Autumn Moon Festival

We enjoyed an Autumn Moon Festival Dinner.

This is the celebration of the Autumn Moon where the tradition is for family gatherings and family meals and everybody shares the Moon Cakes with everybody else. It’s a pretty big holiday here.

To help this story, here is a little background.
In May 2009 I stumbled across this little pub in town (wait; rephrase that) … I discovered this little pub in town. It was called “The Open Bar”. The owner is a fellow named Mo.

He owned and operated with his wife, Dani. The place was small but had cold beer, a TV with all types of sports (mostly Chinese basketball, pool, snooker, soccer), windows that opened onto the street for catching any breeze and watching the world go by and he has absolutely the largest music collection in the universe. You name a band – he has it. I joke that he must have downloaded the entire iTunes library onto his computer and so our team just sort of felt at home here and we became “irregular regulars” and nicknamed the place “Mo’s Bar”.

When the new Soccer stadium was built this year, the street was to be widened so all the shops and stores had to be relocated to make room and Mo moved around the corner and built a nice two story place; bought a new pool table, new tables, added a spot for live music, added a kitchen for some basic food service and he and Dani did a remarkable job rebuilding the place. The sign out front now proudly proclaims “Mo’s Bar”

Last week, our group, while returning from dinner downtown, decided to stop and check out a new bar that has opened across from the new soccer stadium (we wanted to maybe expand our horizons). As we walked towards the door, we could begin to hear the thumpa, thumpa music reverberating through the walls. Not what we like. So we decided to just go to Mo’s instead.

Walking into Mo’s, we greet Dani and a few customers (some German lads we recognize who also stay at our hotel) . There is Chinese weight lifting on the TV and Neil Young on the stereo at the perfect volume. In fact, it was all Neil all night!

We knew it was karma. We only belong at Mo’s. It was a perfect, relaxing, and quiet evening hanging out at our local pub.


So what’s the point of this entire story? The point is that during this karmatic (I just made that up) evening at Mo’s, Dani asked us if we had plans for the holiday. Well, no, of course. So she told us she was preparing dinner for her and Mo and some of their family on Tuesday and she wanted to invite us to join. She then rattled off a list of about 30 items she was serving. It sounded like dinner enough for an army and we graciously accepted not knowing how big the army was to be; but appreciated the thought and knew it would be fun. We also knew she was to spend entirely too much money for this which only heightened the appreciation.

As it turns out, dinner was Dani and Mo, his “brother” (not sure if blood relative or best friend type of thing), the brother’s wife and 14 year old son, another friend of theirs, and the eight of us in the upstairs area of Mo’s Bar. More food than any human should legally be allowed to eat. Mo opened a bottle of red wine imported from Chile (for the wine drinkers), cold beer (for those aren’t) and we all sat together and simply ate and drank and visited just like you would expect if it was Thanksgiving. The 14 year old came over and sat by me to practice his English (with Dani’s help) and I learned he plays soccer, goes to school in Changsha, learns English from Dani … all about him. A nice kid who was a bit shy, but eager to talk to us. I watched his mom out the corner of my eye and saw the same speechless prodding any mother gives her child with eyes and head urging him on implying “Go ahead. Talk. Say something. You can do it.  It’s OK.”

It was cute. We learned his dad works for the Chinese version of the IRS, so I asked if that meant the dinner could be written off Mo’s taxes. Dani immediately understood that and translated for him and he burst out laughing and said “Maybe”. Mo was happy to hear that, I’m sure!

Mo gave me a bear hug when we arrived (with his customary greeting of hollering “Yea, Baby!” and Dani gave me a bear hug when we left, so I think the eight of us have now been officially inducted into Mo’s family. I may have to get the photograph enlarged and framed for them.

Did I mention Karma? I was right.

We only belong at Mo’s.