Saturday, 26 August

Rain

I went to Attaché Hu’s villa with Chengyong. We were preparing for the mushroom picking tomorrow. This is a Russian tradition. During the early autumn between August and September each family will spend a full day in the forests picking mushrooms. Usually the families start at about 2.00 or 3.00 a.m. and walk for a couple of hours to reach the forest at about 3.00 or 4.00 a.m. They bring food into the forest as breakfast. Probably there aren’t many types of trees in Russia, and most of the mushrooms are edible. After the mushrooms are picked, they can be dried and kept for use after several months. Also, this could be a good excursion in the countryside. However, when we arrived at the villa, the neighbours told us that the mushrooms this year are very scarce, so there was no need to go. Also, the Russians were suspicious that if there were many mushrooms this year that would mean war. They said that this year there were few mushrooms, so the war must end soon.