Christmas in China

Christmas in the Classroom

It’s been an incredibly busy Christmas week but it’s also been a fantastic experience.  The week really got going last Friday with the class Christmas party here in Langfang.  One of the privileges I have here in China is the ability to share about western cultural and personal family traditions.  This means that I get to share each American holiday with my students.  Sharing about Thanksgiving was fun but sharing about Christmas was the best!

The Christmas celebration for classes 1 and 3 started out with decorating the classroom.  I brought an assortment of glittering garlands and various knickknacks to spruce up the place.  The students quickly got to work with my bag of goodies and they put together some impressive displays.  They actually took some green garland and made an outline of a Christmas tree on the wall.

Once decorating was complete we moved into the meat of the Christmas celebration.  I lectured briefly about the history of Santa Claus and ended my talk with a reading of, “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”  The students had a hard time following some of the words but I had a PowerPoint presentation with pictures to help illustrate.  Then we moved on into Christmas carols.  The students even shared with me the Chinese versions of such classics as Jingle Bells, which in Chinese is called “Ding! Ding! Dong!”  Then it was time for presents.  I had previously asked the students to all bring a small gift to the class and everyone was ready.  We used the gifts for a white elephant gift exchange. 

The day before I had gone to the super market and picked up a load of candy and cookies.  I knew that it just wouldn’t be a good Christmas party without treats.  So I pulled out my Santa bad and gave everyone cream covered rice cakes and tiny jelly cups.  The students just loved ‘em and they all cheered.  Finally it was time for the greatest surprise of all!  A dear friend back in the states had collected and mailed to me a bunch of one dollar bills.  The American currency came with implicit instructions that it was to be used as Christmas present for the students.  There were enough bills to go around but I decided to make a little game out of the distribution of this gift.  I only pulled out five of the bills and claimed that five was all that I had.  We then proceeded to raffle off the five bills to randomly selected students.  The students were super excited and it was clear that they all wanted their own dollar bill from America.  They were literally on the edge of their seats during the raffle.  Each time a name was selected from my Santa hat the tension would grow.  The students were of course happy for the other students who won but there was clearly disappointment when their own name wasn’t called.

The best part of the whole raffle came at the end.  I reached into my hat to pull out a self-planted ticket that read, “Everyone.”  At first the students were confused and I played it off as some kind of mistake.  However, it was no mistake.  In my mock confusion I checked under the desk for any possible gifts that Santa might have left behind.  Sure enough, there was the stack of bills for the other students.  When I pulled out the stack the room went crazy.  The students were so happy.  I distributed one dollar bill to each student and they couldn’t be happier.  Many of the students told me that they would, “cherish the gift forever.”  It’s a small gift but it really did mean a lot.  After my little charade was over I confessed the whole thing and told the story of how the bills had been collected by my friends back home.  The students all send their thanks.

Christmas in Boading

 This week has been simply littered with Christmas parties.  On Saturday and Sunday, my team made their way to Boading for the IECS teacher Christmas get-together.  We were so graciously hosted by team HFU for the weekend.  I feel like most of the weekend was spent eating, although I’m not complaining.  We ate some really good food!  We started out Saturday luncheon with donkey burgers.  Yes, I said “donkey.”  Boading is famous for their fried bread sandwiches with pulled donkey meat.  It’s actually really good and tastes similar to deer meat.  Saturday evening was Christmas dinner where everyone pitched in to make an assortment of American Christmas dishes.  We had roast chicken, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, and all kinds of other good foods.  The evening ended with a fun white elephant gift exchange where there was no shortage of gag gifts.

Sunday morning was the time for the real gift exchange.  We did a secret Santa gift exchange with each of the more serious presents.  I ended up getting a beautiful handmade Chinese scroll and a t-shirt with panda bears doing Tai Chi.  I love ‘em.  The day ended off with us going to a really nice Italian restaurant in Boading for Pizza, pasta and salad.  Then we played games into the late hours.  It was a lot of fun.

Christmas with the College

 As I retrospectively write this blog I am reminded of just how many Christmas parties I’ve been too in the last week!  We came back from Boading on Monday and Monday night we went to the Langfang Teacher College’s Christmas celebration.  It was a major production in the main meeting hall with nearly a thousand or so students and facility in attendance.  It was mainly a talent show whereby students showed off an assortment of dancing, singing, and other skills.  Even us Americans got to get in on the act when we got up and sung the “Twelve Days of Christmas” with funny actions for everyone to follow. It’s a little odd to think of a Christmas production as having a mixture of Chinese marital arts demonstrations, traditional Chinese music, solo modern songs, and even synchronized dancing to Korean pop music!  I don’t normally associate Girls Generation with traditional Christmas music… but oh, well!

Christmas in the Hospital

 On Christmas Eve, after the school celebration, I got a call from my good friend DC that my shifu (the old man who teaches me taiji) was in the hospital.  He had gone into the hospital over the weekend due to internal stomach bleeding.  At the time of the call the doctors still did not know why this was happening but they were in the process of running tests.

That night the doctors performed a small operation and placed a camera tube down his throat to find the problem. The good news is that the shifu simply had an open ulcer and nothing more serious like cancer.

The doctors will keep the shifu in the hospital for a few days to make sure that the bleeding stops but they say he should heal quickly and be back to good health in a matter of weeks.  They have put him on a strict diet of soup and water while he heals, which my shifu was not too happy about.  But he is being a good patient.

On Christmas morning I went to visit the shifu in the hospital.  The shifu does not speak English but his daughter was there and she is a very good translator.  The shifu did not want DC to tell me about the trip to the hospital as he did not want me to be worrying about him over Christmas.  He knew that this was a special time for me as an American.  I told the shifu that I am glad DC told me and I told him about how my friends back in America were all hoping for his good health.  The shifu's daughter was greatly moved by this act and it took her a moment before she could translate my words into Chinese.  Upon hearing this in Chinese my shifu smiled, started crying, and then he even bowed to me in gratitude.

It was merely a moment on the side of a hospital bed on Christmas morning in China... but it was a powerful moment.  I got to share a little joy with an old Chinese man and his daughter on Christmas.