Spicy rabbit’s head is the ultimate bar snack in Sichuan province. The demand for rabbit’s head is so high in Chengdu that 20 percent are imported from Europe (mostly France and Italy). We crack open rabbit’s head (the cheek and the brain are the best meat) and pair it with a frosty bottle of Snow Pijiu beer on our Shanghai night eats walk.

Spicy rabbit’s head is the ultimate bar snack in Sichuan province. The demand for rabbit’s head is so high in Chengdu that 20 percent are imported from Europe (mostly France and Italy). We crack open rabbit’s head (the cheek and the brain are the best meat) and pair it with a frosty bottle of Snow Pijiu beer on our Shanghai night eats walk.

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiūjié) lands on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, relatively near the autumnal equinox; in 2012, it falls on September 30. Also sometimes called Mooncake Festival, it is a public holiday in China and Taiwan on which families gather to give offerings to the full moon, float sky lanterns and eat mooncakes (月饼, yuèbing). A culinary tradition with legendary roots, mooncakes are sold everywhere from grocery stores to five-star hotels and come with competing origin stories that relate how these sweets came to represent the holiday.