Dragon Boat Festival

The Dragon Boat Festival is considered one of the three main festivals celebrated by the Chinese. You can google it if you want to learn the background to this festival. Today there are International Dragon Boat Races that bring people from all over the world to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China to compete. While many people enjoy heading to these activities, I have yet to attend them once. In the 17 years that I have spent in Taiwan, I have always found something better to do on this holiday than to fight the crowds and walk an hour to the spot of the races. This year was no different. I planned our own Dragon boat races for a church activity. We went to a famous swimming hole with inner tubes and all the fixings for a great barbecue. While there my lovely wife spent all her time on the trees barbecuing for everyone. She loves to barbecue and doesn't really like to be out in the sun. My little daughter wanted to play in the water. Even though it was very hot outside the water was still very cold. She would play in the water until her lips were turning blue and she was just a shivering. I would eventually have to take her out of the water and she would scream and kick, because she wanted to play in the water. My two boys spent time swimming up and down the river. There were about 80 people who came to the hole that day and a good time was had by all. We topped the lunch off with a wonderful watermelon. The watermelon harvest this year in Hualien has been so good that they can't sell them all and in all the fields you see hundreds of watermelons lying there rotten. We had ours though and soon they will start planting for the second harvest.