Been having problems with the old spam bots, and so this wasn’t posted when it was meant to.

So today is the Dragon Boat festival 端午节 (duan1 wu3 jie2) and it is marked by the eating of 粽子 (zong4 zi3) polished glutinous rice or better described as sticky triangular things that take forever to swallow. This festival essentailly celebrates the death of Qu Yuan, who committed suicide by drowning himself in a river.  Anyway, apart from the zong zi eating, most students that I know, woke up before dawn and climbed a nearby hill to watch the sunrise. So not to miss out, my first class was spent climbing that hill, which I’m told has a bomb shelter built under it as an expansion to the natural cave complexes allready there. 

As we walked along the busy road, stopping and covering our eyes from the dust every time a vehicle came past, I chatted with the students.  The walk took us along this busy road, over a rather nice river,  and past thousands of discarded plastic bags and packaging that are sadly all too abundant throughout China.  It makes me annoyed that things are like this, the fact that nobody seems to give a monkeys.  It seems the welfare of the environment is an alien thought to many, and the government appears to be obsessed with economic growth at all costs

The hill itself was very sandy in colour, almost like a beach and kind of reminded me of a quarry. The trees were yet to drop their cones and the grass was patchy, punctuated with lumps of red coloured sandstone.    

Atop of the hill was a large pagoda like building and a Buddist temple or maybe a monistary, i’m not sure.   The walls were covered in graffitti  – something very unusual in these parts –  and the kind of graffitti you’d expect back home: ‘He loves …’  ‘Call 13….. for’ etc…  In Changchun graffitti consists of peoples telephone numbers, as well as spraying a number there will also be a job – like plumber or plasterer or locksmith.  It’s like an advert for the unemployed wishing to get work. 

Here’s the rest of the photos for those that asked: