Many overseas visitors made a special trip to enjoy paddling dragon boats and sharing a traditional meal with locals at a National Day holiday festival in Foshan's Jiujiang town, south China's Guangdong Province.
The weeklong dragon boat carnival opened on Thursday with traditional races and a riverside banquet. Visitors can also try paddling a dragon boat throughout the holiday.
While dragon boat racing is widely associated with China's Dragon Boat Festival earlier in the year, Jiujiang has a long tradition of holding races in October.
The festivities coincided with a busy week for international travel in the region. Border officials expect more than 380,000 inbound and outbound passenger crossings at nearby Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport during the seven-day holiday, including more than 170,000 crossings by foreign nationals.
Georgie, who is from Scotland and has worked in Foshan for three years, invited two friends from home to experience the festivities.
"I'm so excited to show them around. You know, what an experience," Georgie said. For one of those friends, Keira, the festival came less than a day after she arrived in China.
"We arrived five o’clock yesterday, so we haven’t even been in the country for twenty-four hours. But it's been amazing. This is like the perfect way to start a trip," Keira said. The visitors boarded a traditional dragon boat, where local residents taught them to follow the drumbeat and paddle in time. It takes 40 people to propel the boat, and a lapse in rhythm can send it off course.
"They feel happy, good, a little... We don't know if the boat balance was right, but we made it, and now we're on land. So, yeah, it was fun," Georgie said. Visitors from the United States, South Africa, Brazil and Tajikistan also paddled alongside Chinese participants.
"It's my first time. I've never experienced before. It's been one of the best and breathtaking experience for me so far in China, for my whole journey. Yeah, I felt so good and excited and happy, and I hope to enjoy the next part," said John, a visitor from Tajikistan. The celebrations continued on shore with a lion dance. Tasia, a visitor from Brazil, tried her hand at drumming as she watched the performance.
"It's so fun, and I feel like it's a type of culture we can only experience in China," said Tasia, a visitor from Brazil. Later, the visitors sat down to a dragon boat meal, a communal feast that is part of Jiujiang's celebrations. The dishes included Jiujiang yusheng, a local specialty of sliced raw fish.
"It's so good. It was so beautiful to watch as well as to eat all the flavors," Keira said.
Overseas visitors paddle dragon boats, share holiday feast in Foshan
Chinese and Myanmar police have broken the deadlock over Muse region and jointly launched a sweeping crackdown on telecom fraud dens across northern Myanmar after painstaking intelligence operations, high-level consultations and evidence-based persuasion.
Since China launched its special campaign against crimes in northern Myanmar targeting Chinese nationals in July 2023, the ringleaders of Kokang's "Four Families" have all been captured, and fraud syndicates in Wa State and Shan State Special Region-4 have been dismantled.
However, Muse, the campaign's fourth front, remained unbroken.
Muse lies in northeastern Myanmar's Shan State, facing Ruili City of southwest China's Yunnan Province across a narrow river. Long a vital gateway between the two countries, its rugged terrain and complex geopolitical makeup have also made it a preferred hiding ground for telecom fraud syndicates.
With the assistance of local police in Muse, the Ruili police collected and sorted clues from various sources. Through case analysis and suspect screening, they have gradually obtained detailed information on the telecom fraud dens, and finally secured a map clearly marking the locations of these operations in Muse.
Afterwards, leveraging the law enforcement cooperation mechanism established along the China-Myanmar border, senior police officials from both sides were engaged in in-depth consultations regarding the crackdown on new types of telecom fraud dens that were scattered and concealed across the Muse area.
"We on the Chinese side have firmly focused on the fact that combating criminal activity is a shared responsibility of both the Chinese and Myanmar police forces, and we have engaged with them on this premise," said Zhao Nanfang, then head of the criminal investigation corps of the Yunnan Provincial Public Security Department.
At the talks, with the help of the fraud den distribution map in Muse jointly drawn up by Chinese and Myanmar police, China's representative Geng Bang gave a detailed briefing backed by data cross-verified through case analysis, with each set of figures corresponding precisely to a specific telecom fraud compound.
"Who ran the area, who were the financiers and key members, who provided protection, roughly how many people were inside -- we've got all these straight," said Geng, then deputy head of the criminal investigation corps of the Yunnan Provincial Public Security Department.
"Myanmar's military carried out disguised reconnaissance and verified the sites on the ground. Except for a very few locations where people had moved away over time, they later confirmed the rest -- these were indeed compounds or parks running telecom frauds," said Zhang Jun, then head of the telecom and online fraud investigation division of the Criminal Investigation Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security.
With professional, solid and detailed evidence, as well as candor toward partners and resolve against crimes, Chinese police won the unanimous recognition of the Myanmar officials present, laying a firm foundation for subsequent talks round after round.
"We aimed to achieve a 'dynamic zero-case' goal regarding the telecom fraud activities affecting our border areas. We wanted to demonstrate our determination and stance, showcase our concrete measures, and put forward a strategy for joint China-Myanmar crackdowns," said Zhao.
In late March and early April 2024, after careful planning, Chinese and Myanmar police carried out their first joint operation in Muse, arresting 807 suspects.
This also marks the completion of the comprehensive crackdown on telecom fraud dens across four areas of northern Myanmar of the Shan State Special Region-4, Wa State, Kokang, and Muse.
Chinese, Myanmar police crack down on telecom fraud in Muse through close cooperation
