Happy Mooncake Day

Today, went for lunch with my Chinese colleagues to a Chinese restaurant called Shanghai Shanghai.  The occasion?  Why to celebrate this year’s mid-autumn festival of course.  This is China’s equivalent of a harvest festival, on the day of the full moon as part of their lunar calendar.  I didn’t have any “mooncakes” to celebrate the occasion, but tried a variety of different family style dishes that were ordered to share amongst the table – I have no idea what everything was (we are not talking Panda Express style Chinese food at this restaurant, but more authentic dishes like pork shoulder and duck) but almost all of it was good.  Most of the table chatter was Chinese, which occasionally lapsed into English for my benefit, but that was fine as it was nice to just be invited.  My one big issue – chopsticks.  What is the point?  Chopsticks are stupid.  I gave up after a while, and asked for a knife and fork.  I don’t care how embarrassing this was, the chopstick is the most useless food utensil ever devised and I don’t know why we still have them (I’m sure the billion plus East Asians who use chopsticks regularly would disagree with me!).