Dragon Boat Festival in Hangzhou

So I've returned from Kunming to attend the famous Dragon Boat Festival! Our Chinese partners took it upon themselves to guide us around Xixi wetlands and show us the Dragon Boat Festival. The original plan was to have a picnic and then go to the Xixi wetlands to watch the race, but after finding out that the race started at 12 and not 1, those plans changed. We grabbed some street meat and jumped in a cab and raced off. We were all lightly clothed because Hangzhou has been hit full by blast by summer. We bought some tickets and had to walk for a long time before we found an area that wasn't too crowded, but it was still fairly difficult to see. Right as we were passing over a bridge, one of the boats took in too much water and sank. Despite my attempts, I was unable to get a picture of a sunken boat. The Dragon Boat Festival is kept from ancient times, and is very popular and very interesting in China.
There were a ton of boats in the water, all man powered. The bridge we were passing over was considered both the start and finish line. It wasn't really a race between boats on the water at the same time, but it was a race to see who could get finish a lap the fastest. We happened to be stationed right after the bridge, so all of the excitement and energy was lost. John and I wanted to see the real action and so we left the group to go find a better vantage point, which was difficult considering how crowded it was. After about an hour of craziness we went off to have a boat tour. The tour was nice and tranquil, but we were still uncomfortably hot. A couple of people had to go early, and the rest of us were getting hungry, so we headed to West Lake for some food. The Chinese students took us to a restaurant with authentic food from Hangzhou. We had spicy tofu, duck, fish, potatoes and onions, some kind of sweet bread thing, sushi consisting of pear, salmon, and horseradish, the festival food with rice inside of banana leaves, all kinds of good things. A good day, a good dinner, a good video, and a decent travel blog. Tomorrow is for Suzhou.