Special Occasions in Tangshan...Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.

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Ok so it’s been quite a long time since I’ve updated this therefore some of the things in this blog are a little outdated, but I have been meaning for ages to get around to writing this and telling you all about the way I celebrate the holidays over here in China. Firstly I’m just going to say that it's only because I am a foreigner and that I work for an American company that these holidays were celebrated to the extent that they were!

I'll start with Halloween. Halloween isn't something that is traditionally celebrated in China, however in the shops there were costumes and masks for sale and there were some pumpkins to be found albeit they were tiny. This is one thing that I am beginning to notice about China, that all of our Western holidays are very slowly creeping into the shops over here, and this is especially noticeable in the bigger cities. Anyways for Halloween there was a fancy dress party at the school. I dressed up as a snowman (see pictures!) very random I know but I'd just been given this white puffer jacket and it just seemed like a very easy costume after that, the kids loved it! Demond went as avatar and all other teachers just did a little face painting or got a mask! Fancy dress is not a big thing in China so for the kids just to put on a mask or witches costume it was a big deal. After the fashion parade which was really unorganised as there were just too many people there were games for the kids the highlight being the haunted house!! But my favourite memory of Halloween in China will always be our trip to KFC.... So when all the kids had gone home and we had tidied up we were starving so myself Eddie and Demond decided to go to KFC. We had changed our clothes but we each still had our face paint on, it was Beijing Opera make up really good stuff so it was a big effort to take it off before we ate so we decided not to. So in we land to KFC these three foreigners who get stared at enough, so imagine the looks we got as we cycled to KFC and then went in and got food it definitely made for a entertaining end to the night, believe me!!! As we had a full weekend of teaching starting the next day, there was no night of drinking to be followed, this was definitely a new way for me to celebrate Halloween, getting all dressed up, going to a childrens party then home to bed, no alcohol involved, however I still enjoyed it all the same 😱.

Our next celebration was thanksgiving. Obviously being Irish I have never before celebrated thanksgiving so it was quiet ironic that I celebrated my first one in China! The only reason that I got to celebrate thanksgiving in China is because of the school. Nobody in China knows about thanksgiving, similarly enough to Ireland nobody there knows much about it either; it truly is just an American holiday. However as the children were being taught about the whole meaning of thanksgiving I learnt about it too!! Just as turkey is the traditional food for us at Christmas, turkey is the main food for thanksgiving for the Americans. So this was the first task, turkeys had to be bought and according to Eddie we had to get imported turkeys as the Chinese turkeys just weren’t the same who would have known there was a difference... anyways myself and Eddie headed into Beijing to buy “American turkeys”, we went to the international supermarket where Eddie had got them previous years only to find they had none... thankfully I spotted a sign in the shop next door that said turkeys were available, asked at the counter and two frozen turkeys were produced!! So next thing was these turkeys had to be cooked, along with stuffing, gravy, pumpkin pie and cornbread all traditional food for thanksgiving. There was a thanksgiving meal hosted in a local restaurant for a selection of the children (based on the length of time they’d attended the school) where they were told about the story of thanksgiving and got to try the traditional food. However Eddie had to cook the “traditional” food and bring it to the restaurant, the restaurant provided their own selection of food. So as I happened to have no classes the day of thanksgiving I offered to help Eddie with the food preparation for that night. I was put in charge of the cornbread... something I’d never made before but with the recipe and a few white Russians in between 😱 I made batch after batch with no major disasters. It was a great day of preparing the food with Eddie and the children and staff all seemed to enjoy our efforts. However eating turkey and stuffing with chopsticks was quite a novelty!!

