Mid-Autumn Festival, Meishan Longgong

Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15th Day of the 8th lunar month.  China's national day is October 1st, it makes sense that the two might overlap every once in a while!  This year, they did with a vengeance. September 30th was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a festival where everyone gives moon cakes wrapped in beautiful boxes!  The boxes are beautiful, but most people are not fans of moon cakes.  Moon cakes are similar to fruit cakes, everyone once in a while you can get a good one but it is rare and most people would rather just move on!

Well, for my Mid-Autumn Festival I was delighted to be invited to join an ex-student and his family for dinner in a restaurant.  They came to pick me up, as I slide into the back seat with my ex-student I couldn't help noticing the military style hat on the dashboard.  The hat with the pin of the CPC proudly displayed on it.  Richard then smiled and said "Let me introduce you to my parents.  My father works high up in the government, I don't know how to say it.  My mother works at Yuelu Mountain, if you ever want a tour let me know."  I think I gulped really loudly at this point, but no one seemed to notice. We went to a dinner and I have to say, this was the smoothest dinner I have ever been to.  Richard translated almost everything to the best of his ability, I toasted people and impressed them with my ability to drink red wine.  Which to those of you who know me from home know my tolerance is not particularly impressive.  But it turns out Richard's godfather is a high up from Guizhou Provence and they have invited me to visit them in Guizhou Provence and I think I will take them up on it.  Here is the part of the evening where I realized just how important Richard's father was.  Richard had to crop his dad out of all my photos from the evening!

 So national day I took it easy and prepped for a week of my friend Andy.  But once he was here it was a week of eating, games, and visiting Changsha. My favorite excursion and possibly the most difficult was the trip to Meishan Longgong, Something Mountain Dragon Palace.  It was beautiful.  It took 6 hours to get it and was the most draining trip I have been on in a while.

Here was our transportation for the day:
1. Taxi to the Train Station only to find out there were no tickets to Xinhua.
2. Taxi to the West Bus Station.
3. Bus to Xinhua (5.5 hours)
4. Bus to Meishan Longgong Parking lot
5. Ferry Boat
6. Bus to the Cave
7. Boat ride in the cave.  (Watch your head!)
8. Bus back to boat
9. Boat back to parking lot
10.  Bus back to Xinhua.

11.  Bus from Xinhua East Bus Station to the regular Bus Station
12. Bus from Xinhua Reg. Bus Station to Changsha South Bus Station.
13.  Taxi home!

For one hour at a cave it was a bit much.  But the cave was awesome!  It was lit up on the inside with tons of colored lights.  Some of the other tourists (We were the only foreigners) were grating on us a bit, they were smoking, touching the walls that said "Don't Touch", and of course climbing over railings to take pictures.

So we walked and commented but did little else about it.  It was an enjoyable cave, but the trip down was terrible.  The trip back was almost worst, because there were no movies only Chinese KTV.  The weather was bad, but it was important to see the countryside I think.  Seeing green things growing is so healing for me.  Also remembering that not all of China is flashing lights and big cities full of money.  There is a lot of poverty in the countryside and a lot of places that look like they can't even dream of what and Ipad, let alone ever dream of leaving the country.