September 24th, 1999 was the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival. It is actually the 15th day of the 8th month on the Lunar Calendar. Some of you are familiar with this Chinese holiday and some of you are not. So I'll try my best to cater to both sides.

Honestly, or to be frank as most of my students say, I really don't know that much about the Festival. When I celebrate it at home, we simply get together for a dinner that night and eat moon cake for the next week until our faces burst. That's how it was at home, but here, there is more significance to it. You could say it's the Chinese version of Thanksgiving. It's very important to families.

There is a famous poem by Li Pai which talks of a scholar who is in some capital city. He sees the moonlight fall at the foot of the bed and he instantly thinks of his hometown and his family. In fact, it's the only Chinese poem I can recite (in Cantonese only, though). So the tradition of the full moon in the middle of autumn as a symbol of family is very strong.

Here on campus, many of the students thought about their families back in different cities and counties. Some have really come a far way to get to Wuhu. They miss being with the family on days like Mid-Autumn Festival. Although, they do get a 7-day holiday next week for National Day and many of them will go back home to be with their families. (However, here's the catch, they will come to school and do about 8 straight days of classes).

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, the moon started on the early in the evening and had a beautiful and eerie orange glow. It slowly climbed into the sky and became a brilliant white giving light to the campus. Because there aren't that many lights on the campus, the moonlight is really noticeable.

The foreign teachers were invited by one class to take part in a jiaozi (dumplings) party. I didn't go at first because I wasn't officially invited. They spent the time after classes rearranging part of the room and the jiaozi assembly line was started. The students made the dumplings themselves and they filled up about 8 desks worth. It was quite an impressive sight in the photo Terry took. Then, there was an assigned cook or two to boil the dumplings. When I came about an hour later, there was still a lot of uncooked jiaozi left and I imagine they were going to be there all night. I had a bowl and that filled me up enough.

I didn't really know the people at the jiaozi party, so I decided to see if any of my students were in their classrooms studying or watching the news on TV. Sure enough, I found a few of them. Bethany and I both teach this class, so we both went to their room. We sat with them and talked a while. There was no huge party like the other class and much less people.

Also, because it was Friday night, there was supposed to be a movie being broadcast throughout the building. We were going to watch Sense and Sensibility. Then we realized that the Freshmen were having a huge party and had taken the one and only VCR to play karaoke. Go figure. So there was no movie for us to watch. Well, the teachers still wanted to watch a movie, so we went back to the apartment and watched Uncle Buck with John Candy and Macaulay Culkin. It was a "real" family movie--a perfect way to finish off the Mid-Autumn Festival.