Christmas in China, 1997

A true story from my years in the Middle Kingdom

I started off loving Christmas — loving it. When I was a kid, Christmas was everything you expect in a movie or toy commercial. Most of December was filled with relatives and — I swear — soft focus glimpses of the Christmas tree. I lived the whole month in a haze of happiness.

Then on Dec. 24, 1989, I came back from last-minute Christmas shopping to have my sister, teary-eyed, tell me that Dad was dying, might not live through the night, and we were all flying to Montreal to be with him.

And so within an hour of wading through the Christmas crowds, I was on a flight to Dorval, sandwiched between a couple of boozy businessmen heading home for the holidays.

My father did last through Christmas Eve. We all stood round him. He died Christmas day. I was 19 years old.

That day seemed like a betrayal. As if I’d had an undeservedly happy childhood, and accounts receivable had finally caught on.

After that day, Christmas became a clockwork dirge for my family. It became a time of melancholy, of I Just Want to be Alone, of why bother getting a Christmas tree anyway?

Years dragged on like that. Nothing suggested it would ever be any different.

Then, in the fall of 1997, I chucked my job at the CBC and went to China to teach English.

Yiyang county, population 4 million, is a rural district in the heart of China, about 100 kilometres South of the Yangtze River. It’s far from any well-known city. And out of those four million farmers, I was the only foreigner.

Somehow, though, I fit in. In fact I enjoyed myself. I kept my eyes open, my opinions to myself, and held on to my sense of wonder.

Inevitably, of course, Christmas approached. My students began asking me about it: what kinds of food do you eat? Who is Father Christmas? Why do you give gifts? Most of all, what were my plans for the holiday?

As a foreigner, I was guaranteed the day off. I said I was going away, maybe to Hong Kong or Shanghai. The students seemed disappointed.

Then just a couple of weeks before Christmas, I stumbled upon a Santa Claus costume while poking around my apartment. No doubt a cast-off from some previous foreign tenant.

I put the costume away. But it stayed in my mind. I imagined wearing it . . . and surprising my whole world. The more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became.

On Christmas Eve, I decided to go for it. I went to the nearby market town and bought as much candy as I could get my hands on.

The next day I had classes as usual. None of the students asked why I wasn’t on vacation. Classes ended normally. Just another day. I returned home and ate a quick dinner.

The students lived under rough conditions with lots of rules. One of those rules stated that after dinner, all students had to return to their drafty, unheated classrooms, or the slightly warmer but hopelessly overcrowded library. In either case, nothing but quiet study was allowed.

So when an artificially portly, white-whiskered and red-clad foreigner leaped into their classroom, ho-ho-hoing merrily and tossing out handfuls of candy, jaws dropped. Eyes opened wide as dish-plates. Loud shouts found exit from hundreds of throats, hands clapped madly.

I worked my way through the entire college, moving from classroom to classroom. Each time I was met by cheers and shouts and clapping. Ordinarily sweet and polite young people wrestled on the floor for candy. Passions long tamped-down by rules and overcrowding bubbled to the surface. Soon after, I found myself standing in front of the library.

Hundreds more students were studying miserably inside. I entered the doors, then stopped. Above me, the faces of Marx, Lenin, Mao and Stalin stared towards a horizon only they could see.

I felt nervous. This was going too far. I might already be in trouble, I thought. Busting-up the library would surely be cause for sending me to a labour camp.

I looked at my watch. Curfew was half an hour away. I was hot and tired and my pants kept wanting to fall down.

The library was a no-go, but I had one more stop to make. Many of my students had missed out of my fun. Not wanting them to be denied a role in the Great Santa Claus Escapade, I walked over to the female-only dormitory.

Like so many Chinese student dorms in those days, it was unheated, with spotty water and electricity, and crammed with students — eight or ten in rooms the size of a smallish Canadian living room.

I smiled my way past the boggle-eyed security guard and bumped into three of my students. They immediately took my hands and pulled me up the stairs to the sixth floor.

I was guided to their room, attracting stares and excited whispers. Once there, I gave a ho-ho-ho. They were stunned into silence — at first. Then they began laughing and cheering. A sizable group of students began filling the hallway behind me.

But the clock was ticking. Saying goodnight, I squeezed through the crowds on my way out.

The lights went out. Curfew.

As I made my way down the stairs, groups of girls rushed out to see me, screaming and cheering and jumping up and down.

Finally I somehow reached the bottom of the stairs. Looking up, I saw the railings of all six floors packed two and three deep with perhaps 1,000 girls, all shouting and waving and cheering.

“Merry Christmas!” they shouted in unison. I was at first too flabbergasted to respond. But it was obvious they were waiting for an answer.

“Merry Christmas!” I shouted back.

“Merry Christmas!” They repeated happily.

“Happy New Year!” I shouted.

“Happy New Year!” came the reply.

By now the nervous guard was pulling on my arm. I realized I was in serious trouble. The Chinese authorities tend to frown upon young people gathered in unorchestrated enthusiasm.

“GO-TO-SLEEP!” I shouted, trying to sound commanding.

“Nooooo!” came the happy reply.

Finally the guard all but picked me up and threw me out the gate. He pointed me down the road and ordered me to walk. I did. But I stopped after a few steps and listened to the sounds. Floor monitors holding megaphones were yelling at the students to settle down. But it was the voices of the students that held me back.

The kids were calling to one another in the darkness:

“Merry Christmas, room three-oh-one!”

“Merry Christmas, room two-one-three!”

“Happy new year, room four-one-one!”

The monitors with megaphones were still ordering quiet, but no one noticed.

“Merry Christmas, dormitory four!”

“Merry Christmas, dormitory five!”

I walked back through the darkness. My beard was a ruin. My costume was muddy and worn. The merry voices followed me home on the night wind. I couldn’t sleep that night. I was flushed, astonished, joyful. I shook. I cried some. I also expected secret policemen to knock on my door. The knock never came. The fear left me.

The rest stayed.