I wish I had the picture of me singing last night, but if you’ve seen my Facebook photos you can imagine me dancing in a room filled with Chinese families.
Do Chinese people celebrate Christmas?
Kind of. The uber popular Carrefour (big-box store like Wal-mart) was decorated head-to-toe in Christmas pomp. Various stores along the streets of this city have put up Christmas lights and erected Ye Old Plastic Tree.
For all accounts, it seemed a bit like el Norte, sans one big thing: bearded Jesus.
Didn’t see him or his patrons, so obviously the Chinese are awful anti-Christians that burn crosses after defecating on a mound of burning rosaries.
Cultural exchange
In the last five days I’ve been invited to a dozen different Christmas parties and went to three. The first two were faculty parties (I teach at a local college) and were fairly intimate affairs (small groups) whose guests included native-English teachers, deans and even Party officials. Huzzah!
Last night I unexpectedly became a guest of honor. While driving through the countryside with a couple other Westerners, we pulled into a new convention center.
Stepping out in the minus 8 degree weather (in Celsius mind you) we were escorted by beautiful young Chinese women into a heated botanical garden. And just as the small party of guests I was with were about to dive into carby finger foods (plus fresh watermelon), we were all asked to make our way into the much larger auditorium.
There we walked past a dozen rows of Chinese parents and children — all dressed to impressed — and were seated at the very front of the room on a table not too inconspicuously labeled: VIP.
Then came tray after tray of foodstuffs that would make Atkins turn blue. He’d probably like the locally fermented wine though, very delicious.
Sticking out like a sore thumb
It turns out that a local English private school had put together the all-night gala as a way to attract new customers to their language center downtown. And as luck would have it, I speak English.
Actually, some quick background. The unnamed city I live in has a population roughly around 500,000 and was until recently a hub for agriculture activity such as tobacco cultivation (it has now diversified into various other industries).
I am one of six white Western guys in the entire city. Another guy from Ghana teaches at a nearby university. And there are about 100 men and women from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia that attend a local medical school.
Laowei! Laowei! Foreigner! Foreigner!
So you probably understand it now when I say people literally stop and gawk at red-headed me as I walk down the street. Just not many of me-looking me’s out here.
The new Great Leap Forward
If you’ve never traveled overseas to a real foreign country (I don’t mean the Anglosphere), then you’ll have no idea just how everyone wants to learn English. Many Koreans and Japanese are uber fantasized about it (I’ve discussed that here) and many Chinese, despite being relatively poorer, have also drunken the punch.
So now you know why several hundred parents and children dressed up on a icy night in the middle of the work week and sat through a big talent show until midnight celebrating a holiday they don’t celebrate: because the private English center is one hell of a marketer.
Throughout the evening there was never much of a down moment. If people weren’t asking me questions on pronunciation, they were asking me to dance. If they weren’t asking me for my number (to practice English), they were asking me what America was like.
So yes, to answer the age old question: life just sucks when you’re surrounded by beautiful young Chinese women…
Speaking of which, here is a memorable conversation:
Me: Hey, are you a college student?
Girl: Hehe, no no.
Me: (oozing out with game) Oh, so you’re like 19 or 20 then?
Girl: Ha, that is flattering, though I did just graduate.
Me: So what do you do?
Girl: I work for the Communist Youth League
Me: Ah, cool. (jokingly) Are you allowed to talk to Americans?
Girl: Haha, of course, many of us enjoy American culture.
Zing. QED. Take that Matt Drudge and Lou Dobbs. Contemporary Chinese communists are about as anti-American as Mister Rogers, Jimmy Stewart or Kermit the Frog.
Back to the singing and dancing
While a couple of us participated in some various balloon tossing games and techno-laser-dancing, the group of foreigners — all four of us — were asked to sing a couple Christmas songs.
As we approached the stage not only were we blinded by the spot lights but all the camera flashes. They just hate Westerners!
Our first montage was the obligatory Jingle Bells. The audience, being evil communists, clapped to the cadence. This of course muted their screams of jihadi death to America.
Then the next song was Amazing Grace. Yes, evil atheist me sang Amazing Grace. Evil atheist China hated it so much that they had us sing it again, to show their children how to lure Westerners in before the kill.
Upon completing our songs we sat down and listened to one of the other foreigners sing a solo of that hit song: Amazing Grace. The Chinese of course wanted to boo him off the stage and had they not eaten the food, would have thrown a rainbow of fruits and vegetables at him. Take that baby Jesus!
As the evening came to a close, they gave us bottles of wine and even called up a city bus for us before we headed back to town.
So, if there is any doubt left, don’t be fooled by the royal treatment: the Chinese hate Christmas, are not curious about different cultures and above all, hate America.
See also: Smells like communism!