Mid-Autumn festival meals and cai ma

Today was the mid-Autumn festival in China – it’s the 2^nd biggest festival after New Year and occurs on the full moon. It involves families getting together and eating and drinking. Until recently train prices doubled at this time of year to take advantage of all those needing to travel to visit relatives, but the government mandated that train prices must remain the same through this time – something that is unimaginable in our privatised train companies.

In the morning Xiao Li and I went to play table tennis. After being used to playing in the dark, it was a great liberation to play in daylight, despite the heat. Then his wife’s mother called him to do the cooking for the evening meal. He is actually a very good cook. At 4pm we went to Xiao Wei’s parents’ house to get ready for the evening meal. Tan and Xiao Wei had forgone breakfast and lunch in order to be hungry enough to eat loads. At 5pm we started the meal which was excellent of course and would have been better if Xiao Li hadn’t put a massive chunk of extremely hot chilli tofu in my rice.

Having a nice family meal at Xiao Wei's parents' house

After a bit, I was challenged to cai ma again, and duly obliged. I did pretty well and succeeded in getting a couple of the blokes quite drunk!

Xiao Li beating one of the blokes at cai ma.

Me beating the same bloke a bit later on the roof.

We returned to Xiao Li’s house to prepare for the late evening meal. He cooked some crabs and I prepared a nice load of Pimms with an assortment of melon, kiwi, orange and mint, which was appreciated by all. I made it quite strong (not too much lemonade) and I think it had the desired effect. About 12 of us ate on the roof, accompanied by candles and incense sticks, with fireworks going off around us, and a huge moon in the sky.

On the roof of Xiao Li's house drinking Pimms and eating crabs and barbequed duck intestines

Then we started playing cai ma again and I lost enough to not remember what time I went to bed….