Christmas (12-29)

Christmas has been unusual for me this year, as we have had many Christmas-related activities. The celebrations started on Saturday with a party at Ying’s education center. She had invited us all to attend and sing a song. When we arrived for the 2:00 program, we were seated and served fruit and tea. Among the fruits were kumquats, my first and a new favorite. We sat for a long time before learning that the program wasn’t until 3:30. We had been asked to arrive an hour and a half early, which we weren’t happy about. So we went out for a walk and some wanton soup. 

The program was fun. Students performed well, singing and performing a short skit. Afterwards, we joined guests from the education department (Ying’s father works there.) for wine and food while others cleaned up. Then we all went to a hot pot restaurant. There were two pots in the center of the table—one with spicy water and one with plain water. As always, the meal was delicious and had more food than we could eat. People took the extra food that had been ordered home.

Christmas Eve is called Silent Night in China. The tradition is to give apples because the Chinese word for apple is similar to that for silent night. Several students gave me apples when they came for their exams Monday and Tuesday. 

Tuesday after lunch we were called to the Foreign Affairs Office because that was when the president was available to meet with us. Since I had students arriving early for their final exam, I couldn’t stay. So I was given my gift as soon as the president arrived and a photo was taken. They gave us two pairs of beautiful chopsticks and chopstick holders.

That evening, Christmas Eve, the Foreign Affairs Office took us—and several people from their office and Peggy and the head of her department—out for dinner. We had been told that we were going to a buffet. What a buffet it was! The setting was elegant. 

The food was beautifully displayed as well as delicious. 

There were about ten different buffet lines with different types of food at each: sushi, beef steak, several Chinese lines, seafood, two dessert lines. I’d never heard of any such thing, but April said such buffets with different types of international food are popular in the UK. We ate for two hours. The cost was posted at the door: 180 yuan ($30). It was a really special treat.

On the 25^th, which, of course, is not a holiday in China, we had our final exam for the teachers’ class. Mr. Huang had suggested postponing it so we didn’t have to do it on our special holiday. It was really nice of him to be so considerate, but some of us have other classes on Wednesday and had to work anyway; so we agreed that it was OK to do the exam that day. It would have been difficult to find another day when the teachers could meet. When I arrived, there was a small gift—an embroidered billfold—on the podium for me. The other teachers received gifts that day, but I had been given my Christmas present two weeks earlier; so it was a surprise to receive another small gift. The class gave me a light-weight thermos so I can always have hot water or tea. It’s quite nice, and it really keeps hot water hot. In fact, boiling water stays too hot to drink much for over an hour while the outside is cool because the rooms are cold

After lunch that day, Dale and I were called to meet the head of the Foreign Language Department. I knew this would be to receive our gifts for doing teachers’ training lectures early in the semester. Mr. Jiang thanked us for our work, and we were given electronic photo displays.

On the evening of the 25^th, we had a special English Corner activity (aka Christmas party). This was April’s idea and project, but I helped her organize it. She proposed the idea of this special activity at the beginning of the month and the Foreign Affairs Department was happy that we would do this for students. April then submitted a proposed budget three weeks ago, and we had no response. The week before Christmas we were getting concerned and decided that, if we had to, we would purchase what we needed and pay for it ourselves. The original proposal was for 150 students. When a large room was booked, April told the student organizers that all the English majors—about 300—could participate. A week before the event, I talked to Peggy. She told me that such an activity has never been held at the university and that usually students, not teachers, organize special activities. Had we known that, we could have had the students make the original suggestion. We did have two students doing a lot of the organizing, but April did most of it. Also, Christmas is a religious holiday, and religious holidays are not celebrated in China. These may have been reasons for the lack of response to the budget.

