So it’s Christmas time in China. The cars are honking, the rain is falling, and the sky is a nice clear gray. Nothing quite like it except maybe Seattle or some other punch line.
When I go to the store I get to hear Christmas carols sung by people with Chinese accents over the intercom. Songs such as Rudorph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Jingo Bears.
Doing anything in public in China is a little strange when you’re of any sort of non-East Asian ethnicity, however around Christmas the novelty of seeing a white person skyrockets. For example, if I stop moving my cart through the aisles people walk up to it and start to pick through my items, curious about what it is that the foreigner is buying so near to Christmas time. Hint: it’s the same as what I buy any other day of the year, dumplings, bacon, and popsicles.
This year Christmas in China is different. Last year everything was new and strange. This year in China, things are very much normal feeling. The strangeness and oddities of my every day existence here have become totally normal. It’s weird because things aren’t weird anymore. That’s probably why this blog has not been updated so much, it’s because I don’t find myself in the same state of awe that I was before. China is normal.
The only difference I can feel I think is that this year I miss home more. Probably because this is the second year in a row now that I’ve missed every holiday the US has to offer (save for 4th of July). You don’t really get to join in on Chinese holidays because almost all of them are private and family based, so friends aren’t really supposed to come over and join. I was originally hoping that when I came to China I would lose my own holidays but gain a bunch of new ones, but instead I just lost my holidays and got nothing in return for them. Very bad exchange rate.
The Chinese holidays being so private is one of the reasons they find our holidays so enchanting. People here are fascinated by Christmas and Halloween, they think they’re like the coolest holidays ever. I agree with them too. I mean Christmas? That’s a fun a holiday. How often do you get to have a drunken fat man fall into your house, eat a bunch of cookies, then leave nothing behind save for an empty plate and an Xbox? That’s awesome. Then you get to open presents and you have no idea what they are! Who knows what’s going to be inside of that box? Could be anything. In China the only time they give things to each other on a holiday is money at the New Year. That’s nice I guess, but it’s not a surprise you know? You know what you’re going to get, you’re just not sure the amount.
My Christmas Decorations Are SO Amazing You Just Don’t Even Know
I decided that I wanted to decorate my home with Christmas stuff. I haven’t gotten to see Christmas decorations and enjoy Christmas in a while and I’ve always loved Christmas lights, so I wanted to get some.
Off I go to the store and I see they have made a Christmas section up front. I start looking through things to try and figure out prices vs. will-it-blow-up quality on the various different items.
This is what happened. I have many interactions in stores that are a variation of this one:
I bought a big ol’ Christmas tree, some garlands, a power strip, and two strings of lights. I went home with my stuff and started unpacking it and setting it up while watching King of the Hill. That was a great day.
Here is my boring corner of the living room pre-Christmas stuff:
This is the hole in my wall where I make the power strip go outside. Then I can string the lights.
So the power strip is hanging outside next to the air conditioner. Awesome. Now I’ll just plug in the power… strip… nnnnnnNNNNNNOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!
Sooooooo then I raged and put on all of my stuff again and went out to the corner store to buy another power strip.
I can never find extension cords anywhere, just power strips. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the average Chinese person would never need an extension cord because they don’t seem to do maintenance in their own homes and their homes are small enough that they wouldn’t be somewhere that there isn’t an outlet? Maybe? Totally guessing. I can just never find extension cords, only power strips. Because of that, things start to look more and more flammable.
Yes! Time to hang some lights!
It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but that plug was falling apart. It had little metal wire shred sticking out of it. I was also concerned because the plug itself was highly uneven lengths on the right and left side. Odd. I’ve never seen that before. Again, it’s one of those little signs that maybe I’m setting myself up for a fiery death:
Oh this box is much nicer. It’s confusing however that I bought two boxes of the same light, yet one string had a small, awful plug and all the lights had those little plastic covers on them and this one has a nice, strong plug and all the lights are naked. They both came out of boxes that had the same packaging. That’s a weird kind of quality control mistake, putting little lampshade covers on light bulbs versus not.
So here is what the power strip looked like in the day time on another day. I didn’t have quite enough cord to set things down so it’s really all sort of suspended in the air using tape and faulty wires. Again, planning on dying by electrical fire:
HHHhhhhheeelllllllllll yeeeeeaaaaaaaah:
That picture was actually really hard to take because I found out after hanging the lights that they blink. Still, not bad for $1.65. I realized just now that this is the first time I’ve put up Christmas decorations myself in my own home. Awww… I’m growing up!
