Golden Week

Mainland China's on holiday for the whole week to celebrate the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. According to the newspaper, 32.88% of people plan to make outings to downtown and suburban areas, 13.11% plan to stay at home, 23.99% plan to visit friends, relatives and family members, 2.97% plan to travel abroad, 24.45% plan on sightseeing in other provinces and 2.60% have other plans. I only quoted the pie chart because I think rounding out to two decimal places looks ridiculous. According to my Mandarin teacher, nearly 100% of people plan on coming to Hong Kong and buying milk.

Hong Kong only celebrates for one day but that day happens to be Wednesday. And museums happen to have free admission on Wednesdays...so tomorrow I'll be the leader on a museum touring extravaganza. I keep hearing the museums aren't that great, but:

1. I love pressing buttons & the Science Museum is loaded with hands-on exhibits.
   
2. I love art. The Museum of Art is filled with art.
   
3. (in particular, drawings and paintings I read about over the summer)
4. I don't care much for outer space. However: I'm curious to see if the Space Museum has done anything special, considering the first Chinese astronauts to walk on the moon returned yesterday.

So it should be fun.

And next Tuesday is another holiday! This time one that's no longer celebrated in the Mainland on account of the Cultural Revolution eliminating it. It's called Double 9 because it's on the ninth day of the ninth month on the lunar calander. Our teacher didn't tell us much more other than people climb mountains and sweep tombs. And there'll be no classes.

The Dragon Boat Festival, which I won't be around for (May 5th) has a more interesting story. A long time ago there lived a tyrant and a patriotic poet. The country was in a bad state and the poet offered a suggestion to the emperor. When the emperor refused to listen, the poet jumped into the river. The people loved the poet, so to keep the fish and crabs from eating his body, they threw in dumplings (tastier than flesh) and beat loud drums.

In Mandarin class we also learned:

• The Chinese names for the following countries: Japan, Germany, America, Korea, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Nigeria, Poland, India, Ghana, Italy, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, China, Mexico, Sri Lanka, France, Ireland, Sweden, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, North Korea, Slovakia, Arabia. The list appears random because it is (it's composed of the countries the class wanted to learn).
• How to sing the song from the Beijing Olympics

And we watched a lady (on youtube, not in person) sing a traditional folk song about jasmine.

If I don't finish this post soon I'll never get to sleep, so I'll zoom through the highlights/whatever comes to mind. In no particular order I:

• bought graph paper
• became the owner of a fantastic doodle of a cow
• ate a tasty crispy pastry
  
• met my roommate's mother
• printed out a map of Tsim Sha Tsui
• in color, because the black and white printers are out of order
• wrote notes in the wrong notebook
• forgot a black pen and needed to write in blue
• realized I'm missing several friends' phone numbers
• fenced
• researched Australia's trade policies