Mid-Autumn Festival, also called the Moon or the Mooncake Festival. It is the second most important festival, or holiday, in the Chinese year, after Chinese New Year.
This festival celebrates the moon and, because the moon symbolizes reunions, people also spend their time reuniting with family. And, of course, eating mooncakes.
The Holidays
As Chinese holidays use their lunar calendar, the date of the festival varies year to year, but it is usually in September or early October.
It is usually after Teachers’ Day and before National Week. Some years it gets combined with National Week to create an extra-long holiday. But not this year. This year, it is two separate holidays, over a week apart.
Teachers’ Day
Teachers’ Day is a bigger holiday than Teachers Appreciation Week is in America. In America, teachers are constantly unappreciated. However, in China for Teachers’ Day, many parents give their children presents for their teachers. A few of my coworkers got gifts from their students.
I didn’t. My students don’t like me just yet, but I have been yelling quite a bit to try and get the rowdy hooligans in line. Maybe next year, I’ll get something. Assuming, of course, that I’m still here and haven’t gone off to a new country.
But, my employers do appreciate me. They gave us lots of things, even if I did have to go to the office to get them for everyone that works at the training center. I walked half an hour to the office, grabbed 5 gift bags, and walked half an hour home. Then, I had to walk another half hour to work with the 4 extras I had. They weren’t all that light either! But they were useful. And I did get cake and iced tea when I made it in.
The walking was worth it 
I ate so many strawberries!
Mooncake Festival
For the Mid-Autumn Festival, the training center gave everyone some mooncakes. Unfortunately, these were really fancy ones with eggs inside and were somehow crunchy. I’m not really sure how an egg can be crunchy without the eggshell and I didn’t really want to find out.
Fancy mooncakes 
The inside with egg yolks
I did cut off a little bit of the side of the mooncake so that I could say I’ve tried it. It was very bland. I wasn’t brave enough to try a bit in the middle with the crunchy egg after hearing a coworker complain about it for a week. I just gave all mine to a friend who likes them.
There is also some sort of Valentine’s Day-like holiday at the same time. But it doesn’t seem to be talked about that much. I did find some decorations for it, though.
The Celebration
For the last day of work before the festival, the training center decided that we would all go out and eat some barbeque at a popular local restaurant. I love barbeque back in America, but I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the Chinese version.
However, I shouldn’t have worried. It was all very delicious, if a bit spicy.
To help us celebrate, our big boss and big, big boss were there. The big boss is very nice and will push food and drinks on anyone sitting close to her. The big, big boss doesn’t really speak English.
So, when a coworker and I got there, the big boss handed us a menu and asked what we wanted to eat. Most things were between 10 and 15 yuan. And we picked out quite a few things. We got potatoes, beef, lamb, rice, eggplant, and probably something else.
Now, all that food didn’t go only to us. It was partly shared between the two big long tables we had commandeered (the big boss was saving the seats for two hours!). And other people were ordering tons of other food as well.
Edamame, some sort of meat, noodles 
Potatoes and tofu 
Eggplant, salad, corn
And then, they brought out the beer. There were 2 tall containers filled with 3 liters of beer, one for each table. My table drank so much (thanks, big boss!) that we got a second one. Which we drank!
They also had some party games. The first was a foreigner was partnered with a local to get the foreigner to read something in Chinese. I was told I did fairly well. Then, it was charades using some of the phonics words. Finally, we had to solve some riddles. Mine was easy – “What word is always pronounced wrong?”
I got a fan and some more mooncakes for my troubles.
My famous Chinese phrase 
Flower mooncakes? I may haven’t to actually try these
Too Much Work
How I didn’t actually get a day off as required by my contract, again. I’m just getting more money in my next paycheck. While I like money, I did come to China to travel.
This is getting too workaholic for me.
Luckily, I have a vacation planned for National Week! I’m crossing all my fingers and toes and praying to everyone that it doesn’t turn out like my last one.
My TEFL Adventure 