Celebrating the Holidays in Beijing

It is Dec. 24 in Beijing, and we are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. And even more in the middle than if we lived in the USA because there is an additional event we will celebrate in mid-January—Chinese New Year! We will enter “the Year of the Dragon” in 2012 and begin the Chinese New Year celebrations as soon as the Christmas holiday celebrations end.

It has been a pleasant, and interesting, surprise to see all of the Christmas decorations in the city of Beijing. Thanksgiving was a bit of a non-event here; only the hotels and restaurants that cater to expats participated in the holiday in any way. Then December arrived and we started seeing the Merry Christmas signs and special drinks at Costa Coffee, and Christmas quickly permeated the city. Even Chinese restaurant staff were wearing Santa hats when we ate our lunch of spicy sweet peas, rice, dumplings and sweet and sour fish (at least we think it was fish) yesterday. It is my general belief that celebrating this holiday is simply following Western culture; I mean, we say there will be a party and it involves presents. Why not join in? Daniel is a bit more cynical; he says it’s simply another way the capitalists have infiltrated the city. It’s all about money and marketing.

Backtrack to Thanksgiving. It was not a worldwide holiday, so we had school all day. We worked our normal day and then spent our dinner with our Spanish, Filipino and American friends at an Indian restaurant. We could have gone to Frank’s Place (an English Pub) with many of our American staff where a traditional Thanksgiving dinner was being served, but we thought we would break from tradition this year. Our group of eight settled around a table while Bollywood movies played in the background. It was both intimate and international and a bit surreal. We were grateful and humbled and that is what it is all about. A 10th grade Chinese-American student I teach wrote a wonderful story about her own 2011 Thanksgiving experience in her blog called Of Books and Blogs. It’s worth a read.

Our school break started Dec. 10. This meant that our staff Christmas party was the week after Thanksgiving and all of the holiday programs at school were the first week of December. Even though at least 75 percent of our student body is Chinese or Korean, and something approaching 90 percent is “non-western” and potentially non- Christian, we had Santa hats and Christmas trees and decorations. We even had a choir and performed Christmas songs both at school and in the community. It was a lot of fun to watch little children with no command of English working to learn the Spanish in "Feliz Navidad." It seemed odd that our international school embraced this holiday with such vigor. We did not see this in our former international school, and we know from teaching in public schools in the U.S. that we need to be sensitive. It becomes even more ironic with the knowledge that our school head is a strong Jewish woman and a large percentage of the staff is non-Christian. I suppose you could argue that we celebrated the cultural side of the holiday, not the religious side. But, still... 

We are now at Christmas Eve. The malls and shopping centers are humming, but the intensity isn’t quite there. We went “Christmas” shopping yesterday, and we didn’t notice any suburban moms beating up any other suburban moms for the last Transformer Toy or American Girl Doll; we didn’t see any fights in parking lots over the last parking spot; we didn’t hear any parents screaming at their kids that Santa wasn’t coming this year because they hadn’t done their chores or gotten good grades or been nice to their little sister. (Of course they might have been saying those things, but our eight words of Chinese don’t allow us to eavesdrop too well). It seems the Chinese haven’t quite figured out the true meaning of Christmas yet. 

There are “Merry Christmas” signs and trees with bright lights. We hear holiday music in the background at restaurants and malls. We found a street that is lined with Christmas booths, and we bought stockings and a few decorations for our apartment. (Anna found a stocking shaped like a Western boot!) We made a family plan to spend 100 RMB (approx. $16) on each other and we went our separate ways at a market called Yashow. It is a place where you can bargain for everything—clothes, gifts, silk products, ANYTHING…  We met back in 30 minutes with our bags full of treasures for each other. It will be an exciting morning tomorrow to learn who got the best bargains and the best gifts! 

On a spiritual note, we found a small church congregation that is comfortable for us. We will go to the Christmas Eve service tonight at 7 p.m. to sing songs, read scripture and allow the real meaning of Christmas to supplement the plastic Santas and “made in China” Christmas trees. We’ll come home, have a Christmas treat, open a single gift and be grateful for all the experiences we have had and for this incredible journey we are on.

We hope that this note finds you all grateful for your journeys and not too caught up in the tinsel and candy canes to remember what is most important this season and throughout the year.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.