Thanksgiving in China

The reality of being an expatriate sets in hard when you come across a holiday like Thanksgiving and realize this is the first time you’ve celebrated it without your family. Not to mention it’s the first time you’ve celebrated it without consumerism shoving it down your throat. My Facebook friends have been pretty liberal in announcing when they’re having pumpkin pie, though, making it incredibly hard to forget that pumpkin pie is my favorite dessert.

Obviously, Thanksgiving has no presence in China. Turkey doesn’t even have a presence. Two hotels, however, put on Thanksgiving buffets and promised turkey to appease those with North American roots. The hotel I went to—whose dinner cost 158 yuan—apparently flew in a turkey from Canada. Now that’s special treatment! Unfortunately, miscommunication, being the common problem that it is, led us to believe that they had no turkey whatsoever. Our waitress even told us they had turkey yesterday but not today. Disappointed, Thanksgiving dinner ended up looking like this:

After an hour of eating all these other foods not Thanksgiving related, I was ready to leave. Then a group of Americans walked in and asked, “Where’s the turkey?” And the manager said, “Oh, it’s right here! Tada!” They had turkey after all! It just wasn’t ready when we got there. Rather than telling us we would have to wait, though, they told us it was gone. Yeah… that makes a lot of sense. So, of course, we had to stay and eat some, which meant going home feeling even more stuffed and bloated. But then it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving, would it?

27 November 2008 | China | Comments | Home
tags: food, holidays

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