一年中秋又来到，远在他乡的我，心中只有一个信念－－祝家中的亲人们永远幸福安康！
(Yī nián zhōngqiū yòu
lái dào, yuǎn zài tāxiāng de wǒ, xīnzhōng zhǐyǒu yīgè
xìnniàn--zhù jiāzhōng de qīnrénmen yǒngyuǎn xìngfú ānkāng!)
The Mid-Autumn Day
approaches. Although I am far from home, I have this one conviction
in mind- I wish my family happiness and blessings forever.
Traditional Chinese Autumn Festival Message
In ancient times the world had ten suns. They scorched the earth and shrivelled the crops, dried up the wells and made the people poor and sick. In due time, a hero arose named Hou Yi, a man endowed with superhuman strength, who climbed to the top of the tallest mountain and shot down nine of the suns, leaving the last to provide light and warmth and hope in the daytime.
Now
Hou Yi had a deceitful, selfish apprentice named Peng Meng who had
seen his master give Chang E the immortality elixir. Waiting until
his master had left one day, he seized his chance, rushing into Chang
E's chambers, sword drawn, demanding she give him the bottle.
Chang
E was a rather clever woman but even she knew she could not win
against the armed apprentice. She drew the elixir out from the drawer
of her dressing table and did the only thing she could think of.
She
drank the elixir herself.
Immediately,
she ascended to Heaven, thwarting Peng Meng's plans but forever
separating herself from her beloved husband. Dwelling in the Palace
of the Moon she could only watch over him when the sun retired and
the stars appeared, never to be able to speak to or hold him again.
Hou
Yi, upon returning to his house, knew immediately what had happened
and was distraught. Unable to vent his anger upon his apprentice who
had fled, he instead decided to create a special place in honour of his wife, laying out an incense table in the garden and
decorating it with the sweetmeats and fruits Chang E had loved.
When
the people heard about what had happened to their beloved hero and
his wife they too gathered to make their own special altars, adorning
them with hundreds of specially baked cakes, formed in the shape of a
full moon.
And
so the Autumn Moon Festival was born.
In
reality, it means we get four days off work, the roads become
gridlocked as thousands of Chinese people try to return to see their
families and a lot of moon cake gets eaten.
Moon
cakes look like small, decoratively latticed, shiny pork pies, with
a variety of flavourings and additives inside, ranging from fruit
and nuts, to red bean paste and lotus. The type we buy turns out to
have a jelly baby green centre with the same consistency as Turkish
delight and a strange chemically sweet after-taste.
I
decide not to finish mine when it starts taking the enamel off my
teeth.
We
spend
our holiday seeing
two of the most famous buildings here in Chengdu. The first is The
Global Centre, which is the biggest shopping centre in the world. It
has five floors of shops, an IMAX
cinema, an ice-rink, a glass bridge and a Water
Park
complete with its own beach. Everything
glitters gold, the floors are shiny marble and the escalators have
LED jellyfish swimming up and down the sides. There are palm trees
and eateries and a huge domed ceiling to let in the light; boutiques
and beauty salons and an arcade palace.
It makes the Bullring look like a child's dollhouse.
In
a country that is supposed to embody the Communist
ideal of shared wealth, however, it's hard not to think of this symbol of
Capitalism as a great big white elephant in the room. Not that I'm
complaining- anyone who knows me well knows I am always happy to shop
(preferably with other people's money) - but it seems wrong knowing that ten stops down the subway line in the
Tibetan quarter there are people with no legs and crippled hands
begging for a few yuan. That to get to the hostel this morning I
passed a man washing his hands in a puddle on the pavement.
Needless
to say, I leave without buying anything.
Wenshu Monastery, on the other hand, is a calm oasis of religious reflection. The mist rolls around the temple eaves, making stone dragons appear and then disappear again, the silence is only broken by the occasional bird song, and in the lovingly tended ponds in the temple grounds, brightly coloured fish break the surface to search for food. Inside one of the temples we creep up three flights of stairs, past the Buddhist library and meditation rooms to reach the top where lies the Room of One Thousand Buddhas. It's as impressive as it sounds- the walls lined with tiny golden Buddhas in different positions surrounding a huge statue of the Buddha in the centre of the room, ringed with flowers and fruit and the golden cushions for worshippers.
