China Reflection

During my years spent living in Japan and China I have become somewhat of an Asian Christmas expert.  For four years in a row I have channeled jolly old St. Nick’s soul, dawning cheap Santa outfits and prancing around in front of large crowds of students and children as parents snap photos of me handing out gifts in the true spirit of  Christmas materialism . 

The first time I spent a Christmas away from the US was  during my year of teaching English in Japan.   I was asked to participate in a Christmas event for pre-school students.  The organizers of the event would provide me with a Santa outfit and sack of gifts.   I was to walk into a large auditorium, say a few words of Christmas cheer, hand out a couple of gifts, and then leave.  At the time, my older brother, Bryan, was in town.  On the same day of the event, we had a train to catch to Nagano^W, so we wouldn’t have to linger for long.  I asked if some type of costume could be provided for my brother as well, in order to make the experience more fulfilling, festive, and family oriented.  We were promptly given a second Santa suit.  Two for the price of one.  We decided that he would play my head elf, Eldemere.  As we entered an office beside the auditorium, two cute Japanese girls in their late twenties were waiting for us.  They were dressed as reindeer.  They gave me a huge sack filled with presents, and we put our plan into action.  Originally, I was told that the this event would be a “small” gathering.  What I’ve come to learn is that a “small”  Christmas gathering in Japan (and China for that matter) translates to 300 wide-eyed kindergarten students standing in neat little rows on a stage while their parents flash pictures of us.  My brother and I rushed in, both of us in character.  Oh my god, I thought to myself.  All eyes were on me…Santa.  I got up on stage, introduced Eldemere, said merry Christmas, and gave one gift to the first child I saw.  She looked at me with a frightened expression on her face and took the gift, silently.  My brother and I did a little Christmas jig.  He looked at me and said, “chest bump?”  Without taking time to think, we both jumped up in the air, bumped chests, and danced our way out of the building leaving the sack of presents behind with the reindeer.  That was four years ago.  

My two Christmases in Jiangxi have been slight variations of the Christmas I spent in Japan.  Last year I attended an event at a private English school called “Crazy English” (one of many “Crazy English” schools across the country).  Again, I was told to dress as Santa.  Again, I would be given a sack of presents.  On the way to the event, while crossing a bridge, I happened to encounter another Asian Santa Claus.  As soon as we saw each other, in true Brotherhood of the Guild of Fake Santas fashion, we immediately embraced, exchanged pleasantries, and snapped a photo.  When I arrived at the event, the teachers were trying to get the young Chinese students to sing along with Christmas carols.  Once again, as soon as I entered, all eyes were cast onto me.  As with American children, the Chinese knew that Santa=gifts.  The atmosphere became chaotic, and it was difficult for the Crazy English teachers to organize the students in singing Christmas carols.  Suddenly there were explosions of firecrakers, confetti, and foam.  My Swiss colleague and friend, Simon, stood amidst the chaos as children ran around his feet.  After handing out the presents in a mad flurry of hands and feet, I sat down to tell the students some information about my home, the North Pole.

When I first came to Asia, I never realized what a big hit Christmas would be.  Japan and China are not countries rooted in Christianity, instead having more influences from Buddhism.  Despite this fact, my Asian Christmases have been huge explosions of noise, children, gifts, and Western culture.  This phenomenon is undoubtedly the result of Westernization and globalization.  Asian Christmases often give me a strange feeling because the feelings and influence of the West are here, but they are often interpreted in a different slant, and something is lost in the translation.  This mish-mash of cultures and globalization often results in some odd new Asian “Christmas customs.”   In Japan, for example, many young Japanese flock to KFC on Christmas.  The statue of Colonel Sanders is dressed in Santa gear, while friends gather inside to eat the closest thing Japanese have to turkey meat.  In China, the word for Christmas Eve is “Ping An Ye.”  This word sounds similar to the Chinese word for ”apple,” or “Ping Guo.”  Because of this similarity, many Chinese will eat and exchange apples on Christmas Eve.  In both cultures, Christmas doesn’t have anything to do with the birth of Jesus, but is more of a chance to get together with friends and party in the middle of winter.  Now that I think of it, Christmas has never had anything to do with Jesus for me personally.  As a child, I was always just interested in presents and seeing family.  As I grew older, I just cared about seeing family.

