Happy Dragon Boat Day!

On Thurday we celebrated Dragon Boat Day here in China. The story (from what we understand), behind this holiday goes something like this...there was a famous poet who got very depressed and decided to jump into a river to end his life. The people were very upset so they decided to row their boats to the middle of the river and throw sticky rice cakes (there's a name for them, but I'm not sure how to spell it) in so the fish would eat the rice cakes instead of the poet's body. This is obviously a very simplistic retelling of the story, but because of these events hundreds of years ago, the government decided, for the first time this year, to make the day a national holiday, which meant Danny didn't have to go to work! The kids still had school because our calendar was already set before the day was declared a holiday!

Danny and I decided to keep Coop home so we wouldn't have to go out to school at 12:00 and pick him up, but, could instead go explore the Italian concession and have lunch! The Italian concession area has just recently been renovated and it is quite lovely. There are still some buildings that are not complete inside, but the facades are all done and you can picture what the area possibly looked like from 1901 - 1947 during the time in which it was governed by the Italians. In 1947 the area was relinquished to the Chinese government. Tianjin was one of the first cities in China to give authority, in certain areas (concessions), to European countries during the the late 1800's and early 1900's in order to protect the foreigners that were there to provide the goods that were desired by the Chinese market. There were a total of 8 concession areas in Tianjin.

I have read several historical fiction and biographies about Europeans living in China during the time period of the concessions. While we were walking down the street I told Danny that I could just see the ladies in their elegant dress, pretending as if they were still in Italy. I could also imagine the entertaining that went on in these grand houses and the meals that must have been cooked. The funny thing is, we don't live in a concession area, but we do live in a compound where we all, in our own way, try to recreate our home country in this strange, wonderful country!

After exploring, we had lunch outside while we listened to the saxophone player and some violinists!! I almost forgot we were in China for a bit!!