That Stubborn Beijing Winter

It's freezing here in Beijing. Is Spring ever going to come? At least the trees are being brave and are putting on their spring clothes. The plum trees are various shades of pink and red, the forsythia is a riot of yellow, and the deciduous trees are tinged in green. I have yet to put my winter coat away!

Spring Festival in the U.S

This year was the first of our 10 years in China that we returned to the U.S. for winter holiday which in China is called Spring Festival. We had two months off beginning January 1st and since John hadn't returned to the States in the summer, we decided to visit our son in Chico, California for the holidays.

We had a great family time hanging out together, watching some new films and eating lots of our favorite American food (including Mexican!). We have made friends with some Chinese folks in Chico, so when Chinese New Years Eve rolled around we got together with them and celebrated Chinese style. I really felt like we had stepped back into Beijing. We made jiaozi, (a Chinese dumpling) and hot pot with some spices I brought back from China and ate lots of other traditional Chinese food. We met some Chinese students and Chinese professors from Chico State University and just had a great time celebrating Chinese culture and the Year of the Tiger (which is my year, by the way!)

We loved being back in America experiencing our home culture, but it was fun bringing a bit of China back with us as well. Maybe I could borrow from an old saying and conclude, you can take me out of China, but you can't take China out of me !

Well, we are back in Beijing and have started our classes. I am now teaching at Peking University and John is continuing at the Sport University. We look forward to a rewarding year with our students.

The Christmas Season is upon us.

One of the difficult things about living in China is not being near family and friends in the U.S. at Christmas. This is our 9th Christmas in China. Since we teach at the university, we don't get a holiday at this time of year. They usually give us the day off if we want it, but we have to make up the missed day later. One of these years I'd like to have a Christmas holiday so we can be 'home for the Christmas' as the song goes.

I miss the Christmas spirit that seems to be in the air as everyone gets ready for the big day. I miss shopping and (believe it or not) hearing Christmas music playing in the stores. I miss getting together with friends and family. I miss the special times at church as we remember again the 'reason for the season.' I miss the cheery greetings by shop owners and the warm wishes for the season's best. I miss the smell of fresh pine from the tree. (we have a tree here of course, but it's plastic. I did manage to find a potted Norfolk Pine last year and it was a good substitute for a real tree, although it doesn't have the pine smell.)

So how do we celebrate Christmas in China? Well, we put up the tree and all the decor. It's not hard to find decorations here since most are made in China, but the quality isn't quite the same. I guess the ones that show up in the discount markets here are the ones that didn't quite make it for export. Anyway, the house looks warm and bright with lights. We also light candles, and make spiced cider and invite our close friends and students over to share the season's fun. They love the cider, in spite of the fact that cinamon is not a taste most Chinese people are used to. Last year we made tons of gingerbread cookies. I invited my students from each class to come over and decorate a cookie. They had never had such an experience. It was quite a delight. They each posed by the Christmas tree for pictures with me and their cooky. It was fun. So here in China we have no lack of friends and some who have become like family too.

Christmas is a holiday that holds some fascination with the Chinese people. A student remarked recently that her family had already booked a restaurant for Christmas dinner since you had to book several weeks in advance to get a table. Funny! It's not even a recognized holiday here. I expect it to be a bit popular with our English students since learning about culture is part of learning a language. So having a Christmas party in class and talking about the customs is all part of an English lesson. So they are used to having some sort of Chirstmas party. That doesn't explain however, why the stores and restaurants are decorating with Christmas trees and Santa Claus faces in the windows. Even our apartment complex has put up a tree outdoors in the yard. Maybe they didn't know what to do with all the made-for-export goods that didn't get shipped. Here though there just isn't the same Christmas spirit there is at home. It seems just a good excuse to have a party. Then again, I can't expect someone to understand when they haven't got the background. I certainly don't feel the same about Spring Festival as the Chinese do. It's a curiosity for me but has no special nostalgia since I didn't grow up with it. Intersting how deeply these cultural practices get ingrained in the fabric of our souls.

So this Saturday we are having a big bash in a Karaoke Club. Lots of

previous students and friends we have gotten to know over the years

will all get together for singing, snacks, games and even a gift exchange. Karaoke is a big thing here in China and its a great place to have a party. They have countless private rooms of differing sizes, so you can reserve the size that's right for your group. You can make lots of noise and not bother the neighbors. Besides, they clean up the mess! We are expecting maybe 100 people, so it should ge a great time. We will be thinking of all our Stateside friends and family of course.

