Journey to the East

Today, rain swept into Ji’nan. With it came an awakening: cold weather will soon be here. The drizzle was nothing terribly new (much of late July and August here were marked by overcast skies and buckets of rain). Unlike the showers of summer– which only made the air steamy, and the city feel like a greenhouse– the rain brought a chill with it. Suddenly, temperatures dropped into the low 60s and I found myself wearing long pants and a sweatshirt.

Is this the end of the warm weather I’ve been living with since nearly May? Last year, it was almost November before the seasons really turned. In this sense, there really wasn’t a long Autumn and vaguely warm weather lingered on until nearly Halloween. For the temperature to drop so dramatically now seems premature. To be sure, it would be nice to get away from the searing heat that has characterized this city over the past several months BUT, I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the full plunge back into winter (the last one here was perhaps the longest and coldest of my life). Nonetheless, as previously noted, Ji’nan is beginning to take note of the change of seasons, and it won’t be long now before the warmer days are really over for good.

The end of this week marks the start of a nice little vacation for Chinese National Day. As I mentioned before, I’ll be headed with some friends to take a cruise down the Yangtze River’s Three Gorges area starting in Wuhan and ending in Chongqing. We’re also trying to work in a side-trip to Chengdu (and possibly to the panda reserve there). Stay tuned as plans get more specific. I’ll be sure to fill in the pre-trip itinerary soon.

Last week, in my highest-level class (6th year English speakers), I closed with an activity called “Open Questions.” Every student is given a blank square of paper on which they are able to write any question that they’d like me to answer, and we in turn have a class discussion about it. Among the may questions given to me last week, this one stood out:

Do you wish you could eat mooncakes with your family on Mid-Autumn Festival this year?

And so, it’s that time again… Mid-Autumn Festival is coming up next week. Last year at around this time, I wrote a little blurb about the festival, which is still online here. To briefly recap, Mid-Autumn Festival is much like Thanksgiving in America: the focus is on being together with loved ones and eating mooncakes.  Sounds like a pretty good deal, right?  Appropriately, mooncakes have been back on the shelves in grocery stores for a good few weeks, baijiu sales are on the rise, and people have begun to ask me the question that always seems to get asked around holidays over here: Are you planning on going home to celebrate with your family?

It’s at this point that I usually have to explain that since my family is in the U.S. (where the holiday is not really celebrated) that this would be virtually impossible. This usually elicits a response of something like “Oh, that’s too bad,” from whoever I happen to be talking to. It does, however, bring up a more interesting point: I’ve never really celebrated this holiday before. Last year, I was traveling in Xi’an and spent the day sightseeing, so any real “celebration” was more or less lost on me. I admit, the concept of the holiday seems really nice, as it’s an opportunity to be with those who are close to you, and appreciate them and their company. In that sense, Mid-Autumn Festival seems to be a holiday with fairly little pretense, which is also welcoming. In fact, the holiday seems to lend itself to a sort of wistfulness about family, loved ones, and home– perhaps best expressed by the legendary poet Li Bai in his poem “静业思” (Jing Ye Si), “Thinking in the Quiet Night,” which I wrote about a while ago here. With all the talk of togetherness and celebration, I can’t help but think that it would be a lot of fun to observe the day in some way, no matter how small.

As for my plans? This year, the festival falls during the course of a pretty hectic work week (another holiday, Chinese National Day, follows very soon afterwards and as the schools will be closed for that day, Aston is forced to reschedule classes, sometimes on weekdays). So, unlike last year, I’ll be in Ji’nan for the festival, which means that I may get an actual opportunity to celebrate. It’s my hope that, true to the spirit of the holiday, my friends and I can use it as an opportunity to get together and appreciate each other’s company, but as of yet plans have not been made.

Big plans are on the horizon, however. As I mentioned earlier, National Day (which falls on October 1) is a BIG vacation opportunity since everyone is given a week off from work. I’ll be no exception. With my classes canceled for National Day Weekend, I find myself with a good 9 or 10 days to go somewhere. My group is heading south and west on a cruise of the Yangtze River in an area commonly referred to as the “Three Gorges.” We’ll be starting from the city of Wuhan, and then floating down-river towards Chongqing and (hopefully) Chengdu. In total, this means about five days on a boat. It should end up being a really interesting adventure. I’ll be sure to post updates as plans develop. Until then… stay tuned.

