Discovering the true meaning of Christmas

The true meaning of Christmas, while being a hyper-cliché in Western cultures, is genuinely foreign to the Chinese people. I can say this with titanium-grade certainty because these words are being proffered by one seriously disillusioned Santa Claus.

Allow me to zoom out a bit and provide you, the weary holiday reader, some context. My Chinese friend Amy (a super-classy lady that runs her own juvenile English school here in LianYunGang and who’s also dating another foreign teacher here at the HuaiHai Institute of Technology) asked for foreign volunteers to come to a Christmas party at a local Kindergarten. “The more the better,” Amy said. And while I weighed the invitation, I was forced to consider the zealous generosity that Amy had shown to me and the other foreign teachers since I’ve been here. Also, I realized that my attendance at this party, while being a nice favor to Amy on the one hand, might make this Christmas more memorable for the children. Because—at the end of the day—you do it for the children.

Now, to make one thing perfectly clear: I don’t work with children on a daily basis. Some of my colleagues here in China have prior experience outside of the University setting; they’ve taught young’uns at home or abroad. My CV is relatively thin when it comes to early education, though. I suppose the psychology of dealing with the younger crowd is much more straightforward. I can wrap my head around that—no problem.

But the thing that a naïve University teacher fails to realize is this: the kids aren’t the problem; it’s the parents. I’ll get to this point in a moment.

Back to the so-called party. I was joined by Phil, Amy’s boyfriend and a colleague of mine at the University. We met Amy as she was closing up her school on Thursday night. En route to the party, Amy asked me if I would like to be Santa Claus. “Well, Amy…,” I said, “that’s a very enticing offer. But I’m not not exactly what you would call ‘jolly,’ nor do I have the…(cough, gesture towards my stomach) appropriate physique.” I was confident that Phil would be filling out the big red suit anyhow. He had agreed beforehand—I was witness to this. But then Amy informed me that she had extra Santa outfits. Phil’s eyes lit up when he heard this. “Now listen Rory,” Phil started in his heavy Dublin accent, “if I’m gonna be makin’ an arse outta meself yer gonna be there beside me. No two ways about it.” Ah shit.

I could feel my stomach churn in anticipation for one of the most humiliating ordeals of the year, let alone the decade. I was soon to discover that the absolute chaos of the situation would override any concerns I had about looking silly.

After arriving at the school I was led to a small closet, and Amy introduced me to the school’s headmaster. She gave me sparse instructions. “If the kids hand you a red or green ticket, then you give them a present from the bag,” she said. Pretty straight forward. When I exited the small utility closet that the school had set aside as “Santa’s Workshop,” wherein I donned the suit and loaded up Santa’s bag full of toys, the throng of people outside was enough to derail even the most stalwart of Ol’ Saint Nicks. I can’t tell you the exact number of kids that attend this Kindergarten; but judging by the amount of people crowding the halls and shoving past one another, I would estimate that anywhere between 500 and 50,000 kids attend this school.

Very soon I was caught up in the whirlwind of a commercially-driven farce of a holiday celebration; this was complete with a weak and unenthusiastic facsimile of Father Christmas, who was doling out cheap gifts to an un-appreciative crowd of youngsters. Sound familiar? Believe it or not, this happens in China too.

I was quickly surrounded on all sides by clamoring children, and if I failed to immediately take their tickets and exchange them for a gift then the parents wouldn’t hesitate to intervene. Like I said before, they’re by far the worst. I was besieged by pushy and insistent parents, some of them having the gall to tug on my sleeves and pry their hands into the bag. I had to lay down some Santa boundaries. I looked round for Phil in the hopes that we could make a united front. He was being swept in the other direction by the crowd, and I soon lost sight of him. On my own and faced with the mob, I tried to maintain a steady pace of gift dispensing and cheer spreading. I did my best rendition of the voice; I waved to the kids; I pretended to ignore the unintelligible shouts coming from parents who were apparently unsatisfied with the gift that I had given their child. There were moments where I very nearly lost my composure. I distinctly remember saying, more than once, to a sea of completely deaf ears that, “Hey! It’s about giving, not taking!”

And then after another hand tried to force its way into my bag, “Cut that out! That’s not Christmas, dammit!”

All in all, I believe that I was made to be less of a fool than some of these parents. Perhaps the school should’ve equipped their would-be Santas with riot gear instead of polyester bags filled with cheap plastic toys. But as fervent as I was in imposing the cheery and charitable spirit of the holidays, sometimes quite forcefully, the Chinese still understand very little about Christmas, Santa Claus, and the whole scene really. What mattered most for the school, in the end, was having a white face behind that fake white beard.

Trying as it was for me, my Welsh friend Michael had a worse time of it…somehow. He showed up a bit later on, and in a courageous act of selflessness he donned a Santa suit to provide some late-inning relief. He was bright as a supernova at first, throwing himself into the role with aplomb and cheer to spare. But then he made a fatal mistake when he knelt down to hand out gifts to some forlorn-looking tots. The resulting scramble for the open bag nearly trampled seven kids and knocked over a fully-articulated Christmas tree. It was a sad moment for Santa impersonators everywhere.

Future Perfect

Greetings from the world of tomorrow!

