Mooncakes, protests & harem pants

The Chinese Mid-Autumn festival is upon us, and that means moon cakes!  The festival is on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese calendar, which this year is September 30th.  A moon cake is a fruit/seed filled round pastry.  Every day you see people walking home from work with beautifully decorated packages of moon cakes.  Even Starbucks gets in on it.

Mooncake display at a Starbucks

There seem to be varying levels of craftsmanship in these moon cakes, from the individually packaged ones in a Wal-Mart bin to ones made in one of the many awesome French bakeries around the Guamao.  Steve thinks that he got the shaft and got the moon cakes at the office that no one wanted.  I think they are sort of tasty, but not a pretty as some I have seen.

Our box of moon cakes

Onto more serious subjects.  You may have heard of the protests in Mainland China regarding the Japanese trying to take ownership of the Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.  The bad feelings between the Chinese & the Japanese is a long story, but things are really heating up here.  Today was particularly bad as September 18th is the anniversary of the Japanese invasion of China in 1931 and the occupation that lasted 14 years.  Friends that have Japanese people working the front desks at their embassies have had to move them behind the scenes for their safety.  People have looted Japanese stores and major car manufacturers have shut down (Nissan, Mazda, etc..) in other parts of China. Its all very government encouraged and controlled so far here in Beijing.  Trying to get to Mandarin class today, my subway stop was jammed (more than normal) and I came out onto Liangmaqiao which is near the Japanese embassy and which the government had closed, right into the middle of a protest.

What you can't see is the sides of the streets smashed with people covered in the Chinese flag and police everywhere.  The military helicopters circling overhead.  It seemed pretty tame on the way to class, but as I approached Liangmaqiao on my way home, there was definitely a different energy. Lots of young men, in their early 20s or so were running down the sidewalks with home made protest t shirts waving the Chinese flag.  They were really amped.  This is obviously all government sanctioned & controlled (it wouldn't happen otherwise), but you could feel that the line between chaos and control was growing thinner and could be crossed by some accidental incident.  I felt perhaps, if the right thing happened, this crowd of pumped up young men could have mob mentality take over.  But, thankfully, I just had to fight my way into the subway past thousands of sweaty armpits and ride home.  I just spoke to one of the other parents at the bus stop about how I ran smack into the protests today and he (a New Zealander), mentioned that I should be a bit more cautious as there is some anti-American sentiment laced in there because the Chinese feel we are supporting the Japanese.  My fault for choosing September 18th to get off at the subway stop on a closed street near the Japanese embassy. On Thursday, I will go one stop further and walk back.

On to MUCH lighter subjects.

Funny thing- I went to get Oleg off the late bus today because he had "iPad games" after school.  This was the first session and he loved it so much he got off the bus playing air guitar.  Cute.

WTH?  I don't know about Cleveland, but MC Hammer -style harem pants have invaded Beijing.  Seriously?  I'm expected to wear these to look fashionable?  They are in every shop I go in, Zara, French Connection, etc... I'm seeing them on the streets among the fashionistas as well. They look cute on the right woman, but on my American arse?  Not so sure....

And by the way, if I see one more willow-thin, gorgeous Chinese woman on the street eating french pastry or ice cream I'm gonna scream.

Well, that's all for today. Zai jian (Goodbye)