Easter in the East

I just returned from a very fun St. Patrick's Day party. I spent the afternoon with my upstairs distinguished colleagues. They have a little oven, and they had all this random caraway and no place to go. So...Irish Soda Bread for the party! Then we were bored waiting for the bread to cook, so we mixed up some brownies from scratch. (I usually make 1/4 of a brownie recipe in my crockpot, which requires 1/2 of an egg. It was awesome to make 3/4 of a recipe, which didn't require such minimal amounts.)

It was while we were leaving that we realized that tomorrow is Palm Sunday, which means there is one week until Easter. In the States, the stores are full of Cadbury Eggs, Cadbury Robin's Eggs, Peeps, and all of those candies associated with Easter. I must say, the high sugar of all of these treats no longer sounds appetizing. There are other things about Easter that we will miss: Tenebre services, dying eggs, brunch... The worst about Easter in the East is that it is generally not mentioned and unacknowledged, except in passing. I don't know whether the students know about Easter. I don't know whether it would be good or whether I would be a Dancing Bear if I tried to go to a church service next week.

Incidently, today is a Chinese holiday, one in which certain families go to the graves to honor their family members. There is some disagreement about which family, but we guess Zhong because...just because it seemed as logical as any other. Anyway, I left at 8:30 to go "climb mountains" with some colleagues. As we approached the mountain beside our campus, which leads to the Tao temple, we began to realize that the normally deserted road was suddenly taken over by buses, motorbikes, cars, trucks, and motorcabs. Makeshift refreshment stands were set up to sell water and other drinks to the hikers. People brought food and crowded the road to the extent that we were suffocated by people and exhaust fumes. None of us knew that it was a grave-related holiday, but we changed our route and ended up going to the Tao temple and walking up the stairs that lead to the top of the mountain. We stopped in a sandy quarry to take in the view of a nearby village, before we went back down to face the hoards of people still carrying food and offerings up the hill.

-吴佩芙