Long weekend

I love long weekends, even though I don’t actually go off to work anymore, because it means Mike is around and spending time with me and our beautiful kids. Back home I might not have known the deep history of each holiday (although I probably did), but I instinctively knew each one, and when to expect the next holiday or long weekend. Here in China, public holidays just seem to pop up… and instead of just being an excuse for a camping trip or even just a BBQ each ‘holiday’ seems to be associated with a physical celebration, a celebratory food, ‘something’ going on, and usually fireworks!

The fifth day of the fifth month of the Chinese Calendar is known as the ‘Double Fifth’ or Duan Wu. It is the Dragon Boat Festival. We were lucky enough to be able to watch the festivities on the Zhangjiabang River behind us from our balcony. It was particularly exciting to watch the Chinese version of High 5 performing, and Ellie and I were out there on the balcony copying all the actions!! Fortunately some were in English as well, so we knew when to spin, touch our toes and reach for the sun!

Mike also had 2 days left of paternity leave which had to be taken before the end of the school year, so made it a nice long break, so we jumped on a train and went to Nanjing. For parents of 2 small children we were a bit spontaneous, because we didn't book anything before we left... We turned up at the station and managed to catch a train, then when we got off the train in Nanjing we just started walking in the direction we thought the hotels would be!! Unfortunately the walk in prices were too high (asking RMB1700 per night at Sofitel), so Mike used my phone as a modem and connected his computer to the internet and booked 3 nights at the Crowne Plaza (RMB712 per night including breakfast!). We had a great couple of days - walked everywhere - around the lake, went to the Confucian Temple, and wandered around the tourist precinct, to Sun Yat Sen's mausoleum, and the site of the Nanjing Massacre (by the Japanese). Then, got train home again.

I had a bit of a language challenge waiting for the train to come home again... An older Chinese guy was looking at our double decker pram and then said to me "parlez vous francais?" I responded "un petit petit peu". Then he said he didn't speak English, so calling on my Year 9 French I managed to tell him that the kids ages, their names and which was a girl and boy, that Mike is a teacher in a school and that we were not Canadian but Australian and had been living in Shanghai since last August. My poor brain was quite fried by the end of it, because he was translating his French questions into Chinese to about 5 Chinese women also looking at our 2 sleeping kids, and so I translated my answers into Chinese as well. I was really quite impressed with myself, and Mike was just looking at me quite bewildered, and unfortunately couldn’t help me when I struggled with a word in both languages. The guy was a French professor at a Uni that was neither in Shanghai or Nanjing, but I am not sure where!

Nanjing was all very interesting, but I think what was nicest was just being about as a family. Getting out for a day’s excursion is something we do so rarely at home, that I think having 3 days in a row where we did stuff out of the house really made an impact. We even managed to have a “grown up” lunch when the kids were asleep in the pram.