David's Big Adventure in China

Mid Autumn Festival holiday was on September 12 and it’s similar to Thanksgiving in the states. It’s traditional here for companies to give mooncakes or other gifts to employees and officials. There was an article in the paper saying that employers should make employees pay income tax on the value of the mooncakes. I imagine that there are a lot of taxes collected on the value of all the cakes/gifts given to the officials too…..lol. “Typical mooncakes are puck-shaped pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4-5 cm thick. They have a relatively thin crust (2-3 mm), which surrounds a thick pasty filling and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs. Mooncakes are typically rich, heavy, and dense compared with most Western cakes and pastries.”

Last week I took the overnight train on Sunday night to Guangzhou to go to the U.S. consulate to get my “marriageability certificate”. That certificate is required by the Chinese government for foreigners to get married here. When I arrived at the train station in Nanning I ran into a friend who was also going to Guangzhou and we were in the same car so we traded tickets with some others so we could be in the same cabin. We arrived in GZ at 6:00 a.m. then we went to McD’s for breakfast. My friend then went to catch a train to Shenzhen and I went to wait outside the consulate for my 8:30 appointment. There were a couple hundred Chinese waiting outside for their appointment to get a visa to the states. Many of them, especially young single ladies will be disappointed. It only took about 10 minutes to get my certificate (a document stating that I’m not married signed and notarized by a consular official) then I went to catch a bus to the airport. I had a12:45 flight back to NN and arrived back at home by 3:30 p.m. We still haven’t set any dates or made any final plans about a wedding party.

Things are progressing well at the pig farms in Dahua (near NN) as we now have baby pigs! At this point we don’t have facilities to raise them until they reach market weight so we will start out in December by selling feeder pigs of about 44 pounds.

It’s now the first week of October and we’re celebrating the National Day holiday for 7 days although us accounting types will start back to work a day early on the 7th because of period end close. We will work Friday the 7th through Friday the 14th without a day off after enjoying 6 days off. Many people travel this week but we decided to just stick around town, relax and have some dinners with friends and family.

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