Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

Trying to hail a cab at 5 pm on a Friday is not fun in Changsha. It seemed like everyone who took the bus all week suddenly decided to take a taxi. I was heading to EF’s Children’s Christmas party at the Royal Seal Hotel along with Yurgen and Lily, his date for the evening. Lily is his private Chinese teacher. We met Wayne and Emilie and their baby, 9 month old Wyatt and Grace and her daughter, ChiChi at the side of the street. They were also trying to hail a cab. It was dark and raining and windy and cold.

I should tell you a little bit about the Chinese people. They do not wait in lines or wait their turn. The mentality of ‘first come first served’ means the first person to butt in or squeeze passed all the rest wins. It’s a game of survival of the fittest and fastess. And it can be really annoying when you are at the convenience store and someone pushes passed you and puts their stuff on the counter. The clerks only acknowledge whatever is in their direct line of sight. They do not have any peripheral vision from what I can tell.

We finally flagged down an empty cab that could not get across from the middle lane. He beeped and flashed his lights. We watched him go down the street and make a U-turn and head back toward us. As he pulled up to us a Chinese man opened the door and hopped in the front. Wayne was furious! He grabbed the door before it was closed and screamed at the guy who refused to get out. The cab driver didn’t know what to do. After a verbal round of English and Chinese and neither one understanding the other, the man stood up and Emilie squeezed in behind him with the baby and got the front seat away from him. (As a side note, there are no such things as baby car seats in China, nor seatbelts in the back seat of cars. They are however in the front but rarely used.) It was decided that the women and children would go in the first cab. So we piled in. The driver went about 50 feet up the street, stopped and made us get out. We were only going a few blocks and we think he decided the other guy's fare would be larger. We gave up at that point and walked. We were frozen upon arrival at the hotel. Because I thought we would be cabbing it both ways I was wearing a good dress I had brought for such occasions and of course thin shoes and a long all-weather coat suitable for spring or fall. Thank goodness I had decided to put my gloves in my pocket.

The dinner buffet was well under way when we finally arrived at the hotel. The 27th floor was wall to wall Chinese children - at a buffet dinner with no parents. Are you picturing this? The noise was overwhelming to say the least and then someone brought out a huge bag of New Year’s Eve style noisemakers! Whistles, horns, clappers – you name it! Someone told me that China didn’t acknowledge the Christmas season until about ten years ago. Now it’s decorations and music everywhere for the month of December. And they think New Year’s Eve noisemakers are part of Christmas. Someone should set them straight. The noisemakers are for the adult parties! Children make enough noise on their own!

We did however enjoy the meal. Turkey, roasted to perfection – it was wonderful. I hadn’t expected that at this dinner. When I heard there was turkey I expected it to be smothered in red hot chilli peppers as was the custom for food in Hunan province. And cranberry sauce – although it was not quite the same as North Americans prepare it – or how it comes in a can. It looked like they boiled the cranberry’s and strained out the pulp. It was of a runny, pink liquid consistency – but nevertheless, the flavour was there! Other items on the buffet included soft-shelled turtle, eel, duck a la Peking style, baby octopus, whole fish with the heads still attached and duck heads cooked in sauce. (See picture below.) I stuck to the turkey, salmon, shrimp and potato salad! In additional there was the traditional rice dishes and a table of desserts and fruit.

I sat at a table with Yurgen and Lily and Doug, a new teacher from north of Toronto somewhere. We were joined by Rainey who is one of the course consultants. Everyone mingled back and forth. Pictured here is Steve (aka the man in red) and Rainey and Rainey again wearing one of the masks given out to the children. Other tables included Grace, ChiChi and Ashley and Emilie (holding Wyatt), Cindy and Steve. Cindy teaches us Chinese on Wednesday afternoons. ChiChi is one of the students in my kindergarten class. She looked so sweet in her Chinese dress.

After a sing-a-long, riddles and a live musical performance by a saxophone player, Santa arrived! Each child was given a gift and had their picture taken. The only way there was some semblance of organization per se was to have Santa in a separate room and only let in a few at a time. Otherwise it would have been total chaos and Santa would have been ripped to shreds!

After the children were picked up at 9 pm the staff of the school and teachers stayed on for drinks and karaoke. I will never be brave enough to try it. And that’s probably a good thing as those of you who have heard me sing can attest to.

Steve and I shared a taxi back home before midnight. I wanted to get to bed in good time and set my alarm for 8 am so I could get up and be online on my webcam for Christmas Eve in Brantford.

