Mid-Autumn Day and Typhoon Usagi!!!

Sorry guys for the several week hiatus... Lots of stuff's been happening, both here & at home, and we got a bit sidetracked, but we're back now!

Shantou's local mooncakes.

Mid-Autumn Festival was the first interesting thing that happened. That was on September 19th, which we had off from work. The locals celebrate by visiting their friends and family and making gifts of mooncakes, which are a traditional food. They also place food and two red candles on their balconies and pray to the full moon for luck and good health.

The local mooncakes in Shantou have a flaky crust, kind of like an apple turnover, and are filled with sweetened red or green bean paste. I know that sounds a bit strange, but we really enjoy them. The Guangdong style ones, however, have a bit thicker crust and have a salty egg yolk in the middle of the bean paste. Of those, we're not such fans, but they're still edible as long as you take care and miss the yolk.

We celebrated by going to KTV with some of our friends and just kicking back a bit. We did catch sight of the full moon on our walk home, and it certainly was beautiful peeking out from behind the various skyscrapers which dominate the Shantou skyline. Some of our co-workers brought us mooncakes on Friday too, which we were pretty excited about!

While at work Friday, I was checking out the American news on my phone and I saw a headline that said something like: "Super-typhoon has Hong Kong in sights". I thought to myself "Oh my, they must be mistaken because no one here has said anything about it". The day went on and it slipped my mind.

Saturday was our normal day off. Georgous weather, and by that I mean blue skies and almost cool enough to step outside without sweating through our shirts (a common problem here). Beginning at about 3pm though, we started getting texts from various people warning us of Typhoon Usagi, which, sure enough, was heading straight for Hong Kong. Shantou is only a bit to the north and east of Hong Kong so we were sure to get hit.

This isn't our first typhoon here, though NONE of the others have been much of anything, just a bit of rain. To be completely honest we usually find out that the "shower" was actually a passing typhoon when one of our co-workers mentions it in the office the next day. We weren't worried, to say the least. But then at about 8:30 Saturday night, they canceled school for Sunday. That had never happened before & was rather worrisome. We decided to be sure to stock up on canned foods and water, just in case. So we made a late night run to trusty Wally World, which is about a block from our apartment.

Sunday dawned cloudy and breezy, but it wasn't really very threatening. The wind did end up kicking up a good bit, quite a few trees fell. My main entertainment for the day was when a tree on the street below us fell and the response crew went to work on it with hand saws. Yup, you read that right. A tree down over a pretty major road & the road crew was only equipped with hand saws. They managed to hack off some of the furthest reaching limbs, which entertained me for a few hours, and then they gave up and just left the rest of the trunk lying in the street blocking a lane and a half of traffic. Not surprisingly, this minor obstacle didn't even phase the flow of traffic, most drivers just whipped into the oncoming lane and the blare of horns kept me up all night. A few however chose to fly up onto the sidewalk instead. It was great.

Not the best picture, I know, but this is the tree that entertained me for so long.

It didn't even rain enough to flood the street. That was rather surprising since the street usually floods if we get more than 10 minutes of constant rain. Our power never even went off. There were enough trees down for classes to be canceled Monday morning too though, which was very welcome after Sunday night when I couldn't sleep thanks to the traffic.

The most exciting thing that happened as a consequence of the Typhoon was that the hippopotamus somehow managed to escape from the ZhongShan Park Zoo. He found his way down to the river (more of a moat, really) that runs along the side of the park and made himself right at home there, bellowing at anyone that dared to come near him. He made the news, had the time of his life, and was re-captured and returned to the zoo on Monday. Poor hippo.

The trees weren't really cleaned up with any haste. It was Tuesday or Wednesday before the major roads were completely cleared and there's still branches hanging around on our alley.

The rest of the week was business as usual though, downed trees or no downed trees.

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