26. Under the same moon

In the early days of this millennium, I graduated university in England and set out for a new life in China. Here, I share the quiet stories of my journey, a chronicle of discovery and displacement, woven into the fabric of a land vast and unfathomable.

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As the autumn air began to cool in Guangzhou, the campus seemed to soften. The usual chatter of students and distant traffic gave way to something quieter; an expectant lull. We were approaching the Mid-Autumn Festival¹, one of the few public holidays that seemed to carry a stillness rather than a surge. The college gates, usually choked with foot traffic, began to empty earlier each evening, while the neighbourhood buildings themselves - grey, tired - took on a warmer light from the lanterns that appeared one by one outside businesses and on balconies.

I noticed students walking arm in arm, a little slower than usual, mooncakes passed from palm to palm like tokens. There was a hush in their conversations, not of fatigue, but of something more sacred; an attentiveness to the coming pause. A kind of collective exhale. Even the college loudspeakers, normally persistent with their broadcasts of patriotic slogans and exam reminders, had fallen unusually silent.

In the Foreign Affairs Office, Lin sat hunched behind her desk, scanning a sheet of student names with a red pen. She looked up as I entered, smiling faintly.

“Are you going home for the holiday?” I asked.

She shook her head, not bitterly, just resigned. “Too far. And too much to organise here.” She gestured to the growing stack of paperwork. Then, reaching into the drawer beside her, she produced a small packet and pushed it across the table.

“Try,” she said.

Inside was a single mooncake; dense, golden, pressed with the characters for longevity and harmony. The filling was dark, heavy with lotus seed paste and a salted duck yolk gleaming in the centre like a small moon. It was not something I had yet learned to enjoy, but I ate it anyway, slowly.

“Do you know the story of Chang’e²?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

I nodded vaguely.

“She’s alone up there,” Lin said. “Watching us. Every year we look back.” Then she smiled again, quickly, as if embarrassed by her own sentiment.

Outside, a group of students were stringing lanterns between two saplings. I watched as they climbed onto benches, laughing nervously as the wires tangled. Someone held up a pink paper rabbit and gave it a spin. The lantern turned twice and then sagged.

Later that day, I stopped by the small local supermarket to pick up a few groceries. By the door, boxes of mooncakes were stacked in neat pyramids, each one wrapped in embossed paper and cellophane. A handwritten sign in the window offered special discounts for bulk purchases. Next to it, a red calligraphy banner read: May we live long and share the beauty of the moon together, even if we are thousands of miles apart.

Mooncakes for sale en masse at one of Guangzhou’s supermarkets.

The woman behind the counter wore a jade bangle and was packing gift boxes with practised speed. She looked up and saw me looking at the mountain of mooncakes.

“You want to buy?” she asked.

“No thank you, just looking,” I said, before adding a phrase I’d been rehearsing recently. “Happy mid-autumn festival!”

She smiled, as if understanding everything and forgiving my tonal missteps.

Back on campus, the trees had begun to yellow. In the canteen, the usual fried fare had been replaced by something sweeter: sticky rice balls in a thin broth, gently perfumed with osmanthus. In class, one of my students, a boy with a love for basketball, asked if we had a moon festival in England. When I said no, he frowned and looked at me as if something important had been missed in my upbringing.

The foreign teachers, meanwhile, spoke of the holiday in more practical terms: time off, travel plans, how many days the trains were expected to run late. For us, Mid-Autumn was a portal - an opening in the term, a chance to go somewhere else, anywhere else. But it was only the start. The real break was to come with National Day and the week-long Golden Week³ holiday that followed immediately after. The college would close completely, shutting down for seven days: an entire week to pause, travel, or simply escape the city’s relentless bustle.

There were talks of packed train and bus stations, of ticket prices doubling overnight. The sheer scale of the Golden Week exodus was something I had yet to fully grasp.

Mike, who had taught in China long enough to stop counting the festivals, had suggested Guilin over lunch one afternoon.

“It’ll be a welcome break from the city,” he said, pushing a bowl of noodles to one side. “You can lose yourself in the mountains there. Sometimes it’s good to be somewhere with no agenda.”

He’d said it like a man who’d learnt the hard way.

I hadn’t yet decided. Part of me wondered whether to simply stay put and watch the campus fall silent. But something about the mention of Guilin lingered. That name - soft-sounding, fabled - seemed to exist on the edge of a map I hadn’t yet unfolded. I’d seen the photographs: mist over karst peaks, boats drifting along jade-coloured rivers. A place of slowed time.

“Guilin?” Lin repeated, a few days later. “Yes, it will be beautiful. We Chinese have a saying: Guilin’s scenery is the finest under heaven.”

She paused, then added, “Take the boat to Yangshuo. That’s the best way to see it. On the water, it’s quiet.”

Her voice drifted as she returned to her paperwork. I caught the slight wistfulness in it, and for a moment I felt awkward, going somewhere others could not.

Lin immediately got to work organising the train tickets for the small group of foreign teachers who’d elected to travel to Guilin. It was a relief, knowing that she could do the hard work of navigating the system.

In the evening, I joined the other teachers at the barbecue stand just beyond the gate. The air was thick with smoke and the smell of cumin. We huddled around plastic stools, drinking chilled pineapple beer and discussing where we’d go. The festival was just days away. The city felt ready to pause.

“I’m going to Hong Kong,” someone said. “I miss decent coffee.”

Mike shook his head. “Too loud. Guilin’s better. You can sit for hours and not hear a thing.”

I smiled. Silence had become something I noticed more in its absence. The constant code-switching, the effort of being understood, the never-ending murmur of misheard words - it wore on you. Guilin, in my mind, began to form its own kind of silence. Not absence, but rest.

It was a few nights later that I began to pack. Just a few changes of clothes, toiletries, my guidebook and a camera. I hadn’t travelled much in China yet, certainly not beyond the safety net of a college-organised day trip. This would be different. It felt both light and heavy, like stepping off a ledge into something uncertain and longed for.

On the morning of departure, the campus was nearly empty. A few students lingered by the dormitories, laughing too loudly at something I couldn’t hear. The air held a faint trace of incense from a nearby temple. Guangzhou, vast and relentless, seemed to recede behind a soft veil of mist as we walked through the morning streets.

At the bus stop, the driver barely looked up as I stuffed two 1-yuan notes into the payment slot. I boarded, found a window seat, and rested my head against the cool glass.

The journey had already begun - not with the bus or the camera in my bag - but with the mooncake shared in a quiet office, with a lantern spinning in the trees, with Lin’s calm certainty: “It will be beautiful.”

A Moment of Gratitude

If the words of Ill Grandeur have resonated with you, consider buying me a cup of tea. In China, tea is more than just a drink - it is a symbol of connection, warmth, and reflection. A one-off tea is a way of sharing in the journey, supporting the story, and keeping the spirit of discovery alive. Every cup helps bring the next chapter to life.

1. The Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, Zhōngqiū Jié) is a traditional Chinese celebration held on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, when the moon is at its fullest. It’s a time for family gatherings, moon-gazing, and sharing mooncakes, and is often associated with the legend of Chang’e, the moon goddess.

2. Chang’e (嫦娥) is the Chinese moon goddess, said to have floated to the moon after drinking an elixir of immortality. Her story is closely associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, when families gather to admire the full moon.

3. National Day (国庆节, Guóqìng Jié) is celebrated on 1st October to mark the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. It begins a week-long public holiday known as Golden Week, one of the busiest travel periods of the year.