Dragon Boat Festival

It's 端午节, or the Dragon Boat Festival, held every year on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month to celebrate the life or death of some poet or other.

More importantly, it's a chance to race dragon boats, and eat 粽子 or glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in fragrant lotus or bamboo leaves.

Personally, I'm a fan of Southern-style 粽子 which are typically stuffed with meat and red-beans. 粽子 in Harbin tend to be less substantial, and made sweet, using red dates. Yuk!

Enxi comes into class and tells a joke.

米饭和包子打群架，米饭仗着人多势众，见了包着的就打，豆沙包，糖包，蒸饺无一幸免，粽子被逼到墙角，情急之下把衣服一撕，大叫：

看清楚，我是卧底！

The Rice and The Buns are having a gang war. The Rice have strength in numbers.

Anyone that's Bun-like they attack. Bean-paste buns, sugar buns, even dumplings, nobody survives.

A 粽子 finds itself with its back to the wall. In desperation, it throws off its clothes, and shouts:

Take a good look! I'm an undercover agent!

We all have a good laugh.

Enxi asks Teacher Wang Lie if Songhua River has Dragon Boat races, and when the best time to go see them is.

"Go before 5am, tomorrow, or you won't be able to see anything".

She drags her three flatmates out with her, arriving at 4:30am.

In class later that day, in exhausted tones, she explains how she waited until 5:15am. Nothing to see but crowds, so the four of them took a taxi home again.

Mingrui interjects.

"What!? I arrived at 5:30am and they were just starting... I had a great view".

We all have another good laugh.

It wasn't a total waste of time though. Enxi picked up these wristbands which apparently signify friendship.

They're traditionally thrown into water at the first sign of rain. It's yet another mystifying custom in a country that I still haven't even started to understand.