Zhongzi, Dragons, and Protective Bracelets

Seven Day work weeks are the worst. For everyone. The kids hate it, the teachers hate it - Horrible. By Sunday two of my students were home sick, and all of the Maroon Lions were desperately trying to infect the rest of the school with their tiny children coughs.
But today, Tuesday, is Dragon Boat Festival, which means we have yesterday, today, and tomorrow off work.
Neither Super Husband nor I have really gleaned the history behind Dragon Boat. We're pretty sure that it has soooomething to do with a soldier who drowned himself as a sacrifice in order to save a bunch of other people. But I dunno.

 I guuuueeeess I could look it up. 

Hold Please.

Okay, so I've done some research, Wikipedia was involved, as were other sites, and it turns out I was about half right. Or really only correct about someone drowning himself. The poet Qu Yuan was exiled from the court of the Chu kingdom because some other guy didn't like him (I'm pretty sure I'm over simplifying this, but whatever.) and he wrote a few patriotic poems, and then drowned himself in a river so that he didn't have to see his beloved Chu kingdom invaded by some other kingdom... maybe the Qin kingdom. This is kind of where stories differ. Some sources are saying he drowned himself in despair over the exile itself, others say he couldn't bear to see the conquering of the Chu kingdom. Either way, all stories seem to agree that when local villagers realized what he had done they searched for his body in "dragon boats" and threw food, like zhongzi and eggs, into the river to attract the water-borne creatures away from his... ahem... corpse.   

So, the lowdown on zhongzi is this -- They're rice dumplings. There are traditionally two types, sweet, and spicy. The spicier zhongzi are traditional in southern China, and are usually filled with pork or chicken, and dipped in a spicy sauce when eaten. The sweet zhongzi, traditional in the north, are filled with fruit, often jujubes, and are dipped in sugar when eaten. I thought they were wrapped in banana leaves (which I don't like) but apparently it's actually a bamboo leaf, so that's cool. If you would like to make zhongzi, for whatever reason, there is a video of an older asian lady (I didn't watch it) making them on youtube. 

On Sunday the older kids at school made them, and it was hilarious to me to listen to the foreign teachers try to coach the kids in English about making them. Finally, at least for one class, the Chinese teacher just took over and made it a Chinese lesson. 

While the older kids were making zhongzi the younger classes made "five color thread bracelets". The site I linked to earlier, not wikipedia or the video, talks about the significance, but not the history, of these thread bracelets. I'm wearing one right now, and I made one for Super Husband. They are said to protect against plague and disease, and you have to wear it until after the first rainfall, when you're supposed to take it off and throw it into a river. I may or may not remember to do that. 

Moving away from Dragon Boat festival a little, the quiz team won first place again. Because we're just that cool. 

And that looks like it's about all the news I have... 

Oh, wait. I forgot about Sunday's Korean dinner. 

We struggled to get a taxi for almost an hour. Honestly, that's never happened before. We ended up taking a "black cab" after ten or 15 regular taxis, all empty and displaying their "available for hire" signs, drove right past our frantically waving arms... I even closed my umbrella in hopes that the prospect of a dripping umbrella was the major deterrent, but no such luck. After all that we finally arrived at our destination, a Korean restaurant hidden behind some construction and a guard booth (there was a big golden retriever in said booth, and he was rewarded for his existence with some scratches behind the ears).

My experience with Korean food is limited to three separate dining experiences, two of which were in Beijing, so I am far from an expert on the subject, but what we had was good. Of course, we did let an actual Korean person do the ordering, so that might account for some of it. 

First out was a plate of boiled pork, and kemchi. This was accompanied by a basket of lettuce, and we were told that you make a lettuce wrap out of the kemchi and pork. 

Kemchi and Boiled Pork

Korean Mijiu (rice wine) mixed with Sprite

We also partook, for the first time for either Super Husband or I, of Korean mijiu, or rice wine. This particular mijiu was brought in a large pot, and mixed with Sprite. I don't really know if that's somehow fairly traditional, but it seems that it is one of the "flavors of choice". It's served in these little metal bowls (that I couldn't help thinking of as dog food bowls every time I took a sip) and it was really pretty tasty. Super Husband said that it tastes like ice cream, and while it is a smooth, sweet flavor, I wouldn't go quite that far.

We were at this restaurant for the belated birthday celebration of one of Super Husband's Korean classmates, and we found out that there is a "traditional" birthday hazing ritual. When you're down to the dregs of a pot of mijiu everyone must add something (and I mean anything) to the pot. Soy sauce, soju (another Korean alcohol), hot sauce, broth from the soup we were eating, and even lettuce were added to the mijiu, and all were subsequently consumed by the birthday boy. And here, let's just all give thanks for the fact that they didn't know when my birthday was, because my stomach was barely strong enough to withstand his torture, much less drinking that slop myself. Ick. 

And that really is everything... unless it isn't. But it is, for now.