Thanksgiving in China

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As I'm sure most of you folks back home are aware, Thanksgiving was last week. Here in China, obviously, it's not much of a holiday, but those of us teaching English to Chinese kids did our best to make it one.

For us, Thursday is a work day, but thanks to the tireless organizing efforts of our resident Holiday Coordinator (teacher by day; my own term), we had a Thanksgiving feast nonetheless. The foreign staff all were required to make a dish; I was assigned the green beans (exactly 4 pounds of them, according to the email listing our school's feasting needs). We ate lunch here at the Kaifaqu school, with all of our staff, Chinese and American, including the people from downtown, which is like a 45-minute commute away. That and the somewhat dictatorial form of suggested contribution led to some grumbling among the tired, overworked foreign staff (I'm sure the Chinese staff was grumbling in their minds, but they would never let us hear it out loud), and I am definitely not to be excluded from that group. On the Tuesday before, I got a phone call from our Holiday Coordinator who was out shopping, and wanted to point out that she had found a store selling canned green beans imported from America. I said that was nice, and I sheepishly admitted that no, I hadn't yet prepared the dish, but I was just going to go to the supermarket on Wednesday after work and pick up some of those good old-fashioned, 30-cents-a-kilo Chinese green beans (豆角, which are essentially the same but longer and fatter . At which point the Holiday Coordinator kind of paused, inhaled sharply, and then inquired if I knew how to cook said Chinese green beans. I asked her what she meant by that, and she said, "Well, they can be a little tough if you don't cook them for a really long time." So now the pressure was on for me to help make this Thanksgiving in China as American-ey as possible, including the ingredients. Forget the fact, of course, that WE'RE IN CHINA AND AMERICA IS 3,000 MILES AWAY. Sometimes I find the hopeless escapism of the expats here a little frustrating, but I guess I'm not one to talk; I refuse to use a squat toilet and I do spend most of my free time watching American TV shows.

But I got over my frustration when I saw the food all laid out on the table. We had two turkeys and a ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes (with marshmallows on top, something I've never had but is apparently common?), cheesy corn, and my undercooked Chinese green beans. And three kinds of pie. It was definitely the best attended Thanksgiving meal I've ever eaten. Most of the Chinese had never celebrated Thanksgiving before, and I don't think anyone properly briefed them on the expected level of gluttony. They sure weren't ready for the damage I was about to do. And I didn't realize it would be beforehand, but celebrating Thanksgicing was actually very relaxing and nostalgic. Turkey day is my favorite holiday when I'm back home, and even though there wasn't any couch to pass out on after engorging myself, I was still glad someone had taken the time out to organize the whole thing. I felt kind of foolish for getting so upset about it earlier. Maybe some facade of a familiar life is necessary here, at least every once in a while.

This week, we are teaching Culture Lessons at the school, which means we get to make up some lesson plan outside of the book that is somehow related to American life. This month the theme is American holidays, and being all inspired by last week's feast, I decided to teach my students a little more about Thanksgiving. We do something every other week here called English Story Time, where all the students come in at once for an hour, we separate them into two groups according to age, and we tell a story in English. It's anew thing we're implementing, and this week was my first one. I decided to do the story of the first Thanksgiving and combine it with John Smith and Pocahontas, in the hopes that I could play the Disney movie for most of the thing. I wrote a little call-and-response type story to go along with it, and I was pretty proud of it, actually. As usual, I procrastinated, and the weekend before Story Time day, I presented my lesson plan to the Chinese teacher assigned to help me with it. They looked at it, and then politely informed me that a) we don't have the Pocahontas movie, and b) the students attending would understand absolutely none of the stuff I had written. I freaked and spent most of my weekend writing a massive, interactive PowerPoint to show along with the story, hoping that the kids would be able to understand my words by watching little cut-outs pictures dance around on a screen. Then the day came, and we all had to get up and act the story out with no rehearsal, dancing around like complete idiots in front of 40-some kids who have no idea what we are saying or why we are saying it. All the parents, or course, were sitting in the back, just as confused, and setting a good example for their spawn by jabbering to each other without even a modicum of effort to keep their voices down. Then we didn't have enough materials for the activity after the story was over (I had the kids make dreamcatchers, the materials for which were just as hastily put together the day before. No twine here, and no flat Popsicle sticks to glue together in a circle, so we bent some 4-gauge electrical insulated wire into rings), because there were 40 expected attendees, so of course the Chinese teachers prepared exactly 40 sets of materials, and then some more students came and were consequently left up the creek. So all in all, it was a learning experience. For me, of course; I'm sure the kids didn't learn anything.

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Comments

[Mom]

I'm glad to hear that a wonderful feast can still lift your spirits. Marshmallows only belong on cocoa or in s'mores, in my opinion. I did make something called 'candied' yams, but it had brown sugar, maple syrup and butter, no actual candy. I think it's really nice that you put so much effort into this project. It's surprising to hear that the parents were so noisy. Can you send them to the principals' office next time?

[Alex]

Shame
Your lack of commitment to the tasks at hand is obvious and it brings shame upon all your friends and family.