Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Last night was the September full moon, which makes it Mid-Autumn Festival, in which Chinese families get together and people give each other unpleasant-tasting (to us!) Moon-Cakes

We ate with Hongwei and Yujin, HW's mum and dad, YJ's two brothers and their wives, and two of YJs young cousins, in the restauranton the ground floor of our hotel. Our first social event with other Chinese people - and I think we did well. We had managed to find, agree on, buy and hand over appropriate gifts (also a first) and sustained various conversations - interpreted by YJ, HW and the cousins - about food, dogs, weather, etc. A friendly, relaxed, tasty (of course) and generally successful evening.

I like starting to figure out the giving thing. It just didn't properly click with us for a while, this whole business of fighting to spend significant amounts of money on other people: we're much more used to trying to avoid that kind of thing. The night before last, however, we managed to steal the bill at the restaurant and pay it before Hongwei could (the first time we've managed to pay for anything at all that we've done together with them here) and I really enjoyed it. We will have to be significantly more devious to get round Yujin (not with us that night, as he often works into the evenings), as he is tall, strong, sharp and very determined - but I'm anticipating the challenge with relish.

- Mark