Gotta fix that ugly cord though…
DONE.
So I bought my first Christmas tree as well. It is of course, not a real one, but here it is in all it’s glory, the largest Christmas tree I could find:
Okay so it’s not that big. It’s actually the smallest Christmas tree I could find. First I put it down in the corner, but it was so small and sad in that corner that I upgraded it by putting it on top of my mop bucket and decorating it with a garland:
So here it is in the corner with the bucket full of snickers bars I bought myself as a Christmas present. This is really the nicest way I can present this tree:
Man I love how Christmas lights look at night when they’re shining through the window. It makes everything so cool looking. I love it. It makes me feel really Christmasy. When I was a kid and the Christmas tree was on, I would just stay in the living room with it, not doing anything, just so I could see and feel the glow reflecting off all the bulbs and scattering light around the room.
Now let’s try to figure out which one of these rooms has the foreigner living in it:
Christmas Lesson
So anyway, the end of the semester is coming up. I’m excited because that means I get vacation for a month and half. This means I can work on some art projects and I can go travel somewhere, maybe Thailand or something. This is nice. However I do still enjoy my job (overall) and one of my favorite lessons EVER is the Christmas lesson.
Oh man I love the Christmas lesson you have no idea. I changed it a little bit this year to be a more fun too.
The lesson starts off very loose. Like “What do you know about Christmas?” and they usually yell something like “Santa!” or “Trees!” or “Snowman!” I had one student explain Christmas to me today like this: “Christmas is the day when a very important man was born and every year he come back to life and put gifts in your socks.”
Sometimes I forget why I enjoy being here so much, but moments like that make me remember.
I’ve been told to be more specific about what exactly happens in each class, so this is my Christmas plan if you’re interested. I of course make things a little shorter and more simplified for brevity’s sake and to make things easier for non-native English speakers to understand. It’s difficult because there’s so much history and culture that we know that they just don’t, so I have to keep everything in mind that I can think of that they might not know about and try to explain it in as simple a way as I can:
Opening: Ask about Christmas stuff.
What do you know about Christmas? Oh really? Explain that. Interesting. Yes, socks, actually we call them stockings. It’s like a decorative sock; you never actually wear it.
Talk about Mithraism
I’m going to explain this to you because you should know a little bit of the history of Christmas. It’s not all just presents and happy things, there’s a long history there. Does anyone know how old Christmas is?
Well it’s about 3500 years old.
I know, amazing right? Yes. Yeah really. It wasn’t always called Christmas, the name has changed and the traditions have changed, but it’s been basically the same holiday for that long. Yeah western people have old things too, amazing isn’t it?
So you know how in winter the sun goes down earlier and earlier and it gets darker and darker? Then in summer it gets lighter and lighter right? Well 3500 years ago, in Rome, do you know Rome? Yes, yes in Italy. So there was this special holiday called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti which means “Day of the Unconquered Sun”. On the day when the sun got to it’s lowest point in the sky, they would celebrate it as the day the sun started to rise again, thus the name. It was when a god named Mithras, in a way, died and then rose again, like the sun.
Do you understand?
(Explain again in another way.)
So eventually there was this religion called Christianity. Christianity is a religion based on a man named Jesus Christ. Slowly people were becoming Christian, but the majority of people were not and they still celebrated Mithraism. In order to get more people to join in and become Christian, Christians decided to put the birthday of Jesus Christ on December 25th, the same day as Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. So now people could be like: “Oh you’re celebrating your holiday? Well we’re celebrating our holiday too, you should come hang out with us.”
And that’s how Christmas became December 25th. It’s called Christmas which means “Christ’s Mass” which is like getting together and celebrating and praying. There’s a lot more to know about this, but I just wanted you to know a little bit of the history so you understand that it’s not just some empty holiday.
Now for many people Christmas is a religious holiday. However, Christmas has gotten to the point where for many, many, many families, it isn’t religious anymore.
For instance, my family is not Christian, but we still celebrate Christmas. We do this because it’s fun and it’s traditional and it’s a time to get together with your family and have a nice holiday. This is very common for most families, but many people also add religion on top, even though they might not go to church or pray or anything like that on that day. So really, my family is not any different than other people’s families.
Show pictures of me as a little kid on Christmas.
So as I said, Christmas is a day when you get together with your family.
This is my cousin and me when I was like 2 years old or something. I’m the one on the left, and that’s my grandf- Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah I’ve been told I was cute. Thank you. Thanks.
