Mooncake madness. For weeks, the mooncake, signature food of Mid-Autumn Festival, took over our world. Mooncakes were everywhere. Yesterday was Mid-Autumn Day.















I celebrated first by going to China Post to mail Christmas gifts home. (Yes, it was a major holiday in China, but post offices were open, as they usually are, seven days a week. And, yes, it was time. The shipment will take 8-12 weeks to reach the U.S.) As always, it was an adventure. Several of my gifts were dis-allowed, bu xing, despite their obvious innocence. And then there was the packing procedure. Parcels in China are packed by postal employees, not the sender. (Two guys at the counter with me were sending a domestic shipment of about a thousand condoms, quite a process to behold.) This was not the first time that the packer selected what looked like the perfect box, packed my items, then rejected that box for the next smaller size and crammed it all in. I have concluded that most China Post packers I’ve met are directly descended from ancient practitioners of foot binding.

Next I took the scenic ride on Lanzhou’s Number 26 bus, our (only? I’m not sure) double decker. I rode the upper deck from its origin in Beimiantan along the Yellow River from the Yantan Bridge all the way through the city of Lanzhou to the West Lake Park and the site of the Yellow River Mother. I confess that Huang He Mu Qing was a disappointment . . . the hype had me expecting a much larger statue, looking more integrated with the river herself. Yet the Mother’s beatific smile reassured me that she was worth the trip, and if I doubted, there was the informal concert in the park nearby. I ordered a bottle of yoghurt at a sidewalk café and settled in to enjoy the performance that featured traditional instrumentals, vocal music, and spoken poetry.



Meanwhile, modern China zipped along in the foreground.












A final word about the moon cakes. They have vanished! Ubiquitous for so long, the only trace I saw today was a vacant display table in my local bakery. Where is the half-price sale we expect and even, sometimes, hold out for in the U.S.? And what has become of all the left-over moon cakes? Fed to the hogs? Dumped on the overseas market? Poured into the cement mixer trucks that constantly cruise the avenues of our fair city? I’m mystified.