It’s the holiday season in China now, with the three-day mid-autumn festival and the week-long national day festivities this year occurring within a week of each-other. Such are the joys of operating on a lunar and a western calendar at the same time. As usual everyone has to make up for this loss of productivity by coming to work, or school, at the weekends. As I have two different jobs on weekdays and weekends, and as the weekend job involves teaching kids, some of whom now have normal school to go to and must have their classes switched to a weekday… Well, suffice to say a there has been a god-awful mess which I’ve managed to disentangle myself from with difficulty.
Mid-autumn festival has been and gone now, it was mainly notable as being the first chance for any sort of a rest since early July, but also involves the traditional activities of, um, eating moon cakes. To be fair, it’s the same as us eating chocolate eggs at Easter, only a bit more interesting. Perhaps. Moon cakes are dense pastry things with various different fillings, typically involving some kind of sweet bean paste. These are a very big deal indeed – everyone is presented with a box of moon cakes by their boss, which should be taken home, dissected, eaten, commented upon by the family.
So, back to work now, for a few days at least, then another break. I’ve got a lot of projects to finish.