On Friday, Peggy called me and was concerned because she had been told that all of the freshmen and many of the sophomores knew about the Christmas party. Her boss had told her that they would approve the event if we limited attendance to 100 students and called it a special English Corner activity, not a Christmas party. Of course, I agreed. We then made sure that none of the music being played or sung would be religious. Sunday, April and I did the shopping for decorations, prize gifts, and candy for Santa to throw out to students. We purchased the tree at the Student Street shop because it was larger and cheaper than the ones at Carrefour. The shopkeeper also picked up a Santa outfit. We were then ready.

All went fine once the event/party began. We foreign teachers entered singing a Chinese song that everyone knows. That was a big hit with the students. After a couple songs, we began the game playing. Each of us had a game for ten minutes. Mine was Pin the Nose on the Reindeer. Grace had drawn a colorful reindeer for me. Three student groups performed dances. And we finished with Pass the Parcel with a small gift wrapped inside many layers of newspaper. Students who had the parcel when the music stopped could unwrap it until the music started again. Then Santa Dale came out. The students went crazy when he started to throw candy and literally mobbed him. I finally got close enough to tell him to go to the stage, and then all went well. 

The evening finished with photos, of course. It was a big success. Jane from the Foreign Affairs Office and a couple English teachers were there. We wondered if they had been told to attend to report back about how it went.

When we did the shopping, April and I still didn’t know if the budget would be approved and we would be reimbursed. We had to have “commercial invoices” to submit in order to get reimbursed for expenses. These turned out to be receipts with a red stamp from the store. The store on Student Street gave us vouchers, which just had the amount of money, not what was purchased. On Friday after the activity, Peggy told me that her boss had said I could give her the commercial invoices and they will find a way to reimburse me. Perhaps because we strictly followed the rules and it was a success. When I delivered the invoices, she was surprised that I had stamped receipts from the Student Street shop. She had been collecting them from colleagues so she would have the correct amount of money to present to the department head. It didn’t matter that the receipts weren’t from the store we shopped at. It's all about having paperwork on file.

For the three days before Christmas, the tree was in my living room. We put the lights and garlands on it to see how it would look. I found that I enjoyed having it in my room and turned it on every night. Although I didn’t have a tree myself in the U.S., I always enjoyed visiting others’ trees. It was special here because there weren’t other trees to visit.

On Friday, April and I went to Chengdu to see Christmas lights at night. Jane went with us, which was fun. She is our new office mate. She is currently finishing teaching tourism English and will work for the Foreign Affairs Office full time starting next term. We started at Raffles City where we’d seen Santa hats on the panda sculpture and a tree when we went past on the way to the buffet. We walked around inside the mall to wait for the lights to be turned on to have the full effect. Several stores had Christmas trees in the store or window. When we returned outside, the lights were on. 

The wait was worthwhile. Christmas lights are magical wherever they are but especially in places where they are not common. 

The featured tree is made from 7-Up bottles. Seeing the lights there was a highlight of the night.

Next we went to Chunxi Road to see what was there. There weren’t many special Christmas lights, but we enjoyed walking around and seeing the night lights in general. We were fortunate in that the weather was a little warmer; so it was a great night to be out walking. 

The Christmas bears we’d seen at the Japanese department store had already been replaced with horses for the upcoming Year of the Horse. Jane took us to a restaurant for typical local food. After ordering, she left to join her daughter at McDonalds. When the food came, we were astounded. She ordered a total of eleven dishes: three for each of us and five to share. That was much more than we wanted, but we did well.

All of these activities made this Christmas more of an event than it has been for me for several years. It was fun.

Another special event of the week was Grace and her roommate cooking dinner again on Sunday. This time we paid for the food, which we were happy to do. They enjoy cooking, and we enjoy eating.

Grace made paper cuts for each of us, which was sweet of her. She learned to do this in an art class this term and says it’s really easy. I think not.

There are student posters advertising events on campus. Since they’re in Chinese, I don’t know what they are, but many feature Christmas-type pictures, such as Santas and gifts. Some are quite cute. The trappings of Christmas are popular. They are fun to see, but they lack the spirit behind them.