[This is my Trail] Just when you think you've seen everything...Merry Christmas!

[Rachelle]

Sorry this post is so delayed....I was having issues uploading the pictures.

Sometimes I get to a point where I think I know a lot about China. I've been here for almost two years, so I've seen all the holidays and all that. I feel like I generally know what happens and how things work (or don't work) around here. Then something like Christmas happens and takes me totally by surprise...

So someone told us that there would be a lot of people hanging out downtown for Christmas. Yes, despite what may think, Christmas is sort of celebrated, albeit in a very different way, here...there are tacky christmas decorations and annoying renditions of strange christmas carols playing in malls and restaurants and such. China has even made up some Christmas traditions of their own, such as giving apples as presents because the word for apple in Chinese is "ping guo" which sounds like the Chinese word for peace, which is "ping an." So everywhere you can find these apples wrapped in colorful cellophane and apple ornaments for Christmas trees, etc. You can definitely find a lot of Christmas decorations here, but it seems like most people do not put them in their homes. They are mostly in stores and restaurants and office buildings. In my building, my lights/tree are definitely the only ones I see blinking at night--and you can see them for the major intersection I live on--yay!

Me and my "ping an ping guo"

Anyway, so we went downtown to see what was happening for Christmas. It was total chaos. There were people selling things everywhere. Santa hats, sparklers, glow bracelets, mardis gras masks, cotton candy, and most of all cans of silly string and fake snow. At first we thought it was kind of fun. Spray some snow up in the air and it really looks like it's snowing. Spray it at your friend a little and that's funny. But then things got totally out of control. Thousands of people just going at each other, spraying in nose, mouth, eyes...and all that aerosol. Yuck. We could barely breathe. And then people started going after us. Just random Chinese people who thought it would be fun to spray the foreigners. They would totally gang up on us from 5 year old kids to sketchy 55 year old men. It was totally out of control. Spraying poison at each other just not not seem like a good way to celebrate Christmas (or any other holiday). It seemed much more like something that would be appropriate at Mardis Gras or for Halloween. You couldn't walk 5 feet without being totally attacked. So what did we do? Buy our own cans and fight back, of course. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! I think that's a pretty good motto for life in China in general.

Megan gets ambushed!

Megan fights back!

Aiya!

They were also again setting off sky lanterns at Jin Ma Bi Ji Fang, like I wrote about before. I had my camera this time, so I took some pictures, and a video...




Click here if you can't see the video.

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Posted By Rachelle to This is my Trail at 2/05/2009 01:00:00 AM