Christmas in China
There seemed to be more Christmas trees and Santa faces around than the previous year.
This is fairly typical of the Santa signs on windows around town. The trees were plastic and unimpressive.
My pineapple top “Christmas tree” with the snowman tree ornament from Christmas lunch. I brought the cross stitched koala in a stocking from Australia. It now has a new home in the Philippines. The small red pot previously had cacti in it and was a gift from a student last Christmas. Obviously it didn’t survive the year.
One of the teacher entertainers at the city’s Christmas dinner for foreign teachers. A number of the Chinese teacher entertainers had dressed in Christmas colours.
Same day, another party. This time it was the English Department at the college which put on a Christmas concert. Two students dressed as Santas and doing an item.
Some of the many apples I received from students as Christmas gifts. From what I can understand apple in pinyin has the same meaning as safety and therefore is considered an appropriate Christmas gift. The usual method of presentation is to wrap the apple or sometimes oranges, in several layers of paper and cellophane. Special boxes are also made for the occasion. One student made a box to size, covered it in attractive paper and decorated it with ribbon folded to special designs.
One of her special ribbon designs. Earlier in the semester the college held a dormitory competition and some of the students folded ribbons into similar and other designs to stick on their walls.
More gifts. The student who knitted the red scarf asked me about my favourite colours and 4 or 5 mornings later was on my doorstep with the scarf! The student who gave me the black scarf didn’t want me to have it, but rather something warmer, more colourful and larger, but she insisted on me shopping for it with her. I was more concerned about luggage weight and future use so I chose one lighter and more versatile. The purple one was also knitted by a student and came completely out of the blue. Students didn’t want my head to be cold either so I gathered a couple of hats too! No wonder I had to ditch clothes and things in China and still had to pay an excess luggage charge in Hong Kong!
My contract provided for a day off for Christmas, but as Christmas Day was a Saturday it was irrelevant. I cancelled scheduled English classes the previous year.
This is the plum pudding which was cooked by one of the foreign teachers and which we ate on Christmas night. It tasted pretty good and was served with custard.