Christmas in China

December isn’t the Christmas Season in China. Well, it is in some ways, surprisingly, but the people aren’t taken with the Christmas Spirit as Americans were once upon a time.

Walking through the shopping streets in the early dark of winter, I began to notice more and more window decoupage displays of white paper snowflakes over red and green backgrounds. Next to the fashion mannequins, there might have been stacks of presents wrapped in shiny paper, and the whole scene would be advertised with text that read “Ho! Ho! Ho!” or misspelled, gibberish renderings of “Merry Christmas” and other holiday greetings. If a store had a Santa dummy (the Chinese called him Christmas Man), he would usually be dressed in gold or red, maybe silver, and he was always playing the saxophone. I asked one of my students why Santa was always playing the sax, and I received the only answer one can give to such a question: “I don’t know.”

CUH-RIS-A-MERS MAN!

“M-R-R-E everyone!”

The surprising part of Christmas in China, to me, came when I devoted lessons to Christmas, asking students what they knew about it and how people celebrated. My classes knew the melody of “Jingle Bells” and a few other classics, which seemed natural enough, and they also shared the new Chinese tradition of giving apples stamped with a Christmas pattern to their friends- stencils of a reindeer or “Christmas Man” surrounded by the Chinese characters for “Merry Christmas.” I found one of these apples in the spring, after losing it in between my refrigerator and kitchen cupboards, and it still had the same color and firmness as the day I received it. I shudder to think what they sprayed or injected their produce with; the bananas were also uniformly yellow.

All the chemicals in Chinese food made my stomach shake like a bowl full of jelly.

What truly surprised me was when I asked my students as a class, “What do you do for Christmas?” and several of them replied without shyness, “Go to church.” China was still convalescing from Mao and his brand of communism, I thought, and I assumed that like the university professors and public officials who professed the faith, students in school would be hush-hush about church.

Assembling for worship in China, of course, isn’t taken for granted as it is in America, where buildings for every Christian denomination- and then some- can be found within walking distance of every residential area. The public church buildings in China (Three Self Patriotic Movement churches) were registered with the state, and people could openly attend, but state controls hamstrung evangelical efforts and what ministers could preach and teach. It is “the church” with bureaucrats of the Communist Party as head.

Those birds un-caged by state controls, the house churches, were many and various in China, and these were all treated with secrecy for fear of government action (i.e. arrest and imprisonment). So, when I had students freely tell me they were going to attend church with their grandmothers on Christmas, I was taken aback. I was stunned for a moment, and I knew to not ask them what type of church they attended in front of their classmates. Perhaps they went to one of the public churches, and they could share so without reprisal, or maybe it was that they were part of a house church, and attitudes had relaxed to the point that young students thought nothing of discussing it openly. I was left to assume the former, not able to dig into the issue in front of a class of peers, only slowly having my questions about the church in China answered in small increments as time went by. Those small peaks I did get inside church life in China were densely filtered by screens of language and culture.

When I asked my two classes of university students what they were doing on Sunday, the 25th, I heard a groan in reply: “Tests.”

“Tests on Christmas!” I exclaimed, like a claymation character from a Rankin/Bass movie, “That’s terrible.” They concurred.

Earlier that week, I spoke to a Chinese English teacher who told me that one of her fondest school memories was when her foreign English teacher threw a Christmas Party for his students. So, I decided to brighten my students’ day. After they finished their tests, they could come over to my apartment that Sunday for a Christmas Party.

Now, between my two college classes (I had 18 other classes of middle school students), I probably had 45 students, but I did the invitation math I had learned in America and expected 15 people to come, 20 tops, and then only an hour after the official start time. I figured that it would be safe to host the event in my apartment with such a modest crowd, and besides, I had no idea how to reserve a room on campus.

Six o’clock sharp came, official party time, and I had candy and a Christmas cake on the table (cake in China is just like cake in America, only it tastes bad. Imagine the quality of cake you might find in a tawdry convenience store, and that is what cake in China tastes like). I had yet to button up my shirt, but I heard a knock at my door and my phone was beeping with text messages asking me to clarify directions to my apartment. I let the first batch of students in, and from that point on there was a continual stream of new guests. I learned a valuable lesson about Chinese culture that night: if you invite people to a party, they will show up.

Maybe five to seven of my especially anti-social university students didn’t come that night, but the rest of the 45 did come, and some even brought friends. A student who never came to my class (because 10 o’clock was too early in the morning for him) even showed up. At one point, I had over thirty people in my living room. I opened every window to let in the winter wind and try and alleviate the collection of body heat. We could hardly move or hear each other speak, but everyone was in high spirits, with students taking turns to sing solos, and candy and cake being obliterated on and around the table.

