Fish Tales and Film
Chinese mid-Autumn Festival – zhōng qiū jié - started with the fat full moon on 16th September in Pisces, and fire crackers on each corner, exploding. Then China eased into moon cake festoons and family rituals for the next three days. Some stay at home, but many Chinese people like to travel, and many come to Shandong province in eastern China, where I have the great luck to live - at the far edge of town, by Jinshatan Golden Beach – to get the last of summertime and the still warm sea. Jinshatan, 1935, courtesy of Mr Mountain-Shan On the16th as the party opened, the waves were breaking madly, having eaten part of the fishing village up the road in one huge bite; gone. I went to film that night, and all that was left of the three small homes were baby pumpkins clinging to the sand and earth, their roots like tiny veined fingers burrowing down into the flimsy soil, as if they knew that, yes, their time was up too. Everything washed away, washed clean. Tomorrow the pum