Today is officially the one month anniversary of my arrival in China. In many ways it feels like much longer, but at least now I can think in terms of months rather than weeks.

Yesterday was the mid-autumn festival in China. This is a day when people are supposed to look at the moon and think of loved ones who are far away, because they are looking at the moon at the same time. I suppose my loved ones were probably looking at the sun while I was looking at the moon, but, oh well, to be accurate, I wasn’t really looking at the moon. It’s always cloudy at night here, so I haven’t actually seen the moon once since I arrived. But, it’s the thought that counts.

What I discovered about this festival is that it bears the closest thing to the Christmas fruitcake tradition. It is absolutely mandatory that people eat a mooncake during the mid-autumn festival, so everywhere people go, others force mooncakes down their throats. Mooncake are chewy little cakes with different fillings, sometimes including an egg yolk, though not always. One mooncake is enough. They’re not terrible, but they’re not all that good, either, and particularly after a few of them, they start to make me want to gag. However, there’s no refusing them. Thus, I found myself having already consumed numerous mooncakes and having a supply of about fifteen more. People would make me eat one and then give me another three or four for the road - definitely like fruitcakes in America at Christmastime. No one wants them, but one is required (maybe by law) to take them and give them away. Anyway, I got smart today and brought all my mooncakes into the English office at school and made people take them. They tried to refuse, but I begged, and I managed to rid myself of all but one. Not bad!

In other news, I’ve been learning a little more about this area in the last few weeks. Ya’an city is in Ya’an Prefecture, which encompasses eight small counties. And Ya’an Prefecture has quite an bundance of cool things about it. For one thing, it is where the first pandas were discovered by some Frenchman in the 1800s. (Everyone say that this is where pandas were discovered, but it seems probable that Chinese people had “discovered” them long before the French did). It is also about the only place where there are still a few pandas left in the wild. I was talking to John Flowers, an American professor who is here with his wife and child doing research and teaching one class, and he told me that he had gone with a student last semester to a small village very much out of the way to interview the local people about some old stone carvings. This village is a three hour hike from nowhere. Anyway, apparently some of the people there reported panda sightings from time to time. These stone carvings are another neat thing about this area. The rock here is mostly sandstone, and so people have been carving words and pictures into them for a good 2,000 years. Apparently, people stumble upon these things fairly often if they get out into the countryside.

Speaking of countryside, I will be heading there myself in two days. Tomorrow is my last day of teaching before our week long national holiday, and I am going with my friend to her home in Shuangliu, a little town near Chengdu. She is from a peasant family which has many animals and a straw burning stove. She asked if I could make any American food while I am there, but it may be what I have dubbed “American food with Chinese characteristics” - a play on words for the often touted phrase here that the government here is “communism with Chinese characteristics.” I am very excited to have a week off and especially excited to visit Hongxia’s home. Afterwards, we are going to Chengdu for a few days, and I plan on having a cup of coffee while I am there. I imagine we will do other things in Chengdu, as well, but right now all I can think of is having a cup of coffee.

Other than that, there’s not too much new over here. In the food department, I think the only slightly out of the ordinary thing I’ve had since my last e-mail is duck feet. I’ve had many chicken feet, but now
I’ve had duck feet, too. They’re different, you know. The webbed feet are quite a taste sensation.

The last thing I want to say is that I am having my students in class play vocabulary bingo this week, and let me tell you, if you are not accustomed to bingo and have a very limited grasp of English, it is hard to understand the premise. I spend a good three fourths of class trying to get everyone to fill in the 25 squares with the words that I have written on the blackboard. No matter how many times I explain that this is just preparation to play the game, many of them still seem to think that there must be some trick to it. However, despite the frustration, all is forgotten as soon as we begin to play, or, more accurately, as soon as I take out the bag of candy from which the winners get to choose. Oh, and
today, there were some other tasty treats in that bag as well. Yep, you guessed it: mooncakes.

Until next week,

Molly