Outside are hundreds of shops and stalls selling prayer beads and jade, roasted chestnuts and noodles and tiny wooden models of the Buddha. There are vegan restaurants and tea houses and people chatting and playing Mah Jong. We pass a man casually carrying a dead turtle down the street.
We, however, are having Hot Pot for tea as it is K's birthday.
This
hotpot is a lot more successful than our previous attempt in Beijing,
where in
a bizarre set of circumstances we ended up ordering what we wanted by
speaking to the restaurant owner's nephew over the phone who spoke
English. One
of our friends almost ate
raw tofu because
we weren't sure how long things took to cook and fishing
things out of the Hot Pot with chopsticks became a strategic
nightmare (especially
as anything dropped on the table must be left as it is considered
'dead'). In
the end the
waitress ended up plating up all of our food over an hour's meal. We
couldn't even give her a tip because they don't do that in China.
This time, however, all goes well. Having had weeks to master chopsticks
nothing is dropped, we can now gauge how long things must cook
for and K has brought along her Chinese friends who order for us.
'Chicken
stomach.'
Outside
the full moon is shining and we decide to finish the night in
typically Chinese style.
Wenshu Monastery, on the other hand, is a calm oasis of religious reflection. The mist rolls around the temple eaves, making stone dragons appear and then disappear again, the silence is only broken by the occasional bird song, and in the lovingly tended ponds in the temple grounds, brightly coloured fish break the surface to search for food. Inside one of the temples we creep up three flights of stairs, past the Buddhist library and meditation rooms to reach the top where lies the Room of One Thousand Buddhas. It's as impressive as it sounds- the walls lined with tiny golden Buddhas in different positions surrounding a huge statue of the Buddha in the centre of the room, ringed with flowers and fruit and the golden cushions for worshippers.
Outside are hundreds of shops and stalls selling prayer beads and jade, roasted chestnuts and noodles and tiny wooden models of the Buddha. There are vegan restaurants and tea houses and people chatting and playing Mah Jong. We pass a man casually carrying a dead turtle down the street.
We, however, are having Hot Pot for tea as it is K's birthday.
This time, however, all goes well. Having had weeks to master chopsticks
nothing is dropped, we can now gauge how long things must cook
for and K has brought along her Chinese friends who order for us.
On the
other hand this does mean that there are a lot of dishes I don't
recognise. I politely point to one of the dishes that looks a little
like a cross between a white stringy jellyfish and a mushroom and
ask.
'Jeremy,
what is this?'
He
smiles. 'You know cow's have four stomachs? This is the first.'
'And
that?' I point at something flat, brown and spiky, laid in strips on
a plate.
'Fourth
stomach of the cow.'
'And
this?' I point at a white, spiky strip
in
resignation.
'Chicken
stomach.'
'Jeremy,
is there anything you have ordered that is not stomach?'
He
thinks and then points over to a plate of kebab sticks with tiny
lumps of dark red meat on them. 'This is not stomach.'
'Great,'
I smile. 'What
is it?'
'Chicken
heart.'
I stick
to the dumplings.
We go to
a karaoke bar, or as it's known in China, KTV.
Inside
we pass
rooms full of large groups of Chinese people singing very seriously.
If we knew
any Chinese we could have
had a stab
at singing the traditional songs.
Instead,
we end up
singing a lot of Abba very loudly and with die hard enthusiasm.
K's
Chinese friends are understandably a little bemused by this and it is
perhaps the strangest Autumn Festival celebration they have ever had-
watching a group of English people sing Swedish songs very badly.
But it
is a celebration none the less. Of birthdays, of festivals, of being in China and loving it.
And if
there's one thing being in China has taught me, it's that you don't
have to understand what's going on to have a good time.
