The Chinese QingMing festival, Tomb Sweeping Day, usually falls about a week before our Easter. In any normal week at Aihua it’s hard to find a day when everyone is free, as our day’s off are all different, but around public holidays everyone’s week is rescheduled to give everyone the same days free, so at ZhongGuanCun centre a group of six of us leapt at the chance to do something together.
One of our Chinese co-workers had heard of a small place way up in the North of Beijing where you pay a set fee for a cook-it-yourself all-you-can-eat barbeque. Sounded great!
We took the metroline 4 to its northernmost tip, then stood on a bus for over an hour, to a place called something along the lines of “The Popular Red Resting Spot”. The weather was very pleasant and we had a half-mile walk along a riverbank (along with approximately half the population of Beijing!) to a small, noisy, deliciously smoky, meaty-smelling, sunny yard with several trees, a couple of pagodas and a vast number of happy people.
Having queued in several different queues for cooking equipment and trays full of various shish-kebabbed meat & veg, two by two we carried our lit stove and wooden picnic table and benches around to find a space big enough for both them and ourselves. After losing a couple of territorial discussions with others in the same predicament, we happened upon an ideal spot of excitingly undulating ground wedged between two spindly trees and prepared for our banquet.
The food, beer and soft drinks were limitless: the only requirement being that you finish everything you have, otherwise you pay for anything that’s left uneaten – several pairs of eyes were bigger than their owners’ stomachs that day! We ate extremely well, and had an excellent time. When the last morsel had been coaxed down we played pool and pingpong in a large dusty building that resembled a disused aeroplane hangar.
All in all, great fun!