Merry Christmas Lovefest

Merry Christmas! It is the day after Christmas here in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, P.R. China. We miss our friends and family back home but we enjoyed a cozy Christmas day here in Inner Mongolia. There was a dusting of snow outside--and snow continues today. The normal Christmas activities took place here just as they do at home: cooking, eating, playing with toys.

This last week has been something of a love-fest between Hohhot and me. All my previous anxieties about being trapped behind a cultural barrier seemed to disappear in a flurry of everyday activity that made me feel connected to life here in a way that I haven't felt before. It could be just a function of time--of finally being here for long enough so that life feels "normal"--or of having finally built up a foundation of trust with the Chinese friends and students with whom I share my time, but Hohhot is starting to feel more and more like "home."

My students have been really effusive and enthusiastic as of late: the semester is coming to an end and rumors have spread that I will be leaving in March. My students have responded by looking at me with kind, sad, and sympathetic expressions (the kind that 18 year-old Chinese girls especially have mastered) and begging me to stay. When I tell them I can't, their expressions turn even more sorrowful and they say things like, "Oh, it's such a pity" and "We will miss you" and "We will never forget you." I can't imagine American college students expressing such feelings to an American college professor--certainly not to me. At home I don't really invite such sentiment. Even if people like my classes, I don't become their "friend" per se--I've learned to keep a professional distance between myself and my students. But there is a connection between student and teacher here that can't be duplicated in America, and perhaps this connection is even stronger between a foreign teacher and Chinese students. The students here, as I've said in the past, are so untainted by cynicism and self-absorption. They are earnest and respectful. I nostalgically (and naively) imagine nineteenth-century American school children treating their favorite teacher similarly, the way that the poor kids in the one-room school-house treated Laura Ingalls Wilder, whom they respected and admired. They felt that a piece of Laura was theirs. She left them at the end of the term but you got the feeling that Laura and those students wouldn't forget each other (can you tell I've been reading children's books again?). That's how it feels to me here lately. My students have been giving me Christmas presents and flooding my email and cell phone with Christmas messages like this one from my student Catherine: "David, Today is Christmas Eve. I wish you and your family Merry Christmas! Best wishes ! Your son and daughter are very lovely. I like them very much! I hope them happy everyday!"

Samuel holding one of the gifts that my students gave me.

The good feelings were also flowing last Thursday night, when the International Exchange College hosted its annual Christmas banquet for the foreign teachers and students. The dinner was held at the four-star Bin Yue Hotel.

Fancy-schmancy banquet. You can see our table in foreground. That’s Oliver in the scarf, Madoka (sp?—the Japanese instructor) to his left, and then Malicha to her left.

The food was excellent. The singing performances by Mongolian and Korean students were generally pretty bad, but no one cared: there were two bottles of Chinese liquor at every table. The big wigs from the foreign affairs office in Hohhot were there. Dean Chen Yao and Party Secretary Mr. Zhou jumped up as soon as they arrived and immediately began plying them with food and drink and toasts. Our table--one designated for foreign teachers--was conspicuously absent of liquor because all the Americans here, except Arienne and I, are teetotalers. I was sitting by Oliver, the Hungarian scholar, and we were able to get one of the waitresses to bring us a bottle of liquor. So we were happy. The Americans (us!) danced, the Russians drank, the Mongolians drank, the Korean students--all girls--performed a Christmas song decked out in Santa hats. The administrators thanked us for our service. The pleasantries and platitudes rolled from everyone's tongues like so much sweet perfume. It all worked its magic on me. My stomach was full of mutton and wine and I sat there with a feeling of great contentedness and good cheer. I know these banquets are all about formality: they happen every year no matter who the players. My replacement next year will be serenaded just as warmly no matter his/her merits in the classroom. But I took it all personally and I felt a great warmth towards the IMNU “family.” Afterwards, we strolled out in front of the hotel where they have a huge Christmas trees and some Santas and took pictures.

In front of the Bin Yue Hotel.

We've been amazed at how much Christmas cheer exists in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, and China generally. Christmas decorations are everywhere. Last Thursday, Samuel, Grace, and I took a taxi to the Muslim market to buy wrapping paper for Christmas, as well as various other sundry items for Christmas, including pants for both the kids. Samuel is getting to be a big boy and he wanted some nice khakis for the Christmas banquet. I found him a pair at a men's clothing stall. The waist was perfect but we had to go to the tailor and get them hemmed--for 4 RMB, or a