This city doesn’t fit the profile for the clean and sterile utopia of Huxley’s[1] imagination. I’d say it more closely resembles the decaying and crumbling not-so-distant future of Caurón[2] or Scott[3]. In all fairness though, for every site of baffling urban decay there is a shiny new façade to draw the eyes of the skeptic visitor. Honestly, I think these flashy new steel and glass monoliths are part of a thin veneer to cover up…well I’m still not exactly sure what there is to hide. All the remnants of a truly ancient culture are eroding in the face of unrelenting progress.

However, in the spirit of tomorrow there are several fascinating devices and customs that have developed in this not-so-distant landscape of the future. These have started to appear more and more as the mercury has dipped (A brief aside about the weather: when I first arrived in China the temperature was hot but not intolerable. Now, nearly midway through December, I walk outside and I think that it could be any month in the late fall or winter. There aren’t nearly as many of the weather hazards that I’ve grown accustomed to during my life in the Midwest USA). That being said, I find that the Chinese are far less tolerant of the cold than Midwesterners of good stock. Many of these aforementioned devices in the world of tomorrow are related to the declining temperature.

I’ve noticed that the locals have an affinity for keeping their forearms warm. In some instances, this desire to protect the forearm is entirely logical and necessary. Take for example some nifty forearm-guards that I’ve seen on the motorcycles and bicycles. These fur-lined mittens will cover the handlebars of any bike, and from there they extend to cover the arm well past the wrist. These make sense to me; I can appreciate the ingenuity and necessity behind such an invention. But then there is another incarnate of the Chinese desire to keep the forearm toasty; and unfortunately, I see very little logic or reason behind this accessory. The forearm smock, or extra sleeve, is the confounding piece of apparel that I’ve discovered. What drives people—outside of food services—to wear a pair of these hideous sleeves? I cannot say. But I see students wearing them sometimes; and I must admit that when I see someone wearing these pointless sleeves outside their winter coats, I feel genuine contempt for that person. They may have done nothing to offend me outside of wearing these obnoxious sleeves, but that’s all it takes.

In other news, my Welsh friend Michael was back in the hospital last week. Michael has, by his own admission, pissed away his health for the better part of the last ten years. He’s only twenty-four, but twice in the last month he’s had to go to the hospital to treat air pockets in his lungs. These uncomfortable ailments stem from his regular smoking habit since age twelve. I make no judgments about Wales based on my one Welsh friend, but it’s fair to say it’s a different world where smoking is picked up by twelve year olds. Anyway, the hospitals are a real comic experience. In the one location of this futuristic world where one would expect to see a clean and sterile environment, quite the opposite is true. Any Ding, Zhou, or Wang from the street can bring in his oversized fruit cart or motorized tricycle. They’ll wheel their buggy right into the lift, bring it up to the floor where their relative is being treated, and carry on as if this isn’t an egregious encroachment on everything medical. The hospital staff will just work around these obstructions. Nobody bats an eye, even though untold bacteria are being carted in with these mechanical beasts of burden. I suppose it’s more sanitary than allowing the donkey-driven cart into the hospital ward, but it’s still a curiosity. And of course smoking goes un-checked by the nurses and doctors, even in the respiratory ward.

So those of you reading this yesterday, do your best to protect your future. It is not perfect.

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[1] Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and Island

[2] Alfonso Caurón, director of Childrend of Men (2006)

[3] Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner (1982)

Nothing is written!

Good grief, has it really been this long since I’ve updated this register of raucous China-related revelries? Well, dear Reader, please accept my earnest apologies. You must understand, gentle Reader, that the final exam season is upon us here at the HuaiHai Institute of Technology. And while this time of the academic calendar heralds the approach of the long-awaited winter holiday, this season also carries with it a lot of work.

One of the tasks set to teachers is writing final exams. In a fashion that follows suit with the school’s laissez faire approach to classes, attendance, and well..pretty much everything else, the guidelines for concocting these exams are rather vague. In essence, the teachers are expected to create something more or less similar to the previous year’s exam. Copies of the old exams are distributed, but these are to be viewed merely as suggestions. It would be well-advised to adopt a format similar to the previous exam, but when it comes to content alls fair. At least, that’s the impression I got. The nitty-gritty details of the exam process are more intricate and confusing than this general overview I’ve provided. But you, fair Reader, needn’t concern yourself with the big plastic hassle; just appreciate the fact that I’ve been given a considerable amount of leeway when it comes to drafting these climactic quizzes.

Here’s a sample of some exam questions I’ve come up with so far:

1) Common purposes of communicating include

a) Entertainment, wealth, and desire.

b) Survival, co-operation, and personal needs.

c) Disinformation, stealth, and clandestine activities.

d) Extortion, racketeering, and organized crime.

2) Based on in-class lecture, three cultural values that are common in the U.S. are

a) Low fuel prices, high wages, and extended vacations.

b) Fast food, hard work, and television.

c) Independence, hard work, and convenience.

d) Life, liberty, and the pursuit of celebrity status.

3) Which of the following can be defined as a cultural response?

a) Sleeping when you are tired.

b) Saying “God bless you” when someone sneezes.

c) Sneezing.

d) Giving birth.

(think you know the answers? Test your knowledge! Leave answers in the ‘comments’ section of this blog)

All these sample questions came from the exam that I’ve written for my fourth-year students. These fourth-years are at the end of the road here at HHIT, and they’re set to be released into the wide world like a pack of voracious smelling hounds ready to sniff out decent work wherever it might be available. But the sad truth here in China is that good work is just as scarce for the recent graduate as it is back home in the States. I can only hope that the rigorous instruction that I’ve provided over the last four months will serve them well in the future.