Eric's Beijing Diary

Very pleasant outing today with the volunteers from the Haidian English Fellowship. We were at Beihai Park downtown. I haven't spent a lot of time at that park, and I was afraid that it was going to be swarming with people, but it was actually not too bad. We had lunch together, with everyone throwing what they had in the middle of a bit sheet spread out on the ground and all of us just helping ourselves. It was an interesting arrangement. Fortunately, Daniel had brought a couple Frisbees, and someone came up with a football, so we were busy looking like a bunch of Americans for awhile.

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Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival. It's listed as one of China's major holidays, but I don't know if that's really true, because it is pretty short, actually. So this isn't anything like Spring Festival. But it is a very old traditional Chinese holiday, so in that sense, I guess you'd have to say that it is relatively important. Not the kind of thing that sends the whole country back to their home towns, like Spring Festival, but significant in the sense that the whole country celebrates it.

I've noticed in recent years that the moon cakes are getting a little more varied. Had a couple today that were designed like French tea cakes. Really good. Some of the folks were planning to stay for the evening festivities, but I had sorta promised a house church that I would join their Monday evening English Corner.