Water splashing, rats and chickens.
on Tina's Journal (China), 14/Apr/2009 09:28, 34 days ago
Since Sunday we have had 3 days of theWater Splashing Festival. It represents theDai New Year. The Dai form one of the many ethnic groups in China and they are closely related to the Thai people. So what happens during Water Splashing festival? As you have probably guessed people go around splashing each other either with buckets of water or balloons filled with water which are used as missiles. I have had my own, not very pleasant experience, of this. Yesterday whilst walking past the girls dormitory I was sprayed from one of the windows and then today walking home after lunch with Miss Liao( a teacher I am currently co-teaching with) and Jayne, I felt as though I had been punched in the back followed by a horrid wet sensation and my T-shirt , trousers, hair and handbag were sopping. This happened as I was crossing the road and after the shock of wondering what the heck was going on, I realised that a horrid man had thrown a water balloon at me. My spontaneous reaction was to hurl a mouthful of abusive expletives in his direction..he didn't understand any of it but he realised I was NOT happy! Miss Liao was livid and continued to shout and scream at him all the while poking her umbrella at his face. I told her to 'let it go' and don't worry about it as she was on the verge of phoning the police! She was more upset for me because as a 'foreigner' I'm not used to their ways and customs. To be honest I think it's an awful festival and I'll be glad when it's over and I can walk a bit more peacefully along the street.I want to share with you another horrible experience I had this week. Whilst I was enjoying my lunch on Sunday sitting outside a restaurant with a group of friends enjoying the lovely sunshine, I noticed that a man had caught a rat in a cage. However, he wasn't content to have just caught the poor animal but resorted to poking it through the bars with a rigid piece of straw. I could see he was getting more and more frustrated because he couldn't kill it. He eventually threw down the piece of straw and walked away..I had a feeling though it wouldn't end there. Five minutes later I then looked in the rat's direction again and the poor thing had been set alight whilst still alive! The man had poured petrol on it and watched it burn to death. A HORRID spectacle. This coupled with my experience on Saturday on the bus journey back from Zhen Yuan where a women had a live chicken in a sack under her seat for over 6 hours, has 'hit home' the lack of respect some people have for animals. I'm not a vegetarian and eat just about anything BUT don't let the animal suffer before it's killed. The woman wouldn't kill the chicken until she's just about to cook it as the meat supposed to taste better! On that cheery note, I'm just off to have dinner!!