National Holiday

I know we haven't finished our blog about Japan and Korea yet but here we are off again so I'll do this before trying to catch up with the previous adventures.
First happy Thanksgiving to you all. It is not celebrated here so we are just envying you the lovely Autumn day with a brisk walk and lots of good homemade organic fresh food. We'll celebrate with delicious Chinese dumplings instead!!!

The second big festival of the year in China is National Day - a time when everyone goes traveling. So the world (China anyway) is in motion. This year Beijing had its largest ever number of holiday visitors several million (more than usual) we understand. This year because the May celebrations had been shortened the National Holiday was lengthened and as our school had moved the September holiday to October 6th we had almost 11 days vacation..... so we couldn't miss an opportunity to 'go somewhere'........ but where?

As usual, my intrepid travel agent (Mick) came up with a great suggestion and after teaching a make up class on Saturday (Sept 27th) morning we headed straight for the train to Guangdong and on to Kowloon. Another interesting train journey - this time towards the South. All the people you see standing there, and some squatting who you can't see, had to stay that way for the 18 hours of the journey as they had not been able to buy seats - standing room only. Boy were we glad we at least had seats as all sleepers, hard, soft and any other kind were booked when Mick went to get the tickets so those you see here were the unlucky ones. We had to go through Customs and Immigration out of China mainland and into the Special Autonomous Region (SAR) of Hong Kong. Quite efficient but seemed strange when we were still in China!

Kowloon, where we stayed, was a surprise. So many people from East Indian heritage, all offering to make suits and trousers as quick as a wink and at last we saw people other than Chinese. It was an interesting place and this beautiful shady park near where we stayed was alive on the Sunday with people from all races but particularly the muslims and Phillipinos many of whom are nannies and housekeepers here. Sunday is their day off and they meet to chat with each other in the park







and rest too.




Because it was a holiday weekend there was a special display of all the Tae Kwon Do and Tai Chi groups in the park. Here are some of the women doing Tai Chi and







a really talented little boy doing his martial arts with fervour.