Ok, so I’ve gotten kind of behind on the blog (No big surprise here, right?). An explanation is in order. It’s pretty simple, actually: As is often the case over here, the website just ceased to work, meaning I couldn’t log in to update. So here I am, much later, trying to fill in all of the blanks for about a month. I guess, I’ll go for the lightning review… Here goes nothing, then:

Summer is coming to an apex here in Ji’nan. For one thing, the temperatures continue to be blazing hot. Venture outside your apartment for any reason, and you’re sure to return sweating copiously (and I mean it. I have to take a change of shirts when I ride my bike in to work to avoid having to teach all day in a shirt that’s drenched with sweat). Inside my apartment, my air-conditioning unit runs constantly, keeping my room not unlike the inside of a refrigerator unit. Understandably, when it is so hot outside (and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s been well over 90 degrees on average) it’s hard to summon up the wherewithal to get out and do things. Despite this, however, I’ve been managing to continue to play in weekly pick-up soccer games. In fact, my foreign friends and I have become regulars. When it’s not blazing hot, it’s usually raining buckets. Ji’nan doesn’t have a monsoon season on the order of Southeast Asia (or anywhere close), but there is a “rainy season,” which is pretty much the entire month of August. Several times in the last month or so, I have walked outside to find my neighborhood completely flooded with rainwater. When it rains here it rains VERY hard. Runoff spills out into the streets. Gutters overflow… as (occasionally) do sewers. It’s unlike rain that I’ve encountered elsewhere because of it’s intensity. The storms come in short, violent bursts and drop tons of water on the city and then go just as quickly. In merely the span of fifteen or twenty minutes, streets will be covered in water.

It’s not really that surprising then, that everyone here seems to want to flock toward cooler climates. During the past several weeks of classes, my students have told me that they’ve all been to many of the various beaches in the area at places like Yantai, Rizhao, Weihai, and of course Qingdao. August seems to be summer vacation time for most Chinese people, and many of my classes were missing students over the past several weeks due to family beach trips. Foreign teachers are no exception to this rule. My friends and I have made two trips to Qingdao in a month (one that I described previously and another last week to get back to the beach and visit Qingdao’s “Beer Festival” which is basically the Chinese version of Oktoberfest… this will be described in detail in following entries, I promise). Each time, I’ve returned to Ji’nan feeling refreshed, so I am convinced that the ocean air does me quite a lot of good.

Summer will linger here for several more weeks. If last fall is any indication, it will be Halloween before the weather really turns here, and then the weather will turn abruptly. The arrival of fall brings a lot with it: new colleagues, new classes, cooler temperatures, and the opportunity to get out and travel again. I’ll get some time off for China’s National Day in October that I can use to take a trip (might head down to Sichuan province to see the very famous national panda reserve). I’m hoping that I’ll get a chance to take some trips further afield this fall (Inner Mongolia’s grasslands come to mind for one), but much depends on scheduling.

Now that the blog is operational again, I’ll get some pictures of Qingdao and Beer Fest posted ASAP. No more excuses. Until then, stay tuned.

The weather outside is stifling. The A/C units in school are running full-blast all the time. By the time I get to school, I’m drenched with sweat and look like I’ve been swimming. Must be summer in East China. Must be time for a blog update. First, let me apologize for falling completely off the map for a while. Like the weather, which has grown stifling and lazy, I too have been going through some sort of writing doldrums. I simply wasn’t able to muster up the time (or maybe the effort) to set anything down to writing. So, as you can see, there’s been a bit of a lag here… sorry. That’s pretty much my fault.  This isn’t to say that there’s nothing going on. It’s been a busy time here: midterms, family visits, the World Cup, grading, etc.. Lots of things have been happening all at once. Suddenly, Ji’nan’s short but sweet spring became a hot, lazy summer. We’re now in the midst of July, which is very much high summer here in Ji’nan (actually it has been high summer for a while, summer being one of the longer seasons here).

