A Day at the Farm

This week has been National Day/Moon Festival in China so the entire country has been off school/work for 8 days. We took a day and went to the farm with some friends and enjoyed the day. The farm was in the foothills to the Northwest of Beijing. It was similar to a farm you would see in the states. They had rabbits and chickens.

They grew many different fruits and vegetables. Most of which, however, would be unrecognizable to the average American. We ate persimmon, dates picked straight off the tree, eggplant, some sort of enormous green bean type veggie, and they cooked us one of the rabbits, it was the white rabbit (I know because when they told us we were eating tuzi, Selah, a 3 year old girl, asked the farmers wife what color rabbit it was).
We picked pumpkins and the kids chased the chickens around the farm all day. For dinner we cooked hot dogs and s'mores on the campfire. For those of you who are planning to come to China and are planning to make s'mores while you are here, you can get marshmallows and chocolate (Hershey's chocolate even) but graham crackers you will not find. We had chinese substitute crackers that were called "digestives." Rather than ruining 2/3 of a good s'more with a "digestive", I opted to just go with what we now call the "Chinese S'more", which is simply a marshmallow sandwiched between 2 pieces of chocolate.
It was a great time with friends. Altogether there were 7 adults and 7 kids. Since it is Moon Festival time we enjoyed a beautiful full moon rising over the lights of Beijing. The only thing that was missing was a hayride.