Yeah that’s really me. Yes the hair is a different color. Many white people start off with blonde hair and blue eyes, then we change as we grow older. For instance I started blonde and my hair turned brown, but my eyes stayed blue. No I’m serious. Yes really, it’s not unusual at all. Yeah white people are weird.
Here, here’s proof. Christmas is a time you’re supposed to be with your family right? So that’s me and my sister. Yes I have a sister. This is- no not my son. No thank you. That’s my cousin’s daughter… Cousin’s daughter… Yes, my dad’s brother’s son’s daughter. Yes.
This is a picture of me opening presents. Opening presents is a very old tradition; it originally started with giving gifts to the god Saturnalia but eventually turned into giving gifts to eachother.
Here is a picture of me and my grandfather. He made this big playset and gave it to me for Christmas so I could play with my toys on it. Yes dinosaurs, I didn’t expect you to know that word. Yeah I thought dinosaurs were the coolest things ever. Hell I still think dinosaurs are pretty cool:
This is a picture of me and my mom making cookies. Each year my mom and her friends get together and spend about 3 or 4 days making thousands of cookies that they then send out to family and friends as Christmas presents.
Speaking of which, do you know why Santa is so fat?
Yes, he is indeed quite fat, I think that’s funny too.
I don’t know, maybe he does watch a lot of TV, I never really thought about it.
Here, what happens when Santa visits a house? Yes, it’s called a chimney, keep going. Uh huh, then what? He puts presents under the tree and then leaves? Nope, he doesn’t leave yet. First, on Christmas Eve, you leave out cookies, milk and a list of everything you want for Christmas next to a nice comfy chair. Then he comes down the chimney, sits down, eats the cookies, drinks the milk, reads your list, gets what you want out of his bag, puts it under the tree, then goes up the chimney and does it all again at the next house.
That’s why Santa is so fat, because he eats millions and millions of cookies.
Aright, so, any questions? Does anyone know what my favorite Christmas song is?
No it’s not Jingle Bells. No it’s not- you know God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen? Do you know enough about Christmas to know what that song is about or…? Anyway no it’s not God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen.
Here, I’ll tell you my favorite Christmas song. Find the words in the song you don’t know and we’ll talk about them.
My favorite Christmas song is Christmas in Hollis by Run-DMC.
Oh you don’t know it? Huh. Here, let’s listen.
Christmas in Hollis by Run-DMC:
Run:
It was December 24th on Hollis Ave in the dark
When I seen a man chilling with his dog in the park
I approached very slowly with my heart full of fear
Looked at his dog, oh my God, a ill reindeer
But then I was illin because the man had a beard
And a bag full of goodies, 12 o’clock had neared
So I turned my head a second and the man had gone
But he left his driver’s wallet smack dead on the lawn
I picket the wallet up then I took a pause
Took out the license and it cold said “Santa Claus”
A million dollars in it, cold hundreds of G’s
Enough to buy a boat and matching car with ease
But I’d never steal from Santa, cause that ain’t right
So I’m going home to mail it back to him that night
But when I got home I bugged, cause under the tree
Was a letter from Santa and all the dough was for me
D.M.C. :
It’s Christmas time in Hollis Queens
Mom’s cooking chicken and collard greens
Rice and stuffing, macaroni and cheese
And Santa put gifts under Christmas trees
Decorate the house with lights at night
Snow’s on the ground, snow white so bright
In the fireplace is the yule log
Beneath the mistletoe as we drink eggnog
The rhymes you hear are the rhymes of Darryl’s
But each and every year we bust Christmas carols
Run-D.M.C. :
Rhymes so loud and proud you hear it
It’s Christmas time and we got the spirit
Jack Frost chillin, the orchas out?
And that’s what Christmas is all about
The time is now, the place is here
And the whole wide world is filled with cheer
D.M.C. :
My name’s D.M.C. with the mic in my hand And I’m chilling and coolin just like a snowman So open your eyes, lend us an ear We want to say
Run-D.M.C. :
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
(The moment right after they’re done being surprised and skeptical and realize this song is totally legit and they’re in deep concentration):
No I don’t know what an orcha is or where it went. Why did you spot the only word on here I don’t know?
G has a few meanings but in this instance it goes like this: G = Grand = 1000.
What’s mistletoe? Here, you, girl, stand here. You, boy, stand here. Now wait a second as I draw this mistletoe on the board.
Now kiss.
No dude you have to; you have to kiss her.
Would you rather kiss this guy over here instead? I mean whatever you’re into, we won’t judge.
