This is only the second year that the Dragon Boat Festival has been declared a national work holiday, but it has been observed since roughly 278 BC. While the current celebrations feature teams of rowers in really cool boats , it is actually a commemoration of the suicide of a prominent state poet, Qu Yuan, during the Zhou dynasty. As another dynasty came to power, Qu Yuan was jailed for treason and eventually jumped into a river out of despair over the rise of the new dynasty. The local people were so upset that they threw zongzi, or rice wraps, into the water to keep the fish from eating the body, and then went into the river in boats to scare the fish away.
In Shanghai, a lot of the expats join dragon boat racing teams, or go out to Suzhou Creek to watch the races. We didn't do either of those things. Instead, facing down a four-day* weekend and preparing for a visit from Nana and Grandpa, we decided to spend some time around Shanghai.
On Thursday, we took the subway out to Zhongshan Park in Puxi.
Once we made it through the gauntlet of people who wanted to take pictures of the kids, we got to enjoy a really pretty urban park that was filled with people enjoying the day:
And the kids had a really good time exploring the park:
We ended our park visit with ice cream cones and started the long Metro ride back to Pudong. It was a very nice way to spend a morning and to see a new part of Shanghai.
*It was a four-day weekend for Tommy. Sort of. The government declared Thursday and Friday to be national holidays, but then said everyone had to work Sunday instead. The only problem is that Sunday in Shanghai is late-night Saturday in Austin -- and on this particular late-night Saturday, the NI Austin IT teams were basically rebooting every single system we use each day. So no one in Shanghai could work on Sunday. Tommy ended up taking that day as a vacation day. As for me, I still get Austin holidays, so I just worked like normal. (But I get 4th of July off, and Tommy doesn't.)
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