Mid-Autumn Festival

Summer in Beijing is over; it seems to have abruptly ended yesterday.  The daily high temperature feels like it dropped about 10-15 degrees, and it's been cold and rainy all day today.  Just two days ago it was still sweltering.  The abrupt change in season coincidentally coincides with the Mid-Autum Festival, which is being celebrated this weekend.  It has also turned my thoughts towards the bitter Beijing winter.  Speaking of which, last night Muir and I took the subway deep into the heart of the city to meet some of his online forum friends for dinner at a dumpling restaurant.  The food was delicious and the company congenial.  They four whom we met were seasoned foreigners from around the world and had lots of opinions and advice to extoll about living in Beijing.  Muir also seemed to enjoy swapping stories about the triumphs and tribulations of studying Chinese for many years.  The most useful piece of information one of the sojourners shared was to buy some thick long underwear to take the chill off the winter weather.  They didn't have to tell me twice!  It sounds like a terrific idea.  Gimmie!  After dinner and a round of drinks, Muir and I tried to catch a cab back to WuDaoKou since the subway trains stop running by about 11:30 PM, unfathomably early for a major city.  (Ahem, BART.)  It was only a quarter to midnight, but it was as if 90% of Beijing's 19 million people had all gone to bed already.  The sprawling city seemed almost deserted in comparison to the sea of people we faced during the Friday evening rush hour on the way to dinner.  We walked/waited for 20 minutes before finding an available (and legal) taxi cab.  I'll have to take some photos next time we're in the infamous Xizhimen subway station during rush hour.  It's a mob scene.