Christmas in China

A major bump in the road of my Chinese adventure – one I saw coming a mile away – was Christmas and the whole being-away-from-home thing. Firstly, the total lack of build up was crazy! As obviously they don’t celebrate it over here, you would never have realised it was ‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’. The only real indication of the time passing was my advent calendar (THANKS AGAIN FAMILY!).

Secondly, surprisingly and despite the majority of the population not celebrating the holiday, Fuzhou wasn’t totally devoid of Christmas decorations! In western chains and the odd Chinese shop there were slightly depressing Christmas trees and demented looking Father Christmas cut-outs (see below!). The school I work for, like Halloween, had various Christmas activities for the holiday too. As was to be expected, they didn’t go according to plan... The activities began on the Saturday before Christmas and we were scheduled to go to Forest Park in the north of the city for some outdoor funsies. Despite the fact that there was no shelter, and it was cold and rainy, we soldiered on – against all of our wishes. Unfortunately due to the weather conditions, the majority of the games we’d planned we couldn’t play. But THANK HEAVENS for whoever invented balloons is all I’m saying – as they became pivotal to the whole morning! See the photos below! By the afternoon the bosses had finally decided that it was foolish to continue outside in the rain, so we had this session in the cold office (they don’t have central heating here) – at least it was dry! It sounds like I’m hard to please, but it was really cold everywhere OK?! These kids were younger than the morning’s and were SO adorable! Especially in their little Father Christmas hats. On Sunday, it was pretty much the same. During the morning and afternoon sessions, I had to introduce them with a song and dance though. I chose ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ for the sing-a-long as most of the children all knew it already. For the dance I chose ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ – very jaunty little ditties! Luckily there are no photos of either dance. Despite setbacks and the miserable weather, the weekend was pretty fun! The kids seemed to enjoy themselves too, bonus!

Christmas displays outside my fave bakery

Rockin' around the Christmas tree

Belief Christmas Tree - well, they tried

One of the creepy Santas lurking around the city

Costume 1: reindeer

Saturday morning - Outside in the rain! Balloons everywhere! They are attempting to make antlers 

More balloon based games

Santa pinata on the left! On the right is the pinata graveyard

Saturday afternoon - adorable children. More balloon games

Pin the nose on the snowman and the cutest little girl hitting the pinata

Exchanging gifts!

Costume 2: elf (I made the best of what I had!)

After this stressful weekend, I was sort of at a loss of what to do to distract myself from the immediacy of Christmas Day... Christmas Eve was a pretty normal day, which was bizarre. A few foreign teachers and I did go to Starbucks though for some of the holiday drinks they have on – SUCH a good shout. Adding Baileys to the Toffee Nut Latte made it all the better! Naturally, we were photographed in our natural habitat (a western chain) several times. A few people even doubled back after walking past the entrance. Classic. Post-caffeine kick we headed to a party thrown by another foreign teacher here. It was lovely! Had many a cup of mulled/spiced wine (is there a difference?) and just chatted. It was jolly nice being around people in the same boat! I saw Christmas Day 2012 in with a standard street food banquet, a mad old woman begging for money/cursing us for not giving money, witnessing a taxi driver drink a beer then throw the can out of his car (didn’t get into THAT taxi needless to say) and drunk Chinese people salting the wound asking the foreigners why we’re not at home for the holiday. Merry Christmas from China!

Christmas Day proper was pretty uneventful – very, very pleasant though. After the mentioned street food incident (and a good night’s sleep) I joined some of the other foreign teachers in the city at an all-you-can-eat brunch at the Shangri-La Hotel. BLOODY AMAZING! Not only did they have REAL turkey (so happy to have turkey at Christmas!) and cheese and bread (omnomnom), but for a small amount of time you could imagine you were in London or New York or any other western city, and totally forget about mad, dirty China outside. Heaven IS a place on earth. I didn’t want to leave! After eating way too much, I retired home to drink Baileys and watch Home Alone with my flatmate.

Amazing tree at the Shangri-La!

TURKEY!!!! AND HAM! AND BREAD!!!

Delicious fresh sushi on the left, and incredible desserts on the right!

So that about sums up my Chinese Christmas! And I survived! It was nowhere near as bad as I’d imagined, phew. I had a lovely couple of days with great company and amazing food! 

Until next time

Xoxo