I just thought I should point out that the phrase “China doesn’t celebrate Christmas” is completely and utterly wrong. What it should say is “China doesn’t view Christmas as that big a deal, but people still LOVE IT.” It’s a little more common among younger people I think. I mean on a secular level what’s not to like about it? You give presents to each other that are all wrapped up (so it’s always a surprise and everyone loves surprises). You get an excuse to decorate your home as extravagantly as possible without looking like you’re a nouveau riche jerk. You also get to eat a bunch of special food that you don’t eat any other time of the year. There’s even an crazy magical drunken man that flies around in the sky giving you things you like. All kinds of good stuff.
So when December started decorations appeared in stores and on buildings. If were to own a building I would make sure to turn it into a giant tetris game with Christmas lights as well:
It took me a long time to understand why people were celebrating Christmas here. In fact I thought it was awfully cute. There’s so many things to like about Christmas because it’s just such a fun holiday. The Chinese also think it’s a fun holiday, it’s just that they like it in an entirely secular way (like my family), so I was actually quite accepting of it. It felt very much like the whole country was like “Owen! Do you miss home? It’s okay, we’ll help you out!”
When I saw all these decorations in stores I was having a lot of trouble trying to figure out what was different about them from home. It’s the same. Everything is the same. They have fake sprayable snow, they have lights, garlands, christmas trees, holly, etc etc. The don’t have much in the way of wreaths I guess. Also they have no yard decorations like light up deer, plastic candy canes, or giant inflatable Santas. That wasn’t what was different though. I just couldn’t put my finger on why it all seemed slightly askew.
After talking about seeing decorations in the stores with some other people from my program, one girl happened to mention that there was nothing having to do with Christ in the stores. Ohhhhhhhhh. Now I get it! Secular christmas in the stores as well as at home! No angels, no nativity scenes, nothing like that. That’s why I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I wasn’t looking for Jesus stuff cause I just never think about it. Christmas has absolutely no religious connection here, it’s purely commercial and fun and they make no qualms about that. I’m guessing only about one in every four hundred people would even recognize what’s going on in the nativity scene. Therefore there’s no reason to include any biblical referencing decorations in the stores because they won’t sell.
Here’s a restaurant I always walk by to get to the bus after Chinese class. They’re always educating the staff for that night’s rush or whatever. It’s an awful, awful picture, but it shows how everyone gets into this Christmas thing here:
This is the Christmas tree in front of a Wal-Mart downtown. That logo at the top is the Chinese Coca-Cola logo (Ke Ku Ke Le). When I talked about Christmas with my students I enjoyed dropping the bombshell in the first 4 minutes of class that Santa’s coloring is directly because of Coca-Cola.
“Do you know why Santa is red and white?”
“No. Why?”
“Because of Coca-Cola”
“eeewWWWHHAAAA????”
Then I explain the old ads with coca-cola and how red and white wasn’t invented by coca-cola, but it was heartily solidified by them etc etc. When they find out about it they are completely baffled and oftentimes saddened and confused. It only seemed to make them more curious about other Christmas related things however so that was good.
I received two packages during Christmas week. One from my grandmother and one from my mom and dad. My grandma’s arrived first. Thanks Grandma! It is follows:
I decided to share some of it with my friends. They apparently don’t know about candy canes here and Reese’s straight up don’t exist. I gave them some of each. I even took the chocolate chip cookies, microwaved them, and brought those to them so they could be warm. They’d never had a warm homemade chocolate chip cookie before. They loved it. Helen crunched down and ate her candy cane, then saw that Quentin and I were just sucking on the ends and got all indignant so I gave her more so she could eat it properly:
My mom sent a bunch of christmas cookies. I also shared these with people. It was so much fun. The look on Helen and May’s faces as they ate real homemade christmas cookies was absolutely priceless. They really were discovering it for the first time, something I sometimes take for granted I think. Helen would often eat one and then say “I am such a bad mother.”
I had to specify what order to eat things in and I would introduce them to different foods. Like “This is homemade carmel… This is candied orange peel… this is a cordial cherry…” etc etc. Here’s me opening the box after I recieved it. I didn’t get any photos of May and Helen singing “What’s This?” in their heads unfortunately:
Here’s another another gift from Mom and Dad:
Space Invaders and Wire Way are pretty fun. Marker Man is… actually… one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The controls don’t work. While I was playing I was just getting more and more frustrated because the game wouldn’t do what I told it to. Not very relaxing. The other two are fun though. Thanks for the gifts Mom and Dad!
I also got various gifts left on my desk throughout the week left by different students. This is one by the twins:
This is a bag of “New York Style Bagel Chips” which just so happens to be one of my favorite foods back home. Good choice:
A bunch of kiwi from a teacher friend and a letter from student:
The school didn’t officially decorate anything, but the students and the cafeteria workers did. This is the teacher’s cafeteria:
This balloon makes me laaaaaaugh:
After it deflated a little I’m sure you can figure out at what two points on the balloon the extra latex started to poke out.
