Celebrating Christmas and New Years in China
A post about garbage probably wasn’t the best way to start the new year. If it’s any consolation, there may have been a Christmas card in one of those trash bags. But let’s try again. Now that the big holiday season is over, I’m feeling more homesick now than ever before. That’s what happens when you miss two Christmas / New Years celebrations in a row.
Well, these holidays aren’t entirely absent from China. All the stores have some kind of Christmas decoration up, and most people even get January 1st off (though not Christmas day). The outer aesthetic of the holiday is still there. The problem, as a foreigner, is that this season has always been about spending time with my family. And exchanging lots and lots of gifts.
In China, acknowledging a Western holiday is just an excuse for people to eat at a fancy restaurant. Their definition of fancy, though, is typically the restaurants I avoid. So my foreign friends and I went out for pizza and pool on Christmas and Japanese food and karaoke for New Years. It was the most non-traditional way I’ve ever celebrated anything. It was still nice, but… next time, I want turkey and presents.
11-11 is Singles’ Day in China
I totally forgot it was Singles’ Day, which is easy to do, since virtually nothing is done to celebrate such a melancholy holiday. Somebody just looked at the date (11-11), noticed how many ones were in it, and decided to draw attention to single people, as if Valentines Day didn’t already do a bang up job of that. Chinese culture celebrates two Valentines Day, anyway, recognizing the Western February date and their own date (August 26th this year). Yeah, that’s a bummer for the guys, but flower street vendors sure do well.
Rafting through Zhanggong Cave in Yixing
I was a little low on things to do for Halloween. Visiting a cave, however, seemed like an appropriate activity. While Yixing is mostly famous for its teapots, there are also three caves in the area. Zhanggong is the least popular of the three, but we chose it, because… uh… why did we choose it, again? Zhanggong Cave is small, and most of the scenery inside is actually man-made. I could tell, because it was falling apart. The cheesy, colored lights don’t help the atmosphere much, either.
The cave is part of a larger park, and though it is the main attraction there (and the most expensive if you pay for everything individually), the other activities are what made the trip fun. They had two rafting “adventures” you could take, an hour-long drift down a narrow canal or a leisurely row in the dark underneath the cave. I’m glad I went, at least to see something besides another pagoda or temple (or DVD), but, overall, the teapots really are the best thing about Yixing.
P.S. The caption contest is closed, and a winner has been selected. Congratulations, Joe!
The Night Sky in Changzhou
Ooh, spooky. Hey, that reminds me. Halloween is coming up… and yet I’m still stuck in a country that doesn’t embrace trick-or-treating. This is the second time I’m going to miss the big holiday season, and it’s finally making me a little homesick. Don’t forget that the caption contest ends the day after Halloween. At least there’s always that to look forward to!
Nanshan Bamboo Forest in Liyang
National Day may not be the best time to travel to Shanghai or Beijing or Xi’an, but it’s a great opportunity to hit up nearby places of lesser interest. Like Liyang. There’s a bus from Changzhou to Liyang every 15 minutes, so there’s no rush to beat the holiday crowds. And in the forest, most of the tourists headed straight to the cable car, leaving us with a relatively quiet walk up the mountain.
I was here last year for the foreign teachers’ retreat, but I didn’t even make it to the halfway mark before having to head back to catch a bus. I almost had to do that again. The buses to and from the Liyang bus station stop running a little too early, which is the same problem my family and I rant into at Huanglong. We would have had to run through Huanglong to see it all. I did run through the bamboo forest to see it all. I guess the whole point is to come, take a picture, and leave to tell your friends about it.
Hey, guys, I saw some bamboo. Neener, neener, neener.
Yinqixing, Shanghai’s Indoor Skiing Dump
Avid snowboarders (and skiers, though I choose to recognize those wimps in parentheses) probably shouldn’t expect a lot from an indoor skiing area. In the case of Shanghai’s Yinqixing, it’s one short hill divided into three levels of difficulty that can be ridden top-to-bottom in 20 seconds. Watching the Chinese patrons, however, it was clear most of them had never gone skiing before and were just enjoying the thrill of “speeding” across snow and wiping out halfway down. But if they knew any better, they would know they were getting ripped off.
I was fully aware I wouldn’t be getting the full mountain and trees experience and was planning to have fun, anyway, but things started off on a sour note when we arrived and saw that the prices had been raised 40 yuan. Wait a minute! I had checked the website in the morning before heading out, and it said nothing about a National Day surcharge. That extra money was only there to take advantage of us, too, because the park wasn’t even fully-operational during this important week.
