It’s that time of year again here in China. In the same week, we celebrated Teacher’s Day and the Mid-Autumn Festival. It was filled with gifts and cards from parents to teachers, as well as moon cakes.

For anyone not familiar with moon cakes in Chinese society, they are a traditional food eaten in honor of the moon goddess “Chang’e” (pinyin: Cháng’é,  嫦娥). They are little cakes usually filled with either sweetened lotus paste or red bean paste and usually contain salted egg yolk in the center. There are, however, other fillings that include using nuts as well as savory items. They are also quite greasy and dense, and most Chinese actually don’t like eating store-bought moon cakes because they think they are too sweet. I took home a bunch of them as well as a giant tin filled with a full-sized moon cake that I had to cut into many slices and put into my freezer (because no one else wanted to take it). There was some donating and re-gifting going on that afternoon.

The weekend before this, I went to a charity event where we made moon cakes for underprivileged kids from Sichuan who are now living and going to school here in Shanghai.

Something else I wanted to show was a drawing that one of my former students from last year (Oscar) made for me. I thought it was so cute, so I put it up on the wall next to my desk.

That is it for the September celebrations. The next big holiday will be coming up at the beginning of October. More to come after that.