Summer in Ji’nan is strange when you consider just how cold it was here during winer (which still seems like it was only a very short time ago). In January I would have never imagined that this city could be so hot. And yet, it is. While having to bundle up to spare yourself from frigid and icy winds and temperatures well below freezing in winter, I would have laughed at the idea that summer temperatures rarely dip below 90 degrees here. To call the heat oppressive is not an understatement.

But even though it can feel pretty unbearable, the warm weather has its selling points. Warm weather means that you can do things outside. Unlike in the winter when I was confined to the indoors, trying to keep out of the intense cold, summer lends itself to being outdoors. Now, it’s really easy to go take a bike ride, or a walk through the springs, or to sit outside near one of the springs and draw (I’ve only done this once or twice, but it was fun when I did). At least once a week, I’ve started to play soccer at a local university which has a full-sized, artificial turf field. We’ve had some really great pick-up games against the students who attend and it’s been a a really good way to get some exercise. It’s fun to be able to stay outdoors at night, too. It’s not an uncommon sight to walk out of the gates of my neighborhood to find some of the women who live here sitting out and playing cards together, or to find others in lawn chairs simply out chatting and enjoying a breeze every now and then. Often, I’m able to spend a good, warm night in Quancheng Square, relaxing and hanging out with friends. On nights like this we’ve chatted, played soccer in the square, attemped to fly kites, and watched the fountain displays that go off on either end of the square at night. This would have been unthinkable in January, but on a warm night in June or July it’s been great to be able to sit out and enjoy the outdoors.

Locals are out, too. On any given night, it’s not uncommon  to find lots of people out in the square doing any number of things: practicing calligraphy, ballroom dancing, in-line skating (this is VERY popular, especially with little kids who go zooming around lines of cones doing all kinds of crazy footwork), tai chi, playing with skip-its (SKIP-ITS?!?!?! Remember those? They advertised constantly on Saturday morning TV when I was a kid. They’re HUGE over here during these night-time congregations), line-dancing, playing hackey-sack, fishing, martial arts, etc. It’s fun just to sit and watch. As with almost everywhere in this city it seems amazing that there are so many people in one place, and that they are all in the midst of doing so many different things. There’s a tangible buzz in the square at night. It’s a nice feeling.

Eating outside is a big part of summer, too. Curbside restaurants have popped up everywhere. At dusk, tables and stools appear out of nowhere. Suddenly, sidewalks are filled with outdoor cafes and diners. People flock to these impromptu restaurants to eat Chinese style barbecue (lamb kebabs, mostly) and boiled peanuts and drink beer. The center of town is full of places just like this (one of the best being a place we call “the pool,” which is basically a restaurant next to a local swimming hole, where you can eat tasty, cheap food and watch the old men of the neighborhood swim laps). It’s become a favorite past-time of mine to go with friends to Old Ji’nan, find one of these places, and eat next to the canal there. Summer favorite foods like cold noodles, barbecue, crayfish boils and cold plum juice have replaced the heavier, warmer foods of winter, and with an abundance of fresh peaches, melons, and cherries to be bought at fruit stands, it’s easy to get a taste of summer through local produce.

Soon, we’ll be giving final exams and wrapping up yet another semester here. Soon, I’ll have been here for a year. One year. Doesn’t seem like it could even be. And yet… time here has gone so fast. There’s plenty more adventure yet to come, though, some of it almost immediately. After this weekend, a few friends and I are heading out to coastal town of Qingdao for a day or two to relax and check out the beach. Should be a fun trip. Stay tuned for reports on that, and more, later.

Class is over for the weekend. The bags are packed. The tickets are purchased. The room reservations are made. Supplies have been bought. The trip that has been in planning in some way or another since the middle of November is about to begin. It’s happening. All that stands between me and China’s wild, wild west is 36 hours on a train through the desert from Ji’nan to Urumqi. Can’t hardly wait. The next few days will be interesting (how will I survive in a small, contained space for over a day?), and when I am able to, I hope to give updates. However, detailed word (and certainly pictures) won’t be too available until afterwords. Stay tuned over the next two weeks or so for a full account of what will surely be the wildest trip of my life.