Hahahaha!
Here’s the medical office cat. It’s not christmas related but I thought I would show it anyway:
“Merry Xmas Mother Fucker”:
Christmas Eve was much more important to the students than Christmas day because it was a Thursday. They all go home on Friday. So all the Christmas celebrations they wanted to do took place on Thursday. During the day some students were allowed by their teacher to go play some christmas games. Quentin and I were invited down to participate so we did. I almost lost one of the games which would have meant I had to sing. Luckily I got second to last.
This is a game where you have to have like 50 people to play it. It’s like duck duck goose. There’s a bunch of lines of three forming a circle. Then there’s one left over. They run to try and get at the end of a line, when they make it there they’re safe. If they get tagged by the leftover person then they’re the one that’s “it”:
They also gave me a Santa hat:
So the school’s UN group had a big ending get together. Only certain students were allowed to attend and some teachers. You had to have a ticket. I tried to sneak in a couple students, but the kids guarding the door would have none of it. It reminded me very much of the slightly stuffy adult parties that I’ve had to go to with a little bit in the way of controlled fun activities. It was fun though. There were a few tables that were selling their representative country’s goods. I couldn’t find the America table, I don’t think there was one. I remember one student asking me before class “What sort of traditional clothes Americans wear?” so that she could represent the US better.
“I dunno, normal clothes?”
“But like what?”
“Like the same things you wear. Our traditional clothes are also our contemporary clothes.”
“Oh…”
“I mean… we didn’t invent jeans, but they could probably be seen as traditional american clothing.”
“Oh! Yes! That is very good!”
“Also T-Shirts and baseball caps.”
“Oh yes yes! This is very good!”
:-/
The Africa table. I’m sure you can tell that by the various african animals set up:
I was given food pretty often:
Now every student on stage says “Merry Christmas” individually…
…and then they awkwardly dance like only high school students could do: by holding their partner as far away from themselves as humanly possible.
Earlier I said I tried to sneak in a student or two. I did this because I was in the hallway talking with one of them. Apparently all the students had to be stuck inside, doing homework, as they got to hear this invite only party going on in the gym next door. Loud music, cheering kids, classy dress, all of that was going on. Meanwhile they had to do math. That sucks. So after hearing this story I tried to get her into the gym with me so she could experience those pictures above. They didn’t let her in though. I tried the same with a boy from another class. Still didn’t work.
So you have a whole school listening to a classy party with people in suits next door. Compare that to what all the students in the rest of the school decided to do as soon as the clock struck 8:30:
Yes… YES!! That’s what I like. A little bit of chaos. Awesome. There were kids running everywhere. It was basically 15 minutes of anarchy. I saw some teachers that were standing quietly in the middle of it and others that were crushing themselves up against the wall as much as possible. Meanwhile I ran out into the middle of it and ducked through the human tunnels and got sprayed with snow and foam and silly string and febreeze and had a great time. I told them to do that more often the next day. Loved it; I couldn’t stop smiling about it. It was just so much fun after all the “study hard, work harder” stuff they’re constantly inundated with. I was happy I got to participate and I was really happy for them that they got to release for a little while, even if it was just for 15 minutes.
On Christmas night I went out with Helen, Quentin, May, and Charlotte to eat dinner. We went to Mix City which is a big shopping mall. Everyone in my program always references it like “oh yeah just go to Mix City and you’ll find such and such or so and so” and I’m always like: “What the hell are you talking about? What is this place?” Yantian is in the middle of nowhere. I think now might be a good time to point out that the place I live in Yantian is also referred to by some as “The place where no birds will poop.”
This is the fabled Mix City. It was like some kind of heaven:
Here’s a guy on stilts I guess:
Some live music:
Everyone in Mix City was dressed really nicely. There was lots of food and non-knock off shops. There were even girls there that were my age that I got to check out as they walked by. It’s like I was home but… like surrounded by Chinese people.
We went to a grocery store that carries all kinds of import foods. They seemed to have the American prices directly translated into RMB so they were quite expensive. They even had Sun Chips, olives, and various kinds of real cheese. Like real cheese. Not always the best brand of real cheese, but I really really didn’t care at that point. They even had Feta and Gouda! I now have a block of Land O’ Lakes Extra Sharp Cheddar in my fridge, some corn chips, and mexican salsa. The other day I made some nachos and watched District 9. I was nonstop giggles from happiness. I’m going to make nachos for Helen and May next week I think. It’s important.
Here’s something you won’t get in a US-style “family values” run Christmas: a Santa handing out Christmas Condoms:
Now how often has American Santa given you useless toys versus tried to save your life? Exactly. Chinese Santa 1, American Santa 0.