Jus’ playin’, just playin’ sit down.
Mistletoe is a plant you hang up. If two people walk underneath it they have to kiss. It’s the rule. I don’t know. I don’t know, why is any tradition a tradition? It’s just tradition. Sometimes boys will walk around with a piece of mistletoe behind their backs and then walk up to a girl they like, then pull out the mistletoe and kiss her. Guys? Good idea? Try it sometime.
So anyway since it’s not Christmas yet we don’t give presents yet right? Right. However, everyone is really, really excited about Christmas so what we do is we decorate stuff.
So we’re going to decorate this classroom.
Decorate the Classroom with Christmas Stuff
Not our classroom? Don’t care, we’re decorating it.
So what kinds of decorations do you guys know about? Lights yes, what else? Stars yes what else? Sugar sticks? You mean candy canes? Yes what else? Snowflakes? Yes. You guys can make paper snowflakes and put those up or…
Wait… no wait… what?
You don’t know how to make a paper snowflake?
Done. That’s what we’re doing.
Everybody grab scissors and use this paper. This is what we’re doing now.
Okay so first you fold like this and cut off this part.
Next you fold like this.
Then like this and this.
Now you cut a bunch of shapes like this.
And you unfold and… there! It’s a snowflake!
I know right?
Whoa, calm down. Yea- wh- calm. Be calm. I know it’s really cool. No don’t make it look like mine, each snowflake is supposed to be individual and unique… just like you. Get it? Joke? No. Whatever. Just make the snowflakes and then you tape ‘em up on the window like this *slap onto window*.
(Proceed to make snowflakes and garlands for the rest of the class period, about 20 minutes.)
Gotta love college.
Different class. You see that thing that’s not a snowflake? It’s a Chinese character. It means… luck I think? Something about luck or happiness or love. One of those good things. Apparently couples make them and put them up in their windows after they’ve gotten married.
Different class. This is my class that is mostly boys. He’s really intently cutting that snowflake:
This is some kind of thousand-sword wielding Cthulu snowflake. I can’t help but play favorites on this one:
Giant garland time. The paper one, not the one that’s already up on the light, that’s been there all year.
That guy standing on the desk in the middle there sauntered up to me while people were cutting snowflakes and said, in jest: “English class huh?”
“English and culture class. Today is a culture day.”
Another class. These girls had colors with them. I couldn’t find colored paper when I was out shopping for supplies for class, so I was happy they had colors. I think coloring each and every rung of a paper garland sounds a bit tedious personally but they were pretty into it.
Heart garland:
These girls asked me how to make a Christmas tree out of paper. I was like: “Uh… I dunno… I guess you could just fold it in half and cut out a shape like this…” They were impressed and then made their own. I suggested coloring in the ornaments first before continuing with the green, a novice mistake :-O :
So this girl that is hanging things is really outgoing. The first day of class she asked me out on a date. I turned her down. Second day of class she said she would only read her homework to the class in return for a hug. I turned her down.
At the end of this class, after just about everyone had left, I look up and see her staring at me in deep concentration. Confused, I glance at her like: “What?” I could tell something was up. She was looking up above my head and then back to me. What was she looking a- the mistletoe! Shit! She’s the only person in China I know that could possibly have the guts to do it.
Terrified, I looked at her with a stern look and said: “What?” Then she lost her nerve and clicked her tongue: “Nothing.”
Thank god. She’s cute but worst idea ever. The last thing I need is rumors going around the school about the foreign teacher forcing himself on a student in the middle of a crowded classroom.
CRISIS AVERTED.
From outside the classrooms look pretty festive. All the other classrooms look so serious:
I really like the contrast of the prison bars juxtaposed with the childlike wonder of a preschool:
This was my last set of classes. We decorated both the hallway and the classroom:
I don’t know. She didn’t know either, I asked.
What I do know however is that this is supposed to be fish bones. Nothing screams “Christmas!” like fish bones.
This heart was made by men btw.
lol we’re all adults.
”Lots of Snow”
It started snowing and it was getting pretty cold. There were some kids running for gym class or something outside my window and I saw these guys give up and huddle behind this car. I went outside in my short sleeves and yelled at them to run. Easy for the guy that only has to be in the cold for 3 seconds to say.
Apparently Shanghai never gets snow at this time of year and especially not this much. Everyone was really excited.
The following is a picture of a guy apologizing to his furious, screaming girlfriend about throwing a snowball at her. She was so mad. Poor guy. Her yells were so horrible I thought someone had been seriously injured outside.