A ring of people lined my living room and poured into the kitchen and study.

Another thing about cake in China- it’s often double-layered with a thin spread of cream or jelly filling in between, and there is a light, fluffy frosting on the outside. Not unusual for a cake, but the tall and triangular slices, I want to note, carried messy potential inside and out. It would be tricky to eat such a big, sloppy slice as it was, but in China, people do not keep forks or dinner plates in their kitchen. And cake is one food that will cause the Chinese to relent and admit it cannot be eaten sensibly in a bowl with chopsticks, so Chinese bakeries supply cake buyers with a stack of thin, four-inch paper plates and tiny plastic forks that would be better used to spear cheese cubes.

Also, in China, people devour all of your treats. They don’t pretend they’re uninterested and walk away from leftovers as in American culture.

Big, sloppy cake did not combine neatly with tiny plates and forks. Twenty different mouths slicing cake on my coffee table and struggling to cut it into bites with underpowered forks against handheld, flimsy plates turned my living room into a mess quicker than Old St. Nick could ascend a chimney. I didn’t mind so much, I was too busy trying to accept gifts and play the host by saying hello to the unmanageable mob of people. It was a fantastically big end to the holiday weekend.

The night before, Christmas Eve, I was with Aunt Fong in her hometown, a much larger city than my university town. She took me to a hotel, where a church group had rented a ballroom to put on a Christmas program. People lined the long rows of folding tables, watching the front as new groups came out to sing or speakers shared a teaching or narration. Of course, Aunt Fong had to show me off, so she brought me up front, stuck a microphone in my hand, and had me sing a Christmas song for everyone. Speaking as a man who hates approaching people and feels uncomfortable talking to cashiers at the store, I can say honestly that I was an exceptionally good sport about singing for a ballroom-full of Chinese strangers.

Aunt Fong showing me off. The hat was not my choice.

I’m the tall blurry one in the back. Aunt Fong is on my right.

After the Christmas program ended, Aunt Fong and I headed toward the shopping district. Meanwhile, my phone received “Merry Christmas!” text messages without ceasing. We were out after ten o’clock at night, but the streets and stores were filled with people, probably more crowded than I had ever seen them in that city. That is a noteworthy event. But no one was caroling or wishing passersby “Merry Christmas!” Instead, it seemed like a tame version of a Mardi Gras festival. Children were buying balloons shaped into spirals and other creative shapes, people were wearing carnival masks, and food vendors were on every street corner. I had a hard time getting my bearings in the midst of the colors, crowd, and confusion, and it felt dreamlike as Aunt Fong pulled me through the streets and shopping malls.

The next morning, I returned to my university apartment. Grant and Sue, my Australian neighbors on the fourth floor, had invited me over for Christmas dinner. Also, there was Lee Ahram, the Korean teacher, and Theresa, a Chinese student who had studied in Brisbane- Grant and Sue’s hometown. Sue, savvy shopper that she was, had managed to find a countertop toaster oven, probably the only one in the whole city, so she was able to prepare roasted chicken and potatoes for our meal. China, like many countries in Asia, only has gas burners in its residential kitchens; because the only ways people prepare food at home are by boiling or stir-frying (less commonly, foods could also be steamed over a burner, or stewed or braised).

Grant, Theresa, Sue, and Ahram.

Western meals were difficult to prepare in China. Besides the difference in produce, it was hard to come by certain ingredients and spices, and there were no ovens to bake anything. People were stuck with bad store-bought cake.

So, Sue’s Christmas dinner was a special meal for a special time for our group of assorted foreigners. We were far from our families at home, which was a daily heartache around the holidays, but we had a bond as strangers in a strange land who pined for a Christmas celebration with some solemnity and familial warmth.

At the end of the meal, Sue brought out plates of Christmas pudding, which I was as eager to see as I was to taste. Being an American, the only pudding I had ever seen was Jell-O pudding, and on rare occasion, bread pudding. I had heard talk about pudding in British media, and I had always assumed it was some formless dessert that only the English could love, and that America should probably send a delegation to tell them to start building some structure into their dishes.

Well, the Christmas pudding was formless, but it was a custard not far off from American pudding. Sue had spooned it over a slice of, I think, fruit cake. I can say for sure it was custard and a slice of dense cake. I thought it was pretty good, but Sue lamented that it didn’t turn out quite right; she had to use a can of not very good custard mix, the only kind she could find.

It was all well and good by me. My time in China was often a lonely and isolated experience; having that mid-year holiday celebration was a reviving oasis.

One of my favorite and Aunt Fong’s least favorite photos. The girl on the left was a student of mine named Tiffany.