After getting cheese and stuff we went to upstairs to a southern Chinese food place. It was pretty good. We ate all kinds of stuff. I even had jellyfish for the first time. Jellyfish is exactly like pickled cabbage. I wouldn’t have known it was jellyfish if I hadn’t been told. No picture though, it just looks like shredded cabbage. That’s all. Here’s some lotus root I really liked:
I like this photo because it was taken right when everyone was in the middle of doing something. It’s like a really unimpressive baroque painting:
A more posed version: Helen, May, Quentin, Me, Charlotte. I apparently can’t even put down the chopsticks for one photo:
Charlotte spilled this brown powder stuff on the last piece of watermelon. It’s like 5 times sweeter than sugar. I don’t know what it’s made of, but eaten straight it’s so powerfully sweet it can make you gag. I’ve never had the feeling of gagging from sweetness before this powder:
Apparently Mix City even has an ice skating rink. I don’t know how they keep it cool when it’s constantly mixing with the open air from the rest of the mall, but they do it somehow. I know ice skating ice has a higher freezing point, but wouldn’t have thought it was that high:
After eating we wanted to go to a bar but that didn’t work out. So we went to a KTV called “Party World”. I’m not singing though. No way. I don’t know why it is that Chinese people love to sing so much, but they LOVE it. Everyone here sings all the time. The KTV we went to was basically a hotel, but each room was tiny and only consisted of a couch and a TV. You rent out the room for your party and then sing and order drinks and stuff. An entire building devoted to this, and this isn’t the only one. This city is able to support multiple buildings that are based purely around renting out a room with your friends so you can sing together. I mean I guess we have the game Rock Band in the US, but I don’t think many people actually want to be the singer. Everyone wants to do the drums or the guitar.
I think that in the US we care the most about melodies and how the sound makes you feel versus China where they care more about the lyrics and how the words make you feel. Anyway I don’t have many pictures of it. Basically imagine a hotel hallway and make love ballads blast from every room:
This is me in the lobby. It’s past my bedtime:
It was a good time though. I’m growing more comfortable with KTV’s, I just don’t want to sing. It’s going to take a lot of drinks and a lot of convincing to get me to sing.
One of the things I did for christmas week with my students was explain the history. I talked about Mithras, Rome, Jesus, Pagans, etc etc. I also talked about my own family’s various traditions and showed them pictures. I also played them my favorite Christmas song: “Christmas in Hollis” by Run-DMC (because they only know a small handful of songs made pre-1960 of course). They liked it a lot. They had never heard Christmas music like that before. I had one class that started playing it again as soon as I walked out. I had another girl that came to me after class to make sure on the name of the song. Her parents apparently really wanted to hear it.
Anyway I had them write down the various words they didn’t know while listening and then I would explain it. They didn’t know who Jack Frost was, or egg nog, or the yule log. They also didn’t know that after Santa comes down the chimney he eats cookies, drinks milk, and reads your Christmas list (thus why he’s so fat). They thought he just came down, put presents under the tree, then went back up.
All of those things were totally understandable. The thing that got me the most however was that they apparently didn’t know what mistletoe was. This caught me by surprise and made my class much more fun. I drew mistletoe up on the board and called up two students. Then I asked them to kiss. Of course the whole class is then like “WHOOAA NOOO AAAAHHH HAHAHAHA!!” and it was funny and good. I would then tell them about how sometimes boys in school in the US might carry mistletoe around with them, find a girl they liked, put the mistletoe over them really quick and kiss them, then run away.
One boy in my class was diligently taking notes when he found out about this. After I told about sneaking mistletoe around with you and I was ready to move on he was like: “Wait wait, where do you get mistletoe??” I was like: “I dunno. Just draw it on a piece of paper or something. Go for it. You might get slapped though.” “Okay okay!”
With another kid I asked: “What about you? Sound fun? You wanna try?” and he sat and looked at me very seriously with his arms crossed and said: “No. That is not allowable. If someone did this to me I would punch them.” and I was like: “… k……. moving on…”
I also had them describe to me what exactly China was going to do to make Christmas more Chinese. One student drew this:
It’s Santa on a horse carrying money in a sled behind him. Here were some other answers I heard from students:
There were two things I like most about these statements. The first is that these same ideas occurred in just about every class. The second is what would happen when the dragon/phoenix thing came up. This exact conversation happened a couple of times:
Student: “Maybe Santa will ride a dragon?”
Whole class: “Whooooaaa noooo, no, uh uh!! NO!”
Student: “Or a phoenix, or a phoenix!”
Whole class: “Oh okay.”
What? The dragon is just too crazy and unbelievable, but a pheonix? Okay, that’s more acceptable.
Anyway have a belated merry Christmas and happy new year. Also it’s called “Twenty ten”, not “two thousand and ten”. Did we say “one thousand nine hundred and ninty nine”? No. If I’m going to live in the future I want to speak like I live in the future. Saying “twenty ten” is way more fun and cool to say than “two thousand and ten”. Join the movement or we will be stuck saying it the long lame way for the next 90 years.
Xīn nián kuài lè! (New Year Happy!)
