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Hey everyone,

It's time for moon cakes! The giant ad for moon cakes on the photo here is all around Tianjin (and I daresay, China) because the Autumn Festival is about to begin. It's all about families meeting again and eating Moon cakes of which there are different varieties, some of them even heavier and sweeter than others. This work week does not end on Friday (although for many it never does); people work the weekend too, but they have a whole week's holiday after! Millions are travelling through the country to visit their hometowns, families and eat moon cakes all week through.

Before I forget, thanks for your reactions. Unfortunately, I can't read them (at least up till now). So if you want to tell me something please send me an email (misslebrun@hotmail.com). And that goes for the hyvers, too. I can't even send messages on Facebook sometimes, but it seems to work occasionally, if only accidentally.

And now for the rest of the report: I live in the district called Hebei, close to the Ziya river and the jin gang bridge. This red bridge is jin gang qiao:

There are dozens of bridges here as the rivers flow through the whole city.

I have met some nice people in Ali Baba's, the underground cafe for foreigners here, and at a Tianjin expats coffee meeting. So far, I've met people from Uzbekistan, Georgia, South-Africa, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, one guy stereotypically and funnily called Jan (yes, from Holland), Cote d'Ivoire, England, the USA, Canada, Norway, Russia. Seriously, the only culture shock I've experienced so far was walking into Ali Baba's and seeing all the non-Chinese faces there.

I've mostly gone around the city with my colleague Michael (or Muzafer) and with Yufeng, a Chinese architect who spent some years working in Washington. Yufeng took us to the major bookstore; although he is new to Tianjin too, it does help that he speaks and reads fluent Mandarin ;) We also visited the Tianjin Museum together, where we saw an exhibit of Buddhist artefacts discovered in 1987 after a pagoda collapsed.

Muzafer and Yufeng in front of the Tianjin Museum.

We went dancing in New York, which is close to Ali Baba's and therefore filled with "lao wai", which means something like 'old foreigners'--which is a nickname for us waiguoren (foreigners). It was very late before I came home-- I believe it was around 5:20 or so- and just as amazed to see the market being built up as the people building were surprised to see me. I laughed my ass off.

Contrasts are huge here: shiny new buildings, poverty, wealth and dirt go very well together here. Everything screams that China is growing at top speed. This time, mainly pictures of modern landscapes. I hope to overcome my shyness about taking pictures of people living their daily lives soon, because that's what I really want to show you. People, as my mother wisely says, are strange things. She is right. People are strange things, and therefore most interesting.

Until then,

zai jian!

big hug to all of you (share it nicely ;-) )