So I’ll admit it, I’ve been a little lazy with this blog for a while. The root of my laziness is perhaps my own perception that I’ve not really done too much that’s noteworthy lately. This is a bit of a misperception on my part, perhaps. In any case… updates have been a little slow. Given some recent events, I feel like I owe everyone some sort of general status check.

By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the earthquake here. In the event that you perhaps haven’t, I’ll fill you in. About a week ago, there was a fairly huge earthquake out in Qinghai Province in what is Southwestern China. The epicenter of the quake was not far from Sichuan province, which was the center of the deadly quake of 2008. Here in eastern China, everyone is fine and somewhat removed from everything. Qinghai is a long way away from Ji’nan. While everyone I meet is no doubt touched by the scale of the tragedy, it is in a very distant sense. There have been numerous memorials, telecasts, fundraisers and gestures of solidarity for those who have fallen victim to the quake. However, aside from large, official displays of mourning (flags flown at half-mast are amongst the most prominent of these), life seems to continue to function as it always does here.

Most importantly to all of you reading this, I suppose, is that I’m OK. This now raises my “Earthquake in China” percentage to 2-for-2. It’s a strange thought to me: Must it be that every time that I come to China, the country suffers a devastating earthquake? (In fact, it feels almost like the realization of the leading man in Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow who finds that there’s a direct link between places where he’s been and buildings which are blown up during air-raids in London during WWII). I hate to make it sounds like I’m making light of what is undoubtably a tragic event. But it seems like a very bizarre thing to me, especially given how close I was to the last earthquake and how strangely distant from me this one seems by comparison.

In every sense, life has continued to progress as it normally would.  The semester continues to progress. Classes continue to move forward. We’re rapidly approaching the mid-term for this semester (how can that be? We just started right?). Summer will be here before long, and it’s evident. The weather is getting much warmer, very quickly. Before long, I suspect that I will be sweating like crazy.

The activities that fill our time off are becoming more and more oriented towards being outdoors and enjoying this increase in temperature. Yesterday we played a game or two of American-style football at the University where we’ve played frisbee before. It was fun, considering I’ve not thrown a football or played a game of two hand touch in a VERY long time. The Chinese students, who gathered in pretty large numbers as spectators when we played frisbee, mostly found American style football baffling, I believe… or at least the confusion as to what was actually going on seemed to prevent any kind of crowd from gather to watch us play (which is what usually happens when we decide to play sports in public). Nonetheless, it felt good to be outside and active again.

We’re approaching the May holidays, and I have a pretty large-scale journey in front of me as I try to take full advantage of an 11 day vacation (see the post below for further details). Otherwise we continue to run along as normal here in Ji’nan, for which I’m quite thankful. I’ll continue with a few updates in the coming days, and will try to make some sort of huge update once I get back from my journey over the next few weeks. Keep tuned for more.

It’s almost vacation time again! That’s right, May 1st is International Labor Day, which is a national holiday over here. While the rest of the country is given three days off to celebrate, Aston employees fare a bit better. As we only have to teach on weekends, we’re given the weekend of Labor Day off. As we already have all of the weekdays surrounding that weekend free, we’re able to take what amounts to an 11 day vacation! So, what does one do with 11 free days in China. Travel, of course.

With 11 free days comes a great opportunity to really get out somewhere. It became very obvious for me (and a group of my friends) that we needed to have an adventure over the May holidays, because it provided us with a chance to get pretty far out there. Where will go on our adventure, you ask? West.

Ji'nan is near Qufu on the East of this Map. Kashgar and Urumqi are in the extreme northwest corner of the country.

Specifically, we’re going to Xinjiang, the largest province in China located in the extreme northwest. Our primary destinations are the cities of Urumqi and Kashgar, which you can see on the map above. In other words, we’re headed about as far west as you can go, and still stay in China. “What’s there,” you ask? Well… lots of things, including:

The Taklamakan Desert and the Karakoram Highway and remnants of the old Silk Road which Linked China to Central Asia and points further west.

Dunes in the Taklamakan Desert

Various branches of the Himalaya Mountains, which provide stunning backdrops for lakes and forests.

The Pamir Mountains, one of many branches of the Himalayas (others include the Altai, Tian Shan and Karakoram ranges) which rise into the region.

