Today I went to school.
I was double booked. One invitation came from an old friend, who teaches in the local vocational school. They run, among other courses, a Chinese language course for foreign students. I was invited to witness a “special lesson”.
The second invitation came from some friends in the local government, whom I often work with, and who mainly wanted me to be the semi-official photographer at an “interesting event”.
Fortunately my two invitations were to the same event.
Saturday will be 端午节 (duān wǔ jié), the Duanwu festival, also know as “The Dragon Boat Festival”.
I won’t repeat the history and the fables it arises from, but you can be sure they are mostly nonsense. WikiSometimesRight has a reasonably accurate version of the unreasonable story. By the way, the Kingdom of Chu, to which the article refers is modern-day Sichuan. I guess they didn’t know.
Anyway, the important thing to do at Duanwu is to make and/or eat 粽子 (zòng zi), which are a kind of dumpling made by mixing glutinous rice with various fillings and wrapping them in bamboo leaves before boiling or steaming them. The actual fillings vary by region. Northern China tends to like sweet fillings whereas, down here in the south, we are sweet enough, so prefer to mix the rice with mung beans, barbecued pork and chestnuts.
So the event was intended to show the few foreigners in town how to assemble these critters. It was held in what is really a bakery shop, but styles itself a baking museum. True they do have some old stuff on display, but are just one of 54 places styling themselves museums – we have a luosifen museum, a baijiu museum, a coffee museum, a mahogany museum, a bamboo museum, a ticket museum etc., etc. I’m just waiting for them to open a museum museum.
So here are a few images. Starting with the building and some of the museum exhibits.
Entrance
Exterior
Interior 1
Mooncake Moulds
and more
WeddingTableau
Old Stuff
more soon