Modern technology and communication made it possible for me to be in Kevin’s family room as my children and grandchildren gathered Christmas Eve for our annual family ‘gag gift’. We have carried on this tradition for ten years now. We pick names at Thanksgiving when the theme is announced by last year’s winner. This year’s theme (announced by Derek) was: If (name of person picked) was your travel agent, where would they send you and what would you bring back as a souvenir? The souvenir in this case is the ‘gag gift’.

I was right there in the family room on the webcam and I could see and hear all of them and each ones story and what the gift was. Suddenly the world seemed a little smaller! I chatted, waved and blew kisses to Emilie, Jake and Canyon. Of course it made me homesick to think I could not reach out and hug them but it was the best I could have hoped for being so far away from home.

My webcam party was interrupted by a phone call – my father wishing me Merry Christmas! I talked to him and then my mother all the way from Ontario, Canada. It was great to hear their voices. It was still Christmas Eve for them and they were so excited to be off to Craig’s the next morning to be with the little ones and see them open their presents. After a seven year hiatus in California for the winters they were surely going to enjoy this Christmas. Southern Ontario had been dumped on with a snowfall of 25 cm that day – Merry Christmas – you can keep that part!

Soon after I received a call from my friend, Deb. We gabbed for short time and I got caught up on all the news in Windsor. It was great to hear another voice from home. Then it was stocking time. Kim was awake and Heather arrived. We had filled each other’s stockings the day before. It was nice to have something to open Christmas morning. I received a Chinese tea mug with a place to put the green tea leaves so they aren’t floating all over the place, a Chinese flag, toe socks, a jade necklace and the usual candy, toothpaste etc.. The doorbell rang and Steve arrived with a bed-warmer for each of us. This is an electrical round pod with a cloth cover. You plug it in for five minutes and it becomes warm. After you unplug it the heat intensifies inside through some magnetic process and it gets hotter and hotter and stays warm for hours. It has been a lifesaver on the cold nights with no power. (That is of course if you get it heated up before the power goes out!) Wayne arrived with a package of specialty tea for each of us. We gabbed and opened gifts over hot coffee laced with Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Then of course we were hungry and decided to make the trek to the “Canadian Embassy” for breakfast. Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus (Chinese style) were there to greet us as we had a non-traditional Christmas breakfast of burgers, fries and coke. Our school was right across the road and we knew that one lonely receptionist would be working since it was a Saturday and even though there were no classes someone had to be there to greet parents of potential new students. And being the lobby area is not heated we decided to pay her a visit and take her a hot chocolate. I happened to look in the teacher’s room and there on my desk were three envelopes! Christmas cards from Joslyn, my parents and my friend Kathy. Now that was indeed a nice surprise on Christmas day! Getting mail from home here is a major event and everyone shares in the delight – of course with a little bit of the green-eyed monster thrown in. And to get three at once was triple delight!

We trekked back home to our cold apartment (more to come on this subject) and headed back to our beds to keep warm and nap for the afternoon. We had tickets for a turkey dinner later at a hotel down the street.

At 5 pm we were all showered and ready to go. No one felt like getting dressed up so we arrived at a fancy-schmancy ballroom buffet in our jogging pants, sweatshirts, running shoes and wrapped up in coats, hats, scarves and gloves. Little did we know that Chinese people take their families out for a fancy meal on what the rest of world calls Christmas Day. Being the only foreigners in the whole place we got the usual stares. I wasn’t sure if was for the way we were dressed or just the usual “foreigner” stares. The hotel manager came and sat at our table for about an hour. He passed out his card and welcomed us to the Best Ride Hotel. I know that conjurs up some visuals for some people but get your minds out of the gutter! It was a top-notch hotel not a sleazy room-for-an-hour kind of place! Four Chinese girls asked is they could join us and we obliged knowing their ulterior motive was for the complimentary English lesson!

The buffet was much like the one from the night before so it was no surprise. Turkey was on the menu as well. Wine and beer were also included in the all-you-can eat dinner. A version of Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs played on a big television screen. We ate and ate and drank and drank until we were full. We didn’t win any of the draw prizes and were walking through the lobby when we were asked to have our picture taken with the hotel staff. Why? I don’t know!

So that was Christmas 2004 in China. We went through the motions but of course it just wasn’t the same as a Christmas back home. We made the best of the situation. The next day was a Sunday and we had to get up at 6:30 am and back to our regularly scheduled classes.