Moon Cakes

We are on holiday – that’s right! Four weeks into the school year and we are already on holiday. It is the autumn festival here in China – something about a goddess making the wrong choice for love and ending up on the moon? I may have got that garbled but anyway everyone is giving or receiving Moon Cakes and/or going on holiday. These moon cakes started showing up last week in school – Brenda received some in a beautiful gift box from a student. Then we began to see people carrying them on the street and next the school gave us each a box full. We were intrigued – they look very beautiful, but then we tasted some! The first one was OK – well not great but edible – a green paste inside that we are told is bean curd. The rest have some bitter tasting meat filling – not good.

Despite the cakes, we do approve of the idea of a holiday! We visited Xi’an, the famous old capital and the best preserved walled city in China. Our hotel was right in the centre of town – we looked out at the Bell Tower and just down the street was the Drum Tower both of which are well over a thousand years. Fortunately our hotel was much newer and very comfortable. Yesterday, we walked all over the central district – we visited the Museum of the Forest of Stone Steles, a palace where thousands of stone calligraphy tablets are displayed. We also walked on the City Wall and visited the Great Mosque – the city has a large Moslem population and actually is the start of the ancient Silk Road.

We also did a lot of souvenir shopping as each of these attractions was surrounded by a gauntlet of tourist shopping places. Actually the shopping was fun – Brenda bought some silk things and I bought a backpack. We also spent some time sightseeing in the Moslem Quarter and had dinner there last night – mostly it was skewered and barbecued meat and beer for me. Brenda found it a bit too ‘authentic’ to enjoy much food.

Monday was a heavy-duty sightseeing day. We paid for a guide and a van and set off with 4 other people to see several locations. We saw the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, a very beautiful Buddhist monastery. Then we went to the famous Terra Cotta Warriors – a huge and impressive site. Afterwards we went to the Huaching Hot Springs that was developed as a winter palace by a Tang dynasty emperor and later the Banpo Museum, a museum of a Neolithic civilization. It was a very full day! But we felt we got a good value for our money. Tuesday we left Xi’an to travel to Shanghai.

We met some nice people in Xi’an – a couple of midwives from Australia whom we chatted up and exchanged emails with. We also chatted over dinner for about 40 minutes with Lisa, our waitress at the Delhi Curry House, which was near our hotel. We left her with a Canadian pin and our best wishes. A volunteer guide named Sophia also escorted us around the Terra Cotta Warriors. She was very helpful and pleasant and made the time much easier for us. So we have not been lonely traveling by ourselves.

Now we are in Shanghai – a big modern city for sure. It is all lights and glitz and people everywhere! Tuesday was mostly a travel day. Brenda got a haircut in the morning and I went and bought some souvenirs and also toured the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower. Then we set off for Shanghai, a trip that ended up taking too long. We arrived at the airport early and waited about 2 hours for the flight. Then after arriving in Shanghai. We took the bus instead of the bullet train, which took longer, and then our taxi couldn’t make its way to the hotel because of the crowds of people out to watch the fireworks and laser show at the harbour. Finally, we arrived at the Astor Hotel and they told us that they didn’t have a room for us. So we set off with our bags and a bellboy to a nearby hotel. We were a bit po’d because it was nearly 9 before we got settled in, but it ended well as we got a better room than we would have and after some arguing we also got our breakfast included. We met an interesting Australian couple at breakfast – he was a retired teacher and author of educational workbooks. They gave some info on what to do and not do in Shanghai – he had had a camera and cell phone pick pocketed on the Bund. More email addresses were exchanged.

Our hotel is located at one end of the Bund – a former German section along the waterfront. The big attraction seems to be a long promenade along the harbour front with magnificent views of the Bund and across the river to the newer Pudong area with all the tallest buildings. We walked the Bund in the morning and also did the east section of Nanjing Road, a famous shopping area. It was very crowded so we didn’t walk too far but eventually did some side street shopping and Brenda ended up buying some fancy shoes. Then we went back to the waterfront and took a 3-hour boat ride down the river as far as the Yangtze River. We met an Amercian couple on the boat ride – he was an agricultural specialist with the American embassy in Shanghai. I teased him that he was really James Bond!

After the cruise we came back to the hotel to regroup and then took a taxi to the French Quarter to have dinner – lots of clothing and shoe stores and restaurants. We ended up eating Chinese in memory of our friends, Ben and Tracy, who claimed that Shanghai has the best food in the world. We made an excellent dinner of cashew chicken, shrimp, vegetables and rice. We got back to the hotel about 8:30 and enjoyed a wonderful view of the lights along the harbour again. I resolved to return the next night and photograph the lights. Tomorrow, we hope to see the Yuyuan Gardens and Shanghai Old Street.
First Posted October 4, 2006