And… A totally unique cultural fusion. The legacy of the Silk Road has made this place a center of cultural interaction. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Old Town of the city of Kashgar (the place that movie makers chose to film the scenes for the film adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner which were supposed tohave taken place in Kabul).

An alley in Kashgar's Old Town, which was used during the filming of "The Kite Runner."

The cultural influence of China, the Asian Steppe, and Central Asia collide here. The result is a place unlike many others. The influence of Persian culture has been obvious in this region, as has the presence of trade and interaction with the further Eastern parts of China. However, the predominant cultural lineage of the people in this area is Turkic, meaning that they share a close kinship with all the Turkic-speaking people of Asia (Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, and yes even the modern day Turks in Istanbul). All in all it should be a fascinating trip both for epic landscape and vibrant culture.

I’ll admit, Xinjiang is a place that has captured my imagination for quite a while now. It’s not entirely unlike the allure of the American west: wide open, with epic landscapes and the feeling that you can only really get when you’re near the edge of something, out on a border. In the US this feeling comes, I think, from the vast expanse of largely unfilled space that makes up most of the distance between the Mississippi River and California. In China, it is undoubtably one’s proximity to a huge amount of strikingly different cultures that gives Xinjiang it’s feeling of adventure or vibrancy (for lack of a better word). In any case, it’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a long time. Not surprisingly then, when the option of going there was discussed with friends, we jumped at the opportunity.

This will end up being a journey of fairly epic proportions (and the word “epic” is perhaps overused and hyperbolic in many senses, but I can think of no other adequate way to describe the process of getting to west China from it’s eastern end). Imagine a road trip from Philadelphia to Seattle. Imagine taking that trip entirely by train. Imagine going there and back in roughly 11 days. I’m not sure I’m wholly prepared for it, but I know this… in the end, I think it will have been entirely worth it.

As plans progress I’ll be sure to keep you posted. Stay tuned for more.

Since yesterday, December 6, was St. Nicholas Day (a holiday that was always celebrated in my house growing up, and marked a “beginning” of sorts to the larger Christmas season), I thought I’d write a little bit about what I’ve experienced of Christmas in China. Of course, Spring Festival (or Lunar New Year, Chinese New Year or Tet as it is variously known) is the major winter holiday in this country. This year, Spring Festival won’t occur until nearly the middle of February. Christmas, however, does have a growing importance in China.

Slowly but surely, signs that it’s Christmas time have begun to emerge, even here in Ji’nan. Today, as I walked up the stairs to the third floor of the building where I work at Aston 3, I saw a familiar sight through the glass doors: A Christmas tree. At first, I was a little taken aback, as I didn’t realize that Aston even owned a fake tree. There it was, though, standing near to the entrance, newly assembled, the front desk staff busy adding adornments– mostly tinsel in multiple color varieties. This is the latest in a series of very subtle recognitions of the Christmas season throughout Ji’nan. A series of Christmas-themed bus-stop sized advertisements for iced-tea have  sprung up. They feature young Chinese people in their fuzziest holiday sweaters and scarves building snowmen and enjoying a refreshing beverage. Most of the businesses, hotels and restuarants that are western/geared towards westerners have installed some sort of Christmas decoration in their stores: The Crowne Plaza Hotel, the Simpson-Hotel (A 4 star, ping-pong themed Hotel near Quan Cheng Square), and WAL-MART have all put up some sort of Christmas display, often complete with lights and some representation of a tree.  The McDonald’s on Jing Er Lu where I grab my morning cup of coffee before work has even gone as far to put up a large holiday themed wall hanging, erect a plastic tree, and play pop-versions of Christmas songs over their speakers. It all gives a strange feeling of familiarity. Sitting there at 7:00 AM on Saturday, in a hazy state of half-sleep, drinking my coffee, I felt like I could have been back at home. Mostly, though, these signs are hard to notice. About half of Ji’nan is lit up like LasVegas all the time, and the addition of Christmas lights makes for a very  subtle, if not altogether unnoticed change in most cases. I find all of this very curious. I’ve been told that Christmas is a holiday which is observed by many people in China, but not in a major way. It does seem, though, that the commercial aspects of the day have certainly caught on over here.  We’ll see, as December 25th draws near, exactly how big of a deal this imported holiday is.