This year Christmas Eve in Beijing was more of a toned-down affair for me, and I kind of liked it that way.  In an odd coincidence, my boss at Vanguard Travel invited me join his wife and son for a meal at a Japanese buffet.  I first went to his house,and had a glass of tea and some fruit with him and his wife.  His son sat on the ground and displayed his impressive dinosaur collection to me.  After chatting for some minutes, we got into my boss’ car and drove to the Japanese buffet. It was located in an area of Western hotels and surrounded by Christmas trees and lights.  My boss wanted to take me to this area so that I could see how the area had been Christmasized.   On the way to the buffet, I read an English/Chinese version of “Green Eggs and Ham” aloud to his son.  I had given this book to his son as a Christmas gift.  Before I arrived to the point where “Sam-I-Am” finally convinces the stubborn narrator to try his green eggs and ham, we arrived at the buffet.  Packed to the gills with groups celebrating their “Apple’s Eve,” we found one empty table and helped ourselves to the endless supply of sushi, soups, noodles, fried rice, broccoli, cakes, fried seafood, scallops covered with melted cheese…basically everything but turkey.  I sat across from my boss’ wife and their 3 year old son.  His son looked at me and took a big swig of his glass of yoghurt, immediately displaying a yoghurt mustache and beard afterwards.  

I never once channeled Santa’s soul this year on Christmas Eve.  I never had to meet a flurry of hands grabbing for gifts.  I didn’t sing a single Christmas carol.  I just had a meal with a family.  It may have not been turkey, and it may have not been my family, but it was still a meal with a family, nonetheless.  As I sat there with my boss and his family on Christmas Eve, gorging ourselves to our hearts content, I realized that finally, after four years in Asia, Christmas had truly arrived.

I wake up to the sound of the wind rattling my windows.  Lying on my back, I look up through the curtains which hang over the heater in my tiny room.  The trees are shivering with each gust of wind, making me think of a scene out of Sleepy Hollow.  It’s almost 7 o’clock Sunday morning.  Originally, I wanted to get up early and practice nunchakus in Mudan Park.  In order to get there, I have to take two metro lines after a 15 minute walk.  Each rattle of the window pane reaffirms that I should not go outside in the bitter Beijing winter wind.  My nunchaku buddies and instructor are surely not out there this morning.  I’d be surprised if anyone was out there this morning.  Regardless, I’m awake, and I decide that I don’t want to spend the day inside.  Life is short, and Beijing is too big for me to waste the day lying in my bed that sags in the middle on its eastern side.       Swiveling myself to the middle of the sagging spot in the center of the bed, I make sure that my feet do not touch the frigid floor in my room as I get up to go to the restroom.  My floor is simply cement covered in cheap plastic made to look like wood.  I stand up in my slippers and walk to the restroom to take a shower.  In order to accomplish the task of taking a hot shower, I have to first plug the hot water heater into the electrical socket and let it heat up for about 20 minutes to half an hour.  I make the short trip to the toilet, plug in the hot water heater, and return to my sagging bed and study Chinese for a few minutes.  At the same time, I heat up a pot of water to add to my awaiting tin of oatmeal and honey.  I like to multi-task in the mornings if I can.  Heating up my brain with bits of Chinese, my stomach with a bowl of oatmeal, and the shower with hot water, it’s almost enough to counter the bitter cold outside.