The cashier confided in us that the snow wasn’t very good, and the third (advanced) part of the hill was closed. This was what we came to Shanghai to do, though, so we bit the bullet and paid for an hour (138 yuan). The cashier was right; the snow was horribly slushy and shallow. The beginner’s part of the hill wasn’t steep at all, and the lifts to take you up were broken. The park didn’t get them running again until we’d already been there for 30 minutes (and after they started running, they kept shutting down every few minutes), meaning we spent most of the time lugging our skis up the hill. Man, I was so pissed off.
On Yinqixing’s behalf, they did warn us about some of these setbacks, but the broken lift pushed me over the edge. I don’t care if it is a major holiday, you simply cannot charge people extra when the equipment’s not working (and don’t get me started on the missing third tier, either). This is so typical of China. They’ll start construction on a tourist attraction, cover up significant parts of it, and still ask for the same (or even a higher) price. It’s unacceptable, and I let Yinqixing know that.
At first, the cashier didn’t care about our complaints and thought our request for a refund was ridiculous. “I told you about the snow,” she said. “It’s a national holiday. The lifts were working. The website doesn’t lie. Nobody else ever complains.” Then she called the manager and, thinking we couldn’t understand Chinese, vented her frustrations to him. I don’t think she even relayed the complete reason why we wanted our money back, but the manager, after three calls, finally agreed to refund 30 yuan each. Better, but I still wasn’t pleased with the park’s overall performance and vowed never to come skiing here again. I advise you to do the same.
National Day: A Week of Doing Nothing
The PRC was founded on October 1, 1949. To celebrate this event, everybody in China (and I mean everybody) gets a week off. This year, National Day coincides with Mid-Autumn Festival, so the vacation has been extended to eight days. A new record! It’ll also be a new record for sitting around and doing nothing, because that’s about all you can do. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get train tickets when the whole country is wanting to go home or go see the Yellow Mountains? Huh? Do you? No, I don’t think you do.
I was still wanting to at least see a lesser known tourist attraction over the break, but any plans were put on hold (or at least exacerbated), because my brother’s school took its sweet, sweet time renewing his visa… and you can’t stay in a hotel without one of those little pieces of paper. I had this crazy idea, though, where we would just take an overnight train somewhere (preferably here), arrive early in the morning, see the sights, then leave late at night on another overnight train. Crazy… but I was willing to do it. However, there were no beds available to Pingdingshan and no trains at all on the way back. No way. Not doing that.
Well, these week-long Chinese holidays are still a great way to see your hometown, given that your hometown isn’t a popular destination. Over spring festival, Changzhou felt so empty and void of pushing and shoving. It was awesome! I’ve been meaning to see Dinosaur Park again, too, since my last visit was so underwhelming. My school even offered to give me a few extra days off while the students do some “sports meeting,” but then the school panics at the slightest chance of rain and tells me to come back and teach. Why is it such a hassle to make travel plans in this country?!
Teacher’s Day is a Lame Holiday
It’s not a very important holiday when you don’t find out about it until the day of, which is why somebody needs to rethink Teacher’s Day. Sure, some students will give the teachers cards, and everybody says, “Happy Teacher’s Day!” at the beginning of class, but then it’s back to the usual routine of lazy students ignoring a tired, worn-out teacher who’d rather not hang out with his/her co-workers after school. For this holiday to have any meaningful weight, teachers should be able to sit in the back of the class for the day while the students do the lesson. Yeah, that sounds fair.
So I’m teaching middle school this year, though I’m employed by a high school and live on the high school campus. The age difference between primary and middle school isn’t as great as I thought it would be, but middle schoolers at least have enough decency to stay in their seats and not throw garbage at each other. They’re still noisy and chatty, only now puberty makes them less inclined to want to raise their hand and participate. It’s not as fun when I ask someone to draw a face on the board, and nobody starts screaming, “Teacher! Me! I can try! I can try!” Oh, wait, that’s actually kind of annoying. Nevermind, then.
My lessons are supposed to act as a supplement to the regular teacher’s lessons, but since the students only see me once a week—and because the other teachers stick so closely to the book—they don’t get a chance to practice the super special vocabulary we go over together. The first unit was all about describing people, so last week, I covered many useful words like bald, curly hair, muscly, pointy nose, etc. This week, all they can tell me is that everyone looks beautiful, lovely, or handsome. I suppose when that’s all you need to know to pass the test, why bother remembering anything a foreign teacher presents?
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