Dragon boat festival

This year, the Chinese government decided to cut down on the so called 'golden weeks'. During these golden weeks, practically the whole country is 'off-duty' and enjoys a whole week of free time. In previous years, there were 3 golden weeks: Spring festival (Chinese new year), the week around 1 May, and the week around 1 October (national day). Because most Chinese have very few days of annual leave, these golden weeks are traditionally used by many Chinese to go back to their hometowns. Consequently, an enormous amount of people is on the move, which results often in big congestions in public transportation, especially trains.

Therefore, the Chinese government decided to skip one of the three golden weeks, the May holiday; only 1 May is free. As a compensation, there are 3 extra national holidays, the Tomb sweeping festival (to honor the passed away relatives, on 4 or 5 April), the Dragon boat festival or 'duan wu jie' (5th day of 5th lunar months, this year on 9 June), and the Mid-autumn festival or 'Zhong qiu jie' (15th day of 8th lunar month).

In a previous post I already wrote something about the the Dragon boat festival.
This year, we did have a day off so we could go and watch the races. Actually, we did not plan to go and see it, because of the crowds, the races would undoubtedly draw. So instead, we went out with the Aguinaco's to check out a village in the area around Fuzhou. We never really made it to the village, but we did run into a Dragon boat race , as we were just on the ferry, crossing a river. The race was probably organized by one of two of the small villages in the area where we were. It was lovely to see, without the crowds we would have encountered in Fuzhou for sure.