中秋节快乐！

Or in other words, happy moon cake festival (mid-autumn, yeah ok) 

outrageous expensive but I love moon cakes!

And the moon is up there shining even in a little cloudy Amsterdam sky:

the moon over my home

Another good moon for others good memories…

moon and memories… all great now



Another Italian Mid-Autumn festival!

I wrote the pass below in advance, but my plans changed abruptly because a huge delay on departure on Friday that let me to re-schedule my ticket for free (hoping in a ride when arriving in Milan Friday night) for next week.. So for this mid-autumn festival I am in the Netherlands.. still having memories..

Like in 2013, by chance, I am in Italy for my favorite Chinese festivity, the one I will always miss the most since it is so difficult to find the delicious moon cakes, 月饼, abroad!! Today it is the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiū jié), or so called Moon Cake festival 🙂

Last year I got this nice video from a Chinese Aikido friend:

…and I add the memories from my second year in China, when I could really enjoy the moon (in 2010 it had been quite cloudy and rainy!):

From the top: moon cake 月饼, the moon on Hefei, 中 (中秋=mid-autumn)

中秋节快乐！！
Zhōngqiū jié kuàilè! !

Coffee memories..

Talking with a Japanese friend about morning habits I have been thrown back a long way in the past, and got a little nostalgic:

My first morning in Hefei, China.. with the Italian coffee pot and the Soputh Park coffee cup, my loyal fellow voyagers in so many places of my life..

June, 4 – 1989: Why?

Sad anniversary today: the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened 26 years ago, and it is still very clear in the collective memories, at least outside China for what the international press could offer to the world view.

The image we all foreigners (laowai) remember too well is the single man in front on the tank column:

Tank Man

It was June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force.

Another image will always remain impressed in my memory (also because it had been printed as full page with no other words), from Sergio Staino, Italian comics author for the periodic called “Cuore“, a left wing satiric magazine:

well done, “comrade” Deng!

A strong image, from left-wing people crying sad tears for the worst application of Communism in reality..

Officially it is thought that the memory of the Tiananmen Square protests appears to have faded in China, especially among younger Chinese people, due to government censorship and many pages about these facts, Wikipedia included, are blocked in China. But in my short experience in China, participating to English corner events at the university of Hefei, I got more than once questions about our foreigner vision or knowledge of the protest in those days. Warm and delicate topic to treat. Difficult to be objective, even for a person in love with China as I am!

To my surprise though, quite a few of young students used the various VPN and proxy not only for Facebook or YouTube but also for reading international news and information and jump over the so called Great Firewall of China. Still, politics in particular and how China is seen from abroad are topics I always preferred to avoid.

I admit though that the sad anniversary takes me back to happy days in China and in Hefei, especially. And browse through my past posts brought me some sadness and longing feeling of that life, those people (one in particular, at least in my mind image of her), that food (!!)… I’ll be back one day and some things, not all fo course, will be equally good. Some other, maybe, probably, even better!

Missing Hefei

Many can think it is crazy, but I had a great time in that “little” city!

Missing the good time with friends..

Missing the guy I used to be!

Missing the food of course!!!

The things I regret the most

Subtitle: In other words, what I will do during my next trips..

Around 5 pm of Friday 2nd April 2010, Beijing time, I arrived at Hefei and (funny, the dates in my life seem to repeat at fixed intervals.. very engineering) Monday 2nd September 2013 I was back in Italy: after 1249 days or exactly 3 years and 5 months (107.913.600 seconds or 1.798.560 minutes or 29.976 hours) my first experience about living in Asia has ended.

The reasons that brought me to this decision have been a good mix between professional and personal ones: the last job in the south (Longgang district of Shenzhen, a village of typical Chinese mass production factories) had only the effect to make me realize that I want ot work more in modern electronics companies in testing, development, hands-on roles. Not a managerial position in a factory that needed more qualified and expert people than me in order to improve their production system. Unfortunately I took a challenge hoping in a better guidance that I did get at the end, in an environment that was just a Chinese factory ran in Chinese way, maybe the only way to survive in Guangdong!

Hefei… long time no see

Back for a few days in Hefei visiting a good friend I haven’t seen since I left last October…

And among the things I have not see on long time if ever is the outside temperature when I arrived today around 17:30

and tonight few moments ago at midnight

…. Wow …..

Or better, a Chinese would say:

我靠！