Will Santa come to China Mummy?

Asia » China » Shanghai
December 25th 2008

Published: December 25th 2008

Edit Blog Post

rosy59

Christmas Eve

the first Karaoke singers

You would think that in a country like China Christmas would be a non event but how wrong could I be.

Christmas Eve in Shanghai is bigger than Ben Hur with Christmas trees on each corner, Santa hats and tinsel being sold by the street sellers, and restaurants’ staff all wearing something Christmassy.

Celebrations are purely commercial and occur on Christmas Eve with KTV (karaoke) a favourite as well as get togethers and general partying.

We started our celebrations with a faculty party at the university here at SSPU. Stone cold sober and 3pm!!. The karaoke machine had both Chinese and English selections but you had to line up for a turn, it is so popular. Most of the Chinese teachers can sing really well, and 2 of them treated us to a traditional folk song sung in the Chinese operatic style.
A disco ball completed the scene. Again the Chinese put us to shame as they can really dance the old time dances so well. Waltzes are done with ease by all age groups.

The choice of party food is different, bananas, mandarins, chocolate and chips, with instant coffee out of plastic glasses!

I had

Christmas Eve

blurry Graham C

a go at 4 numbers, 2 Beatles songs, Joe Cocker and the Carpenters, not my usual “The Rose” or “ Wind Beneath by Wings” but quite successful even if they seem a bit odd for my tastes.

Karl and I took off on the teacher’s bus at 5pm to the end of metro line 2 and trained in to the People’s Square metro station. Wow what a crowd, the locals were even taken with it and taking pictures on their mobiles to record the ocean of people swarming all the stairs and escalators, and the crush on the train was just incredible. One of the lovely Chinese teachers at the SSPU English faculty helped us at the metro; people are so nice and so helpful all the time.

The roads were full of cars and buses; I have never seen so many people in one place at one time.

We managed to find the right exit and found our way to the outside of the metro and wound our way to Fuzhou Road to a little local restaurant opposite the Yifu theatre. Scoring a seat was tricky but we were lucky and had a great meal, very

Christmas Eve

Other faculty members

tasty, and very crowded. The Chinese are so helpful, the poor waitress was trying to ask me in Chinese if I wanted ice, don’t have that in my vocab so the lady at the next door table quietly leaned over and said ice to me, in Australia we would just mind our own business and say nothing.

Back to the crowds and the short walk to the Shanghai Concert Hall, this is a traditional old style theatre which has a great history. The locals decided it was too close to the road so they up and moved it, lock stock and barrel 66 metres to a quieter part of the park. Cost more to move it than to build a new one, but usually history in this place is not really looked at as desirable but in this case it was seen as important.

The concert was a Christmas Eve celebration with a variety of artists and acts including a great rendition of the Phantom of the Opera duet, a string quartet, jazz band and everything else in between. There were lucky draws at half time, a final sing along in English of “We wish you a Merry

Christmas Eve

Thank goodness we had English for our song choices

Christmas” and then we went back outside to wind our way back home.

The concert finished at 10-00pm and we walked into the dormitory at 11-30pm and what a journey we had.

We took the metro from People’s Square to Luijaizui, and then attempted to get on the good old 993 bus back to the uni. Our attempt worked but the moment it pulled into view us and hundreds of others ran for the bus and who knows how but we shoved and pushed and inched our way to get on the bus before the doors closed. A sea of people with not a centimeter of room free, and amidst it all we had a lovely English conversation with a young Chinese lady standing beside us, literally cheek to cheek!

My usual, “I’m standing in a strange place and I meet someone I know”, happened again. At the bus stop at Luijaizui I saw amongst the crowds one of my SSPU students, who came over and had a chat, him being at least 190cms tall does help pick him out from the other locals. What are the odds in a city of 20 million and me knowing

Christmas Eve

Sue videoed it all for future embarrassing moments

about 250 people total who live here!

Additional photos below

Photos: 37, Displayed: 25

For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A...more history