After enjoying my oatmeal, I make the trek back to the toilet to take my shower.  The shower head itself hangs directly over the toilet, so that every time I take a shower, the toilet and floor become covered in pools of water.  I have to be very careful as I bathe with regards to changing the temperature, as a change of the slightest degree can result in a drastic change of temperature.  It can easily go from scalding hot to frigid cold.  The door to the toilet is old and rather hazardous.  The bottom portion is almost entirely rotted away.  Where there would be wood, there is instead a plastic covering.  This covering is there so that, A) no one can see you as you do your business, and B) water doesn’t come flowing out of the shower into the hallway.  No one has seen me doing my business.  As for “B,” every time I finish bathing I notice there is a small pool of water outside the shower in the hallway.  In the shower room itself, there are two drains.  One drain is for the shower, the other is a small drain for another faucet on the wall.  Each time I glance down at these drains I feel a small tinge of dread as I look at their rusted colors, thinking that at any moment a horde of cockroaches will come burbling out of them.  The cockroaches never come.  Then again, it is only winter.

After drying myself and brushing my teeth, I decide it’s time to meet Old Man Winter face to face for the first time this year.  I put on my clothes and don my scarf (also a first for this year).  As I leave my room, I grab a small orange lock that I put on the outside of my door.  It’s the kind of lock that one would put on a suitcase or backpack.  It’s not that I don’t trust my housemates (I live with 3 young Chinese guys…two from Hubei, and one from Sichuan).  It’s just that there happens to be a spot on the outside of my door for the specific purpose of attaching a lock.  My housemates have locks, too, so….when in Rome.

I never imagined Beijing could be so cold.  It’s appropriate that today is the Winter Solstice.  The Sleepy Hollow wind slaps me in the face as soon as I close the door behind me.  It slams shut the iron gate that leads to our humble apartment complex.  Crash!!  It knocks over two bicycles as I pass by.  Bits of debris sweep by my feet as I move them as fast as they can go in order to get the blood circulating around.  Old Man Winter and his harsh frozen breath begin to eat away at the feeling in my toes as I walk. 

I have a destination this morning.  Yesterday I was informed that a package had arrived some days earlier at the Chinareflection office.  It was from my sister-in-law, Elizabeth.  She and my brother, Bryan, are both in Japan now.  The neighbors told me that if I didn’t pick up the package today, it would get shipped back to Japan.  The post office is about a one hour walk from my house.  I book it at a fast walking pace, the speed still having no effect on the loss of feeling in my toes.  About 15 minutes into the walk I notice that my thighs and legs are beginning to burn with cold as well.  The burning turns into a tingling numbness.  It dawns on me that I need to purchase long underwear.  I have never once worn long underwear under my pants, taking pride in the fact that my hairy legs provide me with sufficient winter insulation.  My Chinese counterparts, however, have different genes and less hair on their legs.  They put on their long underwear sometime in November and don’t take them off until mid to late March (with the exception of changing to wash, of course).  Today is the day that I swallow my pride and purchase the long underwear. 

I decide to buy the long underwear at a large outdoor market that I have gone to before..  It’s on the way to the post office.  Behind the butcher’s stalls and fruit stalls there is a large section where one can buy just about anything:  pots, pans, shoes, hoses, stools, utensils, games, etc.  Each stall has a small selection of long underwear.  I purchase two pairs of long underwear, each one at 10 RMB a piece.  As soon as I make the purchase, I look for a public restroom.  I need to put the long underwear on then and there.

Just around the corner I find salvation.  One of Beijing’s many public restrooms awaits me.  I quickly enter the public restroom and find an empty stall, hoping to make a quick change of clothes.  The floor is covered in morning grime, condensation, and the normal toilet stench.  I hang my bag and scarf on the same hook (luckily there is a hook for hanging things).  The next step in the process is a little bit more difficult.  I have to remove my pants without them coming into contact with the squatting toilet below, or the equally dangerous restroom floor.  Unfortunately, I cannot unbutton my pants.  As a result of the intense cold temperature, I have taken about four steps backwards in the evolutionary process to an era of non-opposable thumbs.  My fingers will not work!  I try blowing on them a few times, but to no avail.  I cannot grasp the button on my pants.  I start to panic and wonder if I’ll have to live the rest of my life in this one pair of pants, possibly spending the rest of eternity in a Beijing public restroom.  I try again and again, but my fingers seemed to have turned into useless sausages, unable to grasp the button on my pants.  A panic attack sets in, and I’m reminded of a similar incident a week before …

….

