in another country; this sure does. YouTube has been blocked for about 3 months and now the blog sites. There’s no use complaining about it but let this be a cautionary tale. When you exchange choices for security, you aren’t always going to be given selections about what you read, hear, say and/or do. Remember that as banks and the auto industry become “subsidized”….what will you hand over next, the medical industry, your retirement (doh!), the schools (whoops!),….? Sorry, off-topic but relevant, it goes under the heading of be careful what you wish for.

Anyhow, we were off from work for the celebration. We went to Auchan (ugh!) to allow Alan the experience (he loved it....NOT!) and then went into a nearby furniture gallery and over to the B&Q store. Some notes on the furniture store, much of the furniture they have here is ridiculous, awful stuff. I don’t know where they get their idea of Western furniture but I think it’s from looking at hotel lobbies from the overpriced, stuffy places where only the elites can go. Uncomfortable stuff to sit around with people named Winthorpe and Buffy and discuss the latest on our shopping trip to Monico (I asked for a Cappuccino and they served me a caffe latte, imagine the nerve of those people, they must have been raised in a barn). They had one decent place there with a very nice Lazy Boy type leather recliner, now that’s what I’m talking about. B&Q is a Home Depot type store but with much less tools and more home stuff (sinks, cooktops, water heaters, etc). We hadn’t been there before so we wanted to see what was inside, the tools were very limited (no axes, sledge hammers, saws, etc.) but we know where to go to buy some hardware stuff if we need it. Afterwards, we walked to Singa Plaza had lunch and then walked over to the lake. We decided to see what was happening at the lake on this holiday, so we walked along and watched the people. It’s always nice to “people watch” here.

We noticed there were speedboats running the lake today and so we went over to check it out. YES!!!! Speed boat ride, 25 RMB, 6 minutes. Not a bad deal, get out on the lake and see the view from a boat. We went to get tickets but the lady didn’t understand us (or perhaps it was the other way around). She was inside the booth and I was pointing to the ride and trying to indicate speed boat with no success (you try and play charades with speed boat and see how you would do it….it’s not easy). She got out of the booth, walked around and looked so we were able to grab 3 tickets on the next boat out the lake (again, the flexibility of the Chinese; in the US it would’ve been tough luck pal….speak the language). We head out to the dock area and are given our orange “life vests”. The man indicates to just tie it near the top (don’t use that pesky zipper thing; it only keeps the darned thing on you if you fall in). I mean this thing is flimsy (the weight limit was probably 20 kg or something) but what am I going to do, I mean if you fall into this water do you really want to survive? One swallow and who knows what’ll happen (somehow I get the image of Alien in my head where a creature grows out from your chest, of course the creature is wearing split pant just to add insult to injury, the last thing you see is some small creature’s butt cheeks). So anyhow, this is where it gets uncomfortable. The boat pulls up and the guy takes us right past a group of Chinese waiting to take the ride and puts us on the boat. We’re getting on the boat wondering, were they waiting for another boat or something? Perhaps the next group was waiting for another boat since there was a 25 and a 35 RMB trip, perhaps they paid 35 RMB for the faster boat? I hope that was the case but it sure feels awkward. There are times where they will push past you at the local market. You will place you items on the counter and they will purposely grab a pack of cigarettes and try to force the cashier to take their business first. I’m not certain why this is but this happens a lot at the local market by the Chateau. I’m certain they do it on purpose, it happens too often to be a coincidence. Usually the cashier will go ahead and ring us up first (since we were there first) and the Chinese person will be jibbering the whole time. These are primarily construction workers so I think they do it as a point of pride or to tell the tales to their co-workers. I just ignore it. Sorry, off on a tangent. Anyhow, we take the ride and it’s very nice, it’s a short ride of maybe 8 minutes but it’s worth it. Just a quick trip around the lake is enough to wet the appetite for more. There are other boat rides around the lake and we’ll have to look into those for the future. For now, it was a nice change to see around the lake without walking around.

Later in the evening, there was a nice fireworks display to celebrate the holiday. I tried to get photos but we were too far off and the night photos are tough to get without a tripod or something to hold the camera steady. You can see the other photos from Thursday using the photo links.