a chinese christmas

(25th-31st/12/2013)
Location: Chengdu

'Rachel, when I first see you I think you are so tall and white'

                                                                                                                                                                -Student quote of the week

 

For me, Christmas mornings always begin the same way.



I’m woken by the sound of the electric whisk as Mum whips up the latest batch of sugar glazed cakes and soft, crumbly pastries in the kitchen. The house is warm and smells of baking and cinnamon candles. Michael Bublé croons softly in the background downstairs. I treat myself to another hour dozing in bed before turning the radio on as I get ready, and Bublé has to do battle with whatever Christmas classic blasts from my room. 

The first Christmas I can remember- I'm three years old.

We have croque monsieur croissants hot from the oven and glasses of Buck’s Fizz. Someone puts Carols from King’s on the TV. My grandparents arrive and my sister and I open our presents from Father Christmas (who has been cunningly tricked into giving us gifts each year even though we’re far past the age of believing.) Lunch appears with great ceremony around 1ish, and everyone gets to open one present at the table before tackling the mounds of food plattered up in front of us. There are crackers and paper hats and charades, family presents to open, the Queen’s speech and the other Christmas TV staples to watch - Doctor Who, (for the youngsters), Strictly Come Dancing, (for my parents) and the usual cheery melodrama of death and destruction offered up by Coronation Street and Emmerdale (for my Nan). Someone normally brings out the board games or the Wii and there ensures a battle of wits, cheats and sore losers, only broken up by the arrival of more food at teatime.

 

And then everything is tidied away, dishes washed, presents carried upstairs, only for the whole thing to be gloriously repeated the following day.

 

The only graffiti I saw in China

Except this year on Christmas morning I am faced with teaching my last classes of the year. Instead of the sounds of festive domesticity I’m woken by the sound of the school bell and the workmen loudly extending the university buildings outside my apartment block. The tiled floor is cold, the shower refuses to provide hot water and for breakfast I have instant chocolate and an apple.

Most of G’s class didn’t turn up yesterday so she cancelled her lesson and came back early. Quietly, I’m hoping mine have the same idea so I can celebrate the holiday with an extra few hours in bed. But where G’s students don’t turn up, I not only end up with four full classes, I have some students in my lessons who I haven’t even seen all semester. Still, I’m determined to enjoy my Christmas day even if I’m spending it far from home. We play Christmas music, charades and blindfolded Pictionary. I discover some of my students have never seen real snow and as a consequence they're slightly baffled by my enthusiasm for snowmen and snowball fights. The closest they’ve got is an upstairs window of the local supermarket, which has been pumping out flakes of white foam into the sky since yesterday afternoon. No-one is quite sure if this is deliberate or if there's just an unstoppable washing machine running rampant up there.

We play the tensest game of Pass the Parcel I have ever witnessed (mostly because there are no prizes only forfeits) and the students put on their productions of The Snowman, which they’ve been assigned as homework. They've made up their own dialogue; brought their own props and some of them even sing and dance.

Sweetly, some of my students have even clubbed together to buy me presents, which I’m very touched by. I also get a small mountain of apples, which is what the Chinese give each other on Christmas Day, along with some rather sweet, hand-drawn cards and chocolate (my students know me so well). The English society have also produced an A4 notebook each for G and I, which has been filled with letters from many of the students, some of whom have never actually had the courage to come and speak to us in person.

The notes range from the sweet: ‘We will miss you.’

To the funny: ‘Rachel, my English is no good so I have drawn picture of you as rabbit instead.’


For some reason
Father Christmas is always depicted
 playing the Saxophone in China.


And then there are the few that are inadvertently creepy: ‘Rachel, I am the boy who watches you in the office. Hi!'
 
Some of my students haven't actually twigged that I won't be coming back next semester and the end of each class concludes with a round of picture taking and hugs, swapped email addresses and phone numbers. This is much less emotionally draining than the Kindergarten, where at the end of the lesson I have a dozen or so children clinging to my legs and waist as I try and wade through them to the door. It's fairly impossible though when you have a group of wobbly lipped, sad eyed four year olds asking very loudly in Chinese for you not to go. Eventually, though, my teaching assistant comes and prises them off me so I can leave and I have to shoo them back into the classroom when they try and follow me out of the door.

The rest of Christmas day is lovely even if it's a bit different. When I get back to the flat G has created a mini Christmas picnic and has Carols from King's playing on the laptop. There are truffles and fizz and lots of foods which are bad for you but completely appropriate on Christmas Day. We have tinsel up and cards and I phone home and manage to speak to everyone just as they tuck into lunch. We even manage to find a Christmas dinner of our own at a restaurant in Chengdu, which does resemble and taste like a traditional lunch, even if it's not a patch on a home cooked one. Still, it's much better than rice and cabbage, which is what's being served at the university canteen. 

 

And then that’s it. Christmas Day comes and goes and suddenly we’re done. We input the scores for the students’ exams. Tidy up the apartment. Pack our bags. Catch the early coach from campus into Chengdu. Our teaching is finished and there’s no fanfare or acknowledgment from the university that we’ve completed our semester, except for a quick goodbye from Beata and some of the other teachers who nod and wave and wish us the best. It’s all very low key and slightly surreal.

Suddenly we’ve finished. I’ll miss the students (most of them) but not the lesson plans and early mornings, cold apartment or strange wasp creatures (that have now gone into hibernation and will appear as a nice surprise for the next teachers to live there).

We’re finished and that’s ok, because here comes the beginning of travelling proper. Like experiencing Christmas in China for the first time, there will be things new, and old and familiar and wonderful and strange.

A new adventure is about to start.

I can’t wait.