The Philosophy department at Xiamen University has about 40 full-time faculty members (and no part-timers!), so the room was packed with current and retired professors. The occasion, of course, was the Autumn Moon Festival that Ann has mentioned in past posts. The Moon Festival is progressively taking over Xiamen and all aspects of life here.
Another funny thing was that the event was at a restaurant that is almost connected to our building but we were completely unaware of. The closed end of the restaurant faces our buildings front door. It is under construction so we just assumed the whole place was closed. Not so. We really played the dumb foreigners when we had to be walked to a place 50 yards from our apartment.
The banquet was our biggest so far, with a ridiculous number of dishes brought out. Most of them were fish dishes (the Fujian specialty) or vegetables. Quite delicious, even Thomas had his fill of food and pop. Then . . . the tables were cleared and the room lapsed into some serious gambling.
Here Ann is throwing into a bowl while Helen, Sophia and Professor Chen (Contemporary Epistemology and Kant) look on. The game is peculiar to Xiamen. Everybody celebrates the Moon Festival, but only in Xiamen do people gamble. Ann asked Chen why people do this here and he said "it's been going on for so long nobody knows. Maybe it started before people were writing things down."
The loot is, maybe, not so impressive after the desire for victory has subsided. Here Thomas and Helen show off our bags.
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