Merry Christmas (12-26)

Christmas has come and gone, and it was good. A lot of students sent text messages or qq messages (China’s answer to Facebook, which is blocked). Other students said “Merry Christmas.” A few students gave me gifts. I found it nice that they made the effort to acknowledge our foreigners’ holiday that is not their special day. A tradition in China is to give apples on Christmas Eve, as apples represent peace and safety. This is a little different from what I was told last year: that the Chinese word for “apple” is similar to the word for “silent,” and Christmas Eve is called “Silent Night.” It’s “peace” that the word is similar to. I also received several apples. After Kasey’s lecture on Wednesday, they had students stand up and say something nice to her as a gift to her. Then they showed a video of fake job interviews that turned out to be for the job of being a mother. After that, they asked Sean and me to say a few words about the meaning of Christmas.

I prepared a PowerPoint about Christmas for my classes, and they all enjoyed that. In my informal evaluation, “culture” was one of the topics mentioned as being most helpful to the students. This would refer to the holiday PowerPoints; so it was nice to know that they found them helpful.

On Christmas day, the Foreign Affairs Office had their lunch banquet for us foreign teachers. It was the usual 23 courses—some new and some old favorites. Special this time were French fries served with bacon on top, fried chicken that was surprisingly delicious, and mashed potatoes Chinese style with bits of pickles mixed in and gravy over them. It’s nice of them to have special Western foods for us. Many toasts were made for a good new year. 

We were each given a special gift: a framed, silk embroidered picture of pandas.

In the evening, we foreign teachers had a private dinner in my apartment. Paul and I did the planning, and Hannah and I did the shopping. 

Like at Thanksgiving, most foods were purchased ready to eat. At Paul’s request, we had lots of meat—duck and two kinds of pork. He cooked carrots, and I cooked mushrooms—Thai style with three kinds of mushrooms for good luck. We also had bread, cheese, mashed potatoes, gingerbread cookies and cream puffs. Dale brought a bunch of fruits and cakes to give as gifts, and we ate some of the cakes, too. Yienfanh joined us and gave us candy—jelly bellies and chocolate—from the U.S. I served chocolate from the U.S., too. Hannah, Vivian and Hannah’s friend Kathy from out town also joined us, arriving with scarves for each of us and candy for all. So it was quite a meal. While eating the desserts, we watched “Elf.” It was an enjoyable evening eating and hanging out together. Since it was Kasey’s and Sean’s first Christmas away from home, I was especially glad we did it.

In the past two weeks, I attended and enjoyed the student shows of the computer science department, combined history and tourism departments, and the education department. 

The history and tourism show had more skits than most of the shows, which seemed appropriate. They were fun even though I couldn’t understand the dialogue, as many were a little humorous. It was also fun to listen to the students respond with enthusiasm when something happened or when their friends appeared on stage. 

The education department’s show was described to me as a gymnastic contest and was held on the sports field. 

Whole classes performed routines and marched in and out in sync. Teachers served as judges. It was fun to watch their precision and see their costumes. 

Facial stickers were common features.

This was also a time for live classical music. Xavi, my former teacher student, invited me to the annual concert given by the younger—under 40— teachers. He was accompanying a few of them. The concert was a nice mixture of vocal and instrumental performances. Afterwards, I was invited to go on stage for the group photo. 

Xavi also asked to have a photo with me.

Last Friday Sean, Paul, and I went to an orchestra concert in Chengdu. One of Paul’s friends plays the bass in the orchestra. We rode into the city with Sigve and then had dinner with him and his daughter at an Italian restaurant. 

I had eggplant parmigiano that was quite delicious. This was my first Italian food since coming to China almost two years ago.

The concert was wonderful. According to Paul’s friend, the violin soloist was one of the best in China. He was truly magnificent. It was just nice to be at a live concert again.

Then on Sunday, Hannah, Sean, Ian, and I met Paul in the city. We met at a new mall near Chunxi Road that was still being constructed when I was there with April last year. The top of the building has a small park area with grass and cute sculptures and a few restaurants. 

We had lunch at Let’s Burger, which has an interesting variety of burgers. I chose a rice burger with cod. The burger was sticky rice patties instead of a bun. These reminded me of the grilled sticky rice patties I like in Thailand. I topped it off with a milkshake. Although the food was good, it is quite expensive; my meal was 140 yuan/$23. So it’s not a place I’ll be frequenting, but it was fun to try it.

The theme of the mall was The Little Prince. On the top, there was a room with quotes from the book, and there were a few statues of The Little Prince. 

The Christmas tree was a Little Prince theme. There were sheep around the tree for the upcoming Year of the Sheep/Ram. Paul said that the theme changes frequently.

After eating, we walked around the new shopping area behind the mall and along Chunxi Road. We found several other Christmas trees around the area and enjoyed the fox characters.

The surprise of the week was that my package from the U.S. arrived just three weeks after it was mailed. Kasey saw it at the post office when she picked up her package and let me know that it was there. The school hadn’t received notification yet. So I may not have known about it if Kasey hadn’t seen it. That made me wonder if last year’s package was sitting in the local post office for weeks before they notified the school “again” but the school had not received anything.

I attended the last yoga class of the semester on Monday. Since no one else attended, I had a private class with Kelsey, whose English name I learned that night. She spoke English most of the time, and I taught her the names of a few body parts. It was nice that she is now comfortable enough with me to use the English she knows.

The metro construction is now visible. They’ve put net viewing “windows” so that we can now see the construction.