Eric's Beijing Diary

I grew up in Japan, but this is the first time in my life that I even thought of having Thanksgiving dinner at a Japanese restaurant. This evening the members of the Eastside Fellowship gathered at a Japanese restaurant in Liangmaqiao that Charley found for us.

The whole idea of the Eastside Fellowship grew out of the fact that as people finish university and begin their career, they tend, very often, to find work in the Chaoyang District. Several times I have seen people try to live with the daily commute from the university district (Haidian), but it usually ends with them giving up the idea of trying to live both lives. So they move to the east side, and I never see them again. So I decided to have a dinner once a month or so for folks on the east side who don't seem to have as many opportunities for fellowship as they did when they were here.

I have said it several times before, but the best place in the world to live if you like Japanese food is Beijing. Plenty of Japanese restaurants in Tokyo, of course, but who can afford them? The all you can eat place we went to this evening cost us each 69 kuai. About 10 US dollars. Certainly not an every day thing, of course, but not that bad for an occasion like this. An American English teacher came along and had a Power Point presentation about the history of Thanksgiving.