I am honestly starting to believe that Chinese people just like any excuse to use an umbrella. I mean water you get wet and you stay soaked for hours. Sun… I mean I guess they have that thing where they like to be pale or whatever. Snow? You brush it off, what’s the deal? It’s not even like people have particularly complex hairstyles or anything. Most people just have simple long or short straight hair. This means it’s not going to get screwed up from getting a light misting of water. I guess boys often have that big poofy hair, but they don’t usually have the umbrellas. What gives?
It took me awhile to figure out why I thought this snow seemed so strange. I eventually got it. All the trees still have leaves. Lots of them don’t even have just leaves, but they have big tropical leaves. Seeing tropical leaves covered with snow feels really strange:
Save point:
Well that didn’t last long.
My Christmas Presents
So I had a couple of extra classes that were off schedule from my other classes. In a couple of them I decided we would talk about TV shows. This happened to be the day that my boss and his secretary came to watch me teach. Also they brought their camera. You can now view some rare candid photos of me as a teacher:
We were discussing soap operas that day. They had a location that they picked out of that plastic bag. Then I gave them a weird prop of some kind (coat hangers, my light table, super glue, the dean’s book, etc) and they had to make a soap opera featuring both the location from the bag and the prop I gave them.
In one of my classes we didn’t do the soap opera thing and we instead talked about recipes for food and stuff. I was like “I’m gonna teach them about BBQ sauce! This’ll be great!” The lesson went really well. Surprisingly well, way better than I thought it would. They taught me how to make some kinds of Chinese foods and I taught them about BBQ chicken.
I realized that they can get all the ingredients for American BBQ sauce in China, it’s just that no one uses them in the right combination to make it. It’s basically ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar, garlic, pepper, and some other stuff for flavor enhancements. Easy. So I decided that my Christmas presents this year would be bottles of homemade BBQ sauce. So I went to the store and bought about 2 gallons of ketchup and brown sugar.
Then I returned home, turned on some 70’s punk music, went into the kitchen, and got to work:
Here I am making some toil and trouble:
Ohhhhhhohohoho yes:
I bottled it up in the leftover ketchup bottles then taped on this label. Click to see the larger version:
There’s also a version w/beard. Which will you get? Collect all 2!
I went to the printing place in the school to print out the labels. Here is me trying to print them and being stopped by some virus scan thing. I told the guy I wanted the images printed out to be 7cm high, not realizing I had made the image 6cm high. Then he rescaled them up! I was like: “No wait! Don’t do that! 6 cm, sorry” then he rescaled them down. I was like “NO stop scaling it ffs! You can’t do that to an image!”
I was like “Undo. Undo it.” And he was like “OK? OK?” It wasn’t working. I decided it was fine and just went with it. It turned out pretty good. Then they laminated it. I thought they were just asking if I wanted glossy versus matte. Turns out it was matte or laminated glossy which seems to kind of defeat the purpose of having glossy anyway.
Whatever, turned out pretty fun:
Here I am on my way to deliver it. It was delicious and awesome and I hope my friends enjoy America in a bottle:
Christmas Eve
So this whole week I’ve been receiving gifts from abroad. I got a bunch of candy and banana bread from my grandma and I got two boxes from my parents. One box had a bunch of homemade cookies and candy in it which I have been delightfully snacking on. The cordial cherries exploded though. Not just inside their own container either, all over the inside of the box. There was cordial cherry juice everywhere. Even on my book :-(
Then another Christmas box appeared and I got one more baggie of cookies plus slippers (this tile floor is sooooo cold), another book, and this amazing microphone called the Yeti.
I played with that microphone for hours. It’s so cool. It’s really, really good at picking up the smallest sounds with minimal room tone. So awesome. I love this microphone. It can switch to different modes, like stereo mode or omnidirectional mode or whatever you want. It’s really fun to turn up the volume and say something while it’s in stereo mode, then move your head to the right and left of the microphone and your voice comes out of the right and left speaker.
I was geeking out for awhile about it.
Anyway what to do about Christmas Eve dinner? McDonalds! I got a whole bunch of McD’s food, went home, and then I watched a Jackie Chan movie (Project A).
Oh did I say just Jackie Chan? I meant Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung! Heck yeah:
Btw, the dubbing in this movie hilariously awful but the bad guy was surprisingly badass. He was probably more badass because he had an amazingly rich, deep, black man’s voice.
That’s Christmas in China. Have a good one!
