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Dragon Boat Festival

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The Dragon Boat Festival has come and gone with little fanfare and a three-day weekend. The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the lesser Chinese holidays. Like many traditional Chinese holidays, it’s date is determined by the lunar calendar. This festival “ occurs on the 5th day of the 5th month of the traditional  Chinese calenda r.” Thanks Wikipedia . The short version is that minister Qu Yuan (c. 340–278 BC) committed suicide after the dynasty he was loyal to was conquered. Having no dynasty to sever he had no reason to live and drowned himself. As such, he has become a figure of loyalty and piety. This origin story or myth serves to explain the two main traditions of the Dragon Boat Festival:  Racing in paddle-driven longboats carved like long dragons to imitate the people as they raced out to pull Qu Yuan from the water.  The bamboo-leaf wrapped rice balls in memory of the rice used to feed the fish in an attempt to distract the fish from eating Qu Yuan dead body.
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An Afternoon’s Hello

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The building I live in is mostly filled with older women and men, all of whom I’ve come to love. There is no elevator in my building of six floors. So, my neighbors must walk up and down the stairs. They move with a slow diligence, placing one foot above the other and pulling themselves up the stairs. On their way down, they turn sideways, easing their weight from one knee to the next. Early on, one of the elder women said to me “you always stop and let me pass. You are so polite.” I smiled and let her pass. She hobbled up the stairs, back bent forward, cloth shoes skidding across the concrete stairs and echoing around the hollow stairwell. I didn’t realize it at the time, but little actions like that are what they enjoyed. The hello’s as we passed, the smiles, and my willingness to stop and chat. “No, that’s not what I said. You didn’t understand.” The widowed women from the fourth floor scolded me with a smile. She repeated herself, but her meaning never made it out from u
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Classroom Art

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There is a committee within each group of students that oversees the propaganda of the week. They are charged with turning the blackboard’s in their respective classroom into a work of art. The quality varies, but I always enjoy them. According to my students, propaganda  is often seen as a tool for the government to care for its citizens. Perhaps these pictures will help you understand what I mean. As an aside, students are divided into cohorts. This happens in elementary, middle, and high school, as well as college. Students are with their cohort for all of elementary,   middle, and high school, and this holds true for college as well. They go to all the same classes with their cohort, and are divided into dorms according to their cohort. They are assigned tasks according to cohort, and engage in sports, singing, dance, and academic competitions based on cohort, whether that is within their cohort or between competing cohorts. Each cohort has one of the committees I described ab
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