Sunday 30 September

Street scene with the full moon shining
 through the trees

Friday was the last day of teaching for a week, while the college, students and most of China have a week's holiday for the Mid-Autumn Moon festival.

Since ancient times, there have been many legends about the moon in China. For the Chinese, the moon is symbolized as being holy, pure, and noble. Over tens of thousands of poems describing the moon have been recorded.

Mooncakes
Photo: Miss Tam Chiak

The moon's round shape also corresponds to the cyclic concepts of Taoism, like the eight diagrams. That's why Chinese people are fixated on the moon and view round shapes as representing perfection.

Fancy some bean soup or
spicy deep fried crabs?

The college and surrounds are now like a ghost town, but the town is jumping. This is one of the two biggest Chinese festivals, the other being the spring New Year festival. These are times that Chinese families get together - and among other things, eat.

The all singing, all dancing kebab stall

I think that there here are a couple of very strong similarities between the traditional Chinese and Italian cultures – the importance of family and food.

It appears to me that the Chinese penchant for the huge variety of noodles and dumplings is rivalled only by that of Italians  pastas and sauces.

On the way, we passed a small street fair and a number of specialist food stalls, including one with two guys selling kebabs while dancing to unbelievably loud dance music.

Dumpling restaurant

Xue busily texting during dinner

For example , tonight I went into town with Xue Gong Ling , a student from Wenzhou I met while practicing tai chi in the park.

He is staying in college during the break because of the distance from his home town, and he invited me to dinner at his favourite dumpling restaurant.

We went into a part of Quzhou that I hadn’t been to before, near the main mall and went in to the restaurant. It was very simple and quite plain with a very limited menu – a few choices of dumplings and soups. He ordered some pork and some shrimp dumplings, and a light soup with very thin flat noodles and bok choy which was simple but good.

Dumplings and the dipping vinegar

Xue had a sort of fruit jelly dish. The dumplings were something else. They have to be eaten carefully, as they contain a scalding broth along with the filling.

Bite taken out of dumpling to release
steam

The idea is to bite off a small piece and let the steam escape and then eat it carefully without spilling it on yourself. I’m not sure how they make them with the liquid inside, but they do it somehow. This is very similar to what is commonly known as "Shanghai Dumplings".

Anyway it was a great night out, and another insight into Chinese culture in the area.