9/22

9/22 8:55am CST

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It's Mid-Autumn Festival! It's 8/15 in the Chinese lunar calendar. This is as big a holiday as Thanksgiving, I'd say. Even still, some of my relatives seem busy with work. A sign of the times, perhaps. The first thing I do when I wake up is take a bite of mooncake. It's actually a really shitty one so I don't finish it. I mean, there's a piece of grit in it. Come on.

We head out to go visit another cousin in Tangshan city. With no cars for hire or friends driving, we take the bus this time. We first take a 3-wheeler to the bus station. Of course 3-wheelers are pure deathtraps, but they're very cheap (often less than half the price of a cab) and don't get snagged up as badly in traffic jam situations, squirting through disastrously tight spaces. The bus ride is tedious and bone-jarring over the awful Guye--Tangshan stretch. I'm genuinely curious if any of the windows on a bus has ever shattered in its track from going over such big potholes. We pass another bus that got into a fairly big accident with a Jetta. Half of the trunk was totally smashed in. That driver must have made a serious misjudgement. Doesn't look like a person could have been seriously injured, though.
Once we get off the bus, we wait a while for the daughter of my mom's mother's sister. We meet up and get picked up by Uncle Biao's brother. He drives us back to the aunt of my mom and her cousin. It is a good chance for their aunt to visit both of them at once. The engagement of my cousin in Beijing (the one from the Peking duck restaurant) is the topic of conversation basically the whole time. Here we have a pretty good lunch. I think I'm over the fever I had yesterday, but now have an intestinal ache that's bugging me. Maybe from the crabs I had last night? It puts me on the sidelines a bit.

After lunch, we make one last visit to another relative to drop off a gift we neglected to deliver earlier on the 18th. Then we wait for another bus back to Guye. I learn on the bus that my mom only lived on the farms in the outskirts til the age of one. Then she moved to where my grandmother lived til she died, several minutes' walk from where we're staying. She also pointed out to me where her commune was. It was only a few km from her home, but back in those days, that would still be a considerable distance from home. Even in this age of traffic jams and awful roads, that distance is so greatly shrunk. It's a bit startling.

Once we're back, we're pretty much headed straight into dinner. This time 1st Aunt is hosting it. Ranran manages to beat my high score in the air traffic control game. It's a good time until 2nd and 3rd Uncle get really sauced again and start debating the most random topics. My mom makes an excuse to leave early and we walk back to the apartment.

I don't even have many pics from today because of my ailment being a constant distraction. I'm hoping it cures overnight.