Swallows

Seven weeks into my homestay and Xingtai has been as dry as the Kobi Desert, but it rained the other day. This in the middle of the May Day holiday. I decided to go to the park, which is the main feature of my part of town, on my bike. The park is dedicated to Xingtai favourite son Guoshoujing, astronomer and inventor of a well used calendar. Whereas the day before the vicinity had been teeming with people, buses and taxis, this day I was the only bike to park at the entrance. Entrance price is very cheap, about 30 cents. I did not have to pay to park the bike because the attendant had absconded. When I entered, it should not have surprised me that the park would be all but empty of people. However it did. I realized that for the first time in my China stay I had enough room to swing the proverbial cat without running into a Chinaman (or Chinaperson to be politically correct). The constant activity and density of people here is I believe the most striking difference with the countries I have experienced. So if you want privacy wait for a rainy day, at least in the dry northern plains of China. I did nontheless share the park with a miriad of swallows and martins weaving swift and intricate patterns around the pond. I watched for fifteen minutes as I gradually got progressively damper but it was a fascinating sight. I think they were catching insects although I didn't see any. I went into the museum (partly to live up to a commitment to teach the guide a tad more English) and when I came out thirty minutes later the rain had stopped. The swallows had gone and there was still virtually no one in the park. Either the people were all at the train station, which is what it seems like during holiday weeks like this, or they had dissolved in the rain (which could be a strategy for the China one-child policy committee).
Note: I am posting these comments to New Times Hebei Agency website, if anyone is interested. Just Google.