Mid-Autumn and Mooncakes

October 1 was National Day, the celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China. We were fortunate to be here on the 60^th anniversary of the founding. Sixty is an important number for the Chinese because, as I understand it, their calendar runs in 12 year cycles (5 x 12 = 60) and sixty is considered a life cycle. There was much excitement and flowers all over the city leading up to the Big Day. We watched a gigantic military display in the form of a parade in the morning. Although the parade took place less than 5 miles from where we live, we did not want to join the thousands (millions?) of people there.

Combined with the National Day holiday is the Mid-Autumn Festival. I have been trying to get a grasp on this holiday, but so far I can only say it involves families and moon cakes. We were given some moon cakes and based on my admittedly western preferences, the packaging for the moon cakes is far superior to the taste.

Maybe we should have eaten the packages.

To Paraphrase Tony the Tiger: It's Great!

If you visit Orlando, you go to Disney World. When you visit Beijing, you must make a trek to the Great Wall. On a beautifully sunny day, we made sure to cross that off our list before our first month was over.

The Huangyaguan section of the Wall is about two hours from Beijing (three if you take a "shortcut"). A road approaches the Wall in a river valley. We easily gained access to the Wall, but it was literally all uphill from there.

I continued beyond the restored section to stone steps climbing the side of the mountain, surrounded by vegetation. It was so refreshing to step into the cool shade after the radiating heat of the Wall. From a perch high above our starting point, the view was spectacular—mountains around as far as I could see.

And just to make the experience complete, two peregrine falcons soared overhead as I descended.