My boss at the travel company where I work (Vango Tour) took me out in the suburbs to meet with some leaders of a private school.  We were to discuss possible plans for their students to travel abroad to America, staying with host families, rather than at hotels.  I was to give the introduction to the school leader regarding details of the American host family program.  As soon as we sat down in the school leader’s office, tea was poured for us, and the leader walked in, hair slicked back and voice booming.  I shook his hand and sat down in a chair after we made our introductions.  Although cold outside, his office was quite warm.  I was still wearing my winter coat, and it was zipped up to the top.  As my boss and the school leader began to make chit chat, I tried unsuccessfully to unzip my heavy winter coat.  Inexplicably, it was stuck at the top.  I tried again and again to unzip it, my boss and the school leader both unaware of my ongoing struggle.  Again and again my winter coat succeeded in defeating me…all my efforts were in vain.  I suddenly had the feeling that someone in the room had turned the thermostat up.  My throat began to close up, and I found it hard to breathe.  I had to get this coat off!  I stood up abruptly, turned to my boss and said the Chinese word, “toilet.”  I then walked out of the meeting, one hand still on the zipper around my throat.  I rushed into the restroom and fought a valiant battle for a couple of minutes with my winter coat, losing each time.  I wondered to myself, what if I can never take this coat off?  I took some deep breaths and looked at myself in the mirror.  It was ok.  I would make it out of this situation.  But time was beginning to tick by.  Surely they would start to wonder what was wrong with me.  I couldn’t stay in this restroom forever?  I had a sudden impulse to jump out of the window and run towards the mountains that were in the distance.  Suddenly I heard a flush.  There was someone else in the toilet.  Another man, in his thirties, walked out of a stall.  I stopped him and asked him to help me unzip myself, making a helpless gesture towards my throat.  Without thinking twice, he helped me immediately.  After a couple of firm tugs he had my coat undone, and I could breathe freely again.  I never caught his name, but I’m forever grateful for his help.

…

With no one to help me with the button this time, I decide the best thing to do is stay calm and collected.  I breathe on my fingers for some minutes and slowly the feeling comes back into them.  With great concentration and effort, I am able to pry open my pants-succes..  I have evolved from homo erectus to homo sapien!  With my pants undone, I slowly take off my shoes and then stand on top of them, so as not to get my socks wet with the moisture gunk on the floor.  I gingerly remove my pants and hang them on the same hook that holds my bag and scarf, taking care not to let gravity take them to an untimely doom.  With nothing on my lower half but my socks and underwear, it becomes colder than ever.  I keep a steady hand and focus on opening up the plastic bag that contains my long underwear.  There is a grey pair and a baby blue pair.  For my inaugural pair, I decide to go with baby blue.  Ever so cautiously, so as not to fall over into the toilet, I put my legs one at a time into the long underwear.  After they are on, I grab my pants and complete a second balancing act with them, pulling them on over the long underwear.  I use the same deliberate speed the entire time, keeping a steady breathing rhythm, so as not to distract my nerves and elapse into another panic attack.  Once both pairs of pants are on securely, I put on my shoes (never having touched the ground with my feet!) and leave the bathroom stall.

As I leave the public restroom and head for the post office, I notice that the long underwear really makes a marked difference in retaining my body warmth.  My legs feel protected, and the wind doesn’t seem to bite as much anymore.  There’s more of a spring to my step, and I feel like a new man.  My toes even feel a little warmer.  I go back to the market and treat myself to three hot-off-the-oven green bean sweets.  While wearing my gloves, it’s a little difficult to eat the sweets without spilling crumbs all over my face, into my beard, and onto my scarf.  I look like a fool standing out there in the open with green bean sweets’ crumbs all over my face.  Still, I don’t care.  I’ve got a built-in body armor of long underwear now.  It’s my secret weapon, and neither Old Man Winter nor the Headless Horseman can take that away from me.