Christmas in China was not really very much like Christmas at home that I am used to at all. No turkey and ham, no nights out getting drunk and working right through the festive season 😞. However I did what I could to make it feel like Christmas. I bought a Christmas tree and decorated my living room; there was actually a lot of Christmas decorations in the shops which I was very surprised by. And a few times I heard some Christmas songs being played in the shops, which always cheered me up and even more so when the people in the shops would stare at me as I sang along!!! Our main focus for Christmas was the school Christmas party. Unlike our thanksgiving celebrations however the food was just Chinese food supplied by the restaurant, the Christmas party was all about the performances by the kids, so in the weeks leading up to Christmas we had to teach the children Christmas songs. However the Chinese teachers did most of the work and got groups together for various acts such as plays, group songs, fashion shows, solo performances and so on. I did however get landed with the job of performing with and teaching a group of children some Irish dancing. This actually turned out to be quite a fun task, however finding Irish dancing music in China was a problem in itself, but after trawling the internet for a while I was able to download a jig. The dancing was a whole other issue; I had two 45minute sessions with the kids before the night.... So I taught them a few basic steps and we did a little routine. They pretty much followed me around the stage kicking their legs up and doing their best to copy me, very funny to watch back on the DVD, but they all enjoyed themselves so that’s what really matter right?!! There was a little bit of everything on the night, I have a hour long DVD of the night which is definitely something fun to remind me of my Christmas in China and that was pretty much how I celebrated Christmas.... That was Christmas Eve for me and the next day Christmas day it was the start of a full weekend of teaching 😞. However skype was great as I said hello to back home before work (Christmas Eve for them) and then after work for me (Christmas morning for them) we opened our presents online together! A very random Christmas to say the least, but we did get our Christmas show plugged on two different news TV channels ( I’ve DVD evidence of this also!). So getting on the TV in China was the height of my excitement for Christmas!!

As their was no major celebrating (i.e. drinking) done over Christmas all us foreign teachers were delighted to hear that even though New Years Eve fell on a Friday, it was actually a public holiday in China therefore we had no teaching on the Saturday! So that meant one thing, a proper night of drinking was on the cards . In China, outside of the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai etc. traditional bars are not common, so a night of drinking means a karaoke bar (KTV). The night began with a lovely meal in a very posh restaurant with three quite important Chinese people from Tangshan. One was in charge of the train station, the other in charge of the airport and the third had something to do with city council or that, he sorted our Visas etc when we arrived. So I thought it was going to be a bit of a dry start to the night before we headed to KTV turned out they were big drinkers and two of them even joined us for karaoke 😊! So we celebrated the New Year in style with a lot of singing, plenty of beer, a bottle of Jack Daniels and of course some Baijiu (i.e. potent Chinese liquor). Wikipedia definition “Baijiu is a Chinese distilled alcoholic beverage. The name baijiu literally means "white liquor," "white alcohol" or "white spirits". Baijiu is often mistakenly translated as "wine" or "white wine," but it is actually a distilled liquor, generally about 80 to 120 proof, or 40-60%!a(MISSING)lcohol by volume (ABV).” So if you are ever offered white wine in China be in for a HUGE shock, I think the best translation is white spirits as in the paint stripper kind... that’s not to say I haven’t consumed plenty of it during my time here in China, but it is lethal stuff, a hangover doesn’t even begin to describe how you fell the next day!

Anyways that’s just a very brief overview (even though it’s an essay!!) of how I celebrated the festivities in China. I’m just back from a week in Shanghai where I celebrated Chinese New Year but that is definitely a whole other blog. I will be back much sooner this time to update with all my more recent stories!

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Photos

New Years Eve started off very civilised with a lovely meal
Sally, Eddie, Mr Wong, me, Demond, Mr Chong, Adam and Mr ? (but an equally chinese sounding name!)

A karaoke microphone and a bottle of jack...
...all the ingredients for a good night!!

I was boiling in my snowman outfit, my legs were stuffed with towels and the jacket was so warm!
(however jacket has been great over the cold winter months!)

Comments

[Fiona]

lovin it
not sure about the singing but the lovin the outfit!!!!! Go me

[IrishGlobetrotter]

@ Fiona
Yeah the outfit is great, I have bought a new skirt here and it's lovely with the navy top and tights too, actually had it on the night before last!!