an abba autumn festival

Chengdu, Sichuan Province (19/09/2013)

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.

 

As a reward he was given an elixir by the Empress of Heaven, Wangmu, which if drunk would render him immortal and cause him to become a celestial being. Unwilling to part from his beloved wife, Chang E, however, he gave it to her to keep safe.

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.

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.

Outside the full moon is shining and we decide to finish the night in typically Chinese style.

 

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.