Country, Family or Food?

What first comes to your mind when you see the word “home”?

The name of your country? The lovely house you live in with your family? Or simply the warm soup your mom cooks for you?

For me, the answer varies at times, but at least yesterday, it was the moon!

You may have known that in China, people use two types of calendar – the western/official one and the lunar one in the same time. The latter originated from thousands of years ago when almost everything revolved around nature and agriculture, naturally including marking the time. So in the lunar calendar, the period of the moon changing from eye-brow-thin to half-way-full on to pancake-round and then reversing the process is defined as a month. Is there anything similar in your culture? Or do you celebrate a special day in the middle of autumn when the moon appears the fullest?

That day is called Mid-Autumn Festival in China, the 15th of the eighth month in the lunar calendar. It is a time for family to get together, have moon cakes (a special cake shaped like a full moon with different stuffing, usually sweet) and admire the bright full moon in the night sky.

The Day is full of poetry if I think of it. Poetry written in countless works by ancient Chinese scholars with amazing beauty and subtlety; Poetry not written in the cozy air when mothers are holding little babies under the moon, or lovers leaning on each other quietly in the moonlight.

“When we are looking up at the moon, there is someone looking back at us from the cold palace up there in the distant world. Her name is Chang’e.” said my grandmother many years ago when I was having my favorite flavor of moon cake with red-bean stuffing. Like the story of Santa Claus in western culture, this Chinese young girl is a well-known legend in oriental culture.

“She lives there with her little bunny for many centuries now. She was once a young girl like you, living happily on the earth, but because she wanted long life, she stole a magical medicine, took it and flew up to the Cold Palace on the moon, where an eternal life was granted—yet with solitude. ”

I would always give a long stare at the surface of the moon, seriously trying to find the palace and maybe the girl stroking the little bunny in her arms. I believed I had seen it a couple of times, the shady and bumpy spots in the middle of the moon. I believed in this story for many years till I was older. Now I would think of my grandmother more who passed away a few years ago, rather than the girl living on the moon.

Because of all these connections to the moon running along our cultural line, you will now surely understand why yesterday was so special for me—it was this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival— yet a one without being with my family in China as I am now studying in Heidelberg, Germany.

My Chinese friends here and I still decided to have some small celebrations. We went to a Chinese restaurant in the city center and had the most touching meal I had ever had in the past one month since I was in Germany. The food was of Shanghai style, which is extremely close to that of my hometown, and the Chinese chefs and waiters there felt like family. After the dinner, we walked along River Neckar, a branch of River Rhein, which runs across Heidelberg.

Then there was the amazing brilliance of the moon!

We almost shed tears seeing the perfectly shaped full moon in the sky above the foreign soil. It’s the same moon when hours earlier our families and friends in China had seen. It’s the same feeling of home that would hardly change.

A means to an end

“Travel is a means to an end—home.” I saw this nice sentence on the London Bus Card (with a vivid name: Oyster) when I was last in London. So Nuala, have a WONDERFUL holiday in Baltimore…and don’t forget to come back home! We will all be here waiting for your exciting stories and pictures from the US！

Your travel plan has obviously stirred my memory again. Recently I have made quite a few small journeys in southern Germany.

Two weeks ago, as my one-month preparatory German language course came to an end, I had a friend of mine visit me in Heidelberg from Rotterdam, and we went together with an amazingly nice German couple I’d known to the Schwarzwald (the Black Forest). We were driving all the way through the forests in the mountains, which brought us a beautiful view of the southern German landscape.

I wished my eyes were automatic camera lens so that it could be fast and convenient enough to take pictures. I especially liked the valleys between the mountains, where you could see vast grassland for grazing, and flocks of sheep or cows (actually I’m not sure what those animals were)…Oh, do take a walk in their vineyards and taste their wines if you go there someday! Or stand there for a while on the top of a mountain where you can see France on the horizon like what we did!





In the evening, after a nice picnic and some random touring in the lovely villages along the valley, we said good-bye to the couple (who must go back to Heidelberg for work on Monday) in a small town called Freiburg (Maybe you have heard of it because of an old and well-known university there). We had a lovely night staying in a clean youth hostel celebrating my friend’s 20th birthday!After a two-hour sightseeing in the small town, we took a train at noon on to the Bodensee (Lake Constance in English) on the border of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. My words simply dare not describe its charm, especially in the evening when we arrived. Let the pictures give you some idea of what I meant.







Considering our limited budget, we decided to head back to Heidelberg around midnight. Mid-night train in a foreign country, with a language you barely understand and an exotic view (and in dark) out of the window-- one should also have such an experience once or twice in his/her life. There was a combination of feelings…excited yet very exhausted…or should I put it as excitedly exhausted? In a word, just like alcohol.

The next couple of days of my friend’s stay in Germany, we basically traveled near Heidelberg, which by the way was very nice too. Together we explored the old town of Heidelberg, where I live, and even went boating on the river Neckar. Thanks to Germany’s student-friendly transportation system, we were able to travel to many neighboring towns cheaply.







Some other recommendations (I’ve been to the first two and liked them, and wanted to go to the third): the Schlossgarten (castle garden) in Schwetzingen, a historical town called Wuerzburg, and Nuernburg if possible.

I still feel Heidelberg one of the most beautiful ones after having been to many towns and villages in southern Germany. There are many different worlds blended in one here. It has much diversity to offer rather than only the natural scenery which sometimes looks similar to other towns. But I guess that’s because l live here as someone who buys milk and sausage from the local supermarket and empties the dustbin in our public kitchen when it’s my duty—and when the semester starts soon, I will be someone who hurries to catch a punctual bus and complains (perhaps in German) about the bus driver who never stops to wait for one more minute, or someone who goes home with bunches of books and papers in the evening chillness, passing the Asian tourists everywhere.

I simply love the feeling of living here, not as a visitor. And that’s making Heidelberg more beautiful. It’s already memory, not a picture.