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. Let me know how you are going to celebrate the season.

Wow, what a turkey! It looks huge in the picture but actually its only a 12 pounder. It's not easy to get turkeys in China, but we can't let November go by without one, so we go to the local western food shop and buy an imported one for 240 Chinese Yuan, or $35. It's expensive but it's worth it. Old traditions die hard. By early November the taste buds start gearing up for turkey and we just have to have it.

The first year we were here we cooked a chicken. Ovens are not common equipment in the Chinese kitchen. They have not been bakers, traditionally. So our first year here we bought a small toaster oven that could accomodate a chicken nicely. So chicken sufficed for Thanksgivng that year. But the following year I was determined to find an electric oven big enough for a real turkey. Well, I searched high and low. Store after store had only little toaster ovens like I already had. But I wasn't giving up until I went to every department store I knew of. At last, I found it. It was the floor model, but it was a nice sized convection oven. I still wasn't quite sure if a whole turkey would fit so I went down to the store and got the turkey and brought it with me to make sure. Ahhh. Success at last. It was just big enough with about an inch of head space at the top.

Well, since then we have successfully cooked a turky or two every year. However, I have to make sure the turkey doesn't exceed 12 pounds. One year it was a bit too big and we had to cut it in half!

This year we invited some of our closest student-friends. We had a lot of fun. They were amazed at the size of the bird and they loved the gravy. They hadn't had it before and had many questions. What is this? How do you make it? And they poured it all over everything on the plate. In the past we have found that our Chinese friends are not much impressed with Thanksgivng dinner. Chinese food is generally a little more complex, and meat is rarely eaten plain without some sauce or vegetables to accompany it. But these young friends seemed to enjoy themselves, and we enjoyed their company. It was just like having a big family over.

Starting life in a new country has had various challenges. We came to China in 1999 to teach at the Foreign Language Training Center at the China National Petroleum University. When John found this school's invitation on Dave's ESL Cafe Website, I must admit, I had misgivings. I didn't like the sound of a Petroleum college. It sounded dark and, well, oily. But they wanted two teachers and they were happy to get a husband/wife team, so we accepted their offer. The school was right in the middle of the Haidian District in Beijing, which has hundreds of universities. However, our training center was housed in a little-used campus and was, o put it mildly, quite run down. We were housed in a one story quadra-plex attached to the school. Our rooms were about the size of a dorm, with a 4x8 "living-room/dining room, a bedroom big enough for our bed and a wardrobe and a small bathroom and tiny kitchen. Since there were two of us they gave us two such dorms, so we moved the bed out of one dorm and set up a "living room" where we had a bit more room to stretch out and entertain visitors. The only problem was we had to go out one door and in the next since the rooms were not adjoining. Well we adjusted by having the attitude that, hey, this is a foreign country. We weren't expecting to find ideal conditions, and maybe we just needed to rough it a little.

The nicest thing about the place was the little garden outside our doors, which is extremely rare in Beijing. Most apartments are in high rise buildings, so having a "private" yard was a real treat. John was able to set up his bar-b-que and we had many little parties with students out there. We even found a hedgehog nestled in the grass one day, which was a delight since 'wild life' is very rare. There are virtually no squirrels in the city, although rats abound. We had one visit us one night. I got up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom and I had this sense that I should go slow and turn on the light in the kitchen on my way to the bathroom. Usually I would just stumble through in the dark since it was only 2o steps. But this time I leaned into the kitchen and switched on the light. There, sitting on the windowsill was a healthy rat staring at me. I jumped onto the bed and yelled for John to wake up. I was relieved that he came to my rescue. He chased the rat around for a few minutes before opening the window and shoeing him out. A few minutes later, however, the rat was back coming up through the drain in the floor. He had managed to run around, get into the sewer and up through the pipes into our kitchen. Well, having discovered it's entry way, we weighted down the drain opening with a brick and solved the rat problem.

Teaching is my joy! Living in China is a great adventure and a challenge. Join me as I share my musings about the joys, pleasures, pains and trials of living in the PRC

.I have been living and teaching English in Beijing, China for 7 years now. My husband, John and I came to China in 1999, the 50th anniversary of the PRC. We teach at the Beijing Sports Unversity. Previously, we taught at the China National Petroleum University and the Beijing Language and Culture University. I graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1993 with a BA in Spanish. Two years later, I got a Master's Degree in Teaching English as a Second Language.