The next couple of weeks should be exciting, as I’ll be headed to Shanghai next Sunday, and probably Beijing the week after. I’ll have lots to report on, for sure. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do it from a brand new laptop (cross your fingers). More to come later.

So, I was writing an e-mail to some friends of mine back home, describing my life in Ji’nan. I was trying to paint a picture of what happens on a day to day basis here. What do I do when I’m not in class? Lots has happened to me even this week, but I can’t begin to sum it all up. There are so many little things that end up getting lost in the bigger picture of life in China. These small things are what make this country so vibrant and interesting. These are the things, I thought, that make this such an incredible experience… the small parts. I hope that someday I don’t get so used to being here that I take them for granted, but I think that it’s inevitable. For now, this is my attempt at adding some depth to my portrait of daily life in Ji’nan. Here’s what I wrote, it will have to do for now:

I’m in the midst of my “weekend,” that glorious recovery period of three days off that I get before heading back into the teaching fray of Friday afternoon through Sunday night. Things here are going well. There’s SOOO MUCH to recap that I find it difficult. In some senses, the most interesting things (what I’m eating, what I’m seeing in the markets, etc.) seem like rather mundane details to add into an email or a blog post… only because I live with them on a daily basis. They’re not though. They’re really incredible things that I wish that I could adequately describe… like what it’s like to be crammed into the bus for my morning commute, just a small part of the greater mass of humanity that travels the two blocks from my apartment on DiKou Street to Jing Er Street every day. Or the pure, unequivocal joy that is eating shaved mutton hotpot in the Muslim district in town with my good Chinese friend who invited me into HIS HOME, to eat said hotpot with HIS FAMILY (wow, was I a little embarassed to be there… felt a little like I was intruding). Or all of the really amazingly beautiful things I could say about kites… about the old men who fly them in the square in the center of town… about their amazingly beautiful colors… about the way that many of them are shaped like birds, and painted like birds, and swoop and dive like birds… about the way that at night people fly them with lights on the underside, so from anywhere near the public square, they can be seen in the sky, like Christmas lights, or little constellations… These are the things I find in my day to day life that I feel like I’m leaving out of my communications with people. They’re things that I notice, and hope that I don’t start to take for granted. I have a feeling I will, though.

Then there are the routine things, or the hard and fast details of my life here. Among other things, I’m finally taking private Chinese lessons to suppliment what I’m learning from just talking to people… it’s also teaching me how to read, for which I’m pretty grateful, as I’m now able to sort of identify stores based upon what their signs say. It’s an underrated ability, being able to read a sign. After doing some sightseeing on the vacation that we had for National Day I’ve gotten the travelers itch again. Suddenly, I’ve rediscovered my desire to see every last inch of this country, and so I’m trying to put those wheels in motion somehow. Going to start small, I think– tonight we’re headed up to Tai Shan, one of China’s 5 sacred mountains (some would say the “most sacred,” whatever that means) which also happens to be right in our backyard (about an hour away by bus). We’re going to grab a late bus to the mountain, climb it in the dark, and watch the sunrise from the peak. Should be fun… or at least something cool to do on a Wednesday night.

OK, I’ll give a more complete update when I get back from Tai Shan. Hopefully, I’ll have some good photos to go with it. More to come later.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is usually around mid or late September. It is a date that parallels the autumn and spring equinoxes of the solar calendar, when the moon is supposedly at its fullest and roundest. The traditional food of this festival is the mooncake, of which there are many different varieties.

Mmmmmm.... Mooncakes

The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the two most important holidays in the Chinese calendar, the other being the Chinese New Year (also known as Spring Festival), and is a legal holiday in several countries. Farmers celebrate the end of the summer harvesting season on this date. Traditionally, on this day, Chinese family members and friends will gather to admire the bright mid-autumn harvest moon, and eat moon cakes and pomelos together.

There’s also a really cool story about the origins of the mid-autumn festival. Like the other aspects of the day, the story about how Mid-Autumn Festival began centers around the moon. There are many versions of the origin story, but this is my favorite. It features Houyi, a godlike archer, Chang’e his wife, and a magical, pharmaceutical moon-rabbit. Here’s what Wikipedia offers in summary:

Houyi was an immortal, while Chang’e was a beautiful young girl, working in the Jade Emporer’s (the Emperor of Heaven) Palace as the attendant to the Queen Mother of the West (wife of the Jade Emperor), just before her marriage. One day, Houyi aroused the jealousy of the other immortals, who then slandered him before the Jade Emperor. Houyi and his wife, Chang’e, were subsequently banished from heaven, and forced to live by hunting on earth. He became a famous archer.Now at this time, there were 10 suns, in the form of three-legged birds, residing in a mulberry tree in the eastern sea; each day one of the sun birds would have to travel around the world on a carriage, driven by Xihe (a goddess, the ‘mother’ of the suns). One day, all 10 of the suns circled together, causing the earth to burn. The Emperor of China commanded Houyi to shoot down all but one of the suns. Upon the completion of his task, the Emperor rewarded Houyi with a pill that granted eternal life, and advised him: “Make no haste to swallow this pill; first prepare yourself with prayer and fasting for a year”. Houyi took the pill home and hid it under a rafter, while he began healing his spirit. While Houyi was healing his spirit, Houyi was summoned again by the emperor. Chang’e, noticing a white beam of light beckoning from the rafters, discovered the pill, which she swallowed. Immediately, she found that she could fly. At that moment, Houyi returned home, and, realizing what had happened, began to reprimand her. Chang’e flew out the window into the sky.

With a bow in hand, Houyi sped after her, and the pursuit continued halfway across the heavens. Finally, Houyi had to return to the Earth because of the force of the wind. Chang’e reached the moon, and breathless, she coughed. Part of the pill fell out from her mouth.  On the moon, she found a jade hare, and Chang’e commanded the animal to make another pill, so that she could return to earth to her husband.

As of today, the hare is still pounding herbs, trying to make the pill. As for Houyi, he built himself a palace in the sun as “Yang” (the male principle), with Chang’e as “Yin” (the female principle). Once a year, on the 15th day of the full moon, Houyi visits his wife. That is why, that night, the moon is full and beautiful.

It’s a hell of a story if you ask me. A little convoluted? Sure. But you can’t beat a magical moon rabbit who makes immortality pills. That’s good drama. From the “moon-pills” that the hare makes, are derived the mooncakes that are eaten on Mid-Autumn Festival. Currently, grocery stores are selling them in ENORMOUS quantities, and we’ve tried several varieties, including: five nut, sweet bean paste, and “egg” flavored. Honestly, they’re not bad, and I’d like to think I’ve acquired some sort of discerning taste for them.

Because the Mid-Autumn festival is on a lunar schedule, its calendar date shifts from year to year. This year, because of the way the lunar calendar falls, it falls remarkably close to National Day (which is ALWAYS celebrated on October 1). Essentially, what this means is that two breaks which are normally short have been combined into one superbreak. To celebrate, we’re getting out on the road and going “on holiday” as our British friends here in Ji’nan say.

Starting next Monday, September 28, I’ll be headed out West to Xi’an (西安), one of the great cities of China (or really all of Asia for that matter). It’s about a 15 hour train ride from Ji’nan, but it will be well worth the wait. A little bit about Xi’an: Xi’an is the capital of Shaanxi proince. I like to think of it as China’s “Gateway to the West” in the same way that St. Louis or Chicago is the US.

For years during China’s dynastic period, it was known as Chang’an (长安), and it was the cultural and political heart of the Chinese Empire. So, it’s a city with rich cultural heritage. In those times it was also the capital of dynastic China, so it’s famous for all of its ancient traditional buildings. There are many famous towers and walls. Most famous however, are the funerary sculptures from the mausoleum of China’s first emporer. These are known as the Terracotta Warriors, lifesize sculptures of an army (there are 5,000+ of these things) of soldiers set to guard the emporer’s eternal rest. They’re amongst the most famous landmarks in all of China (probably second only to the Great Wall). All in all it should be a great trip. Stayed tuned for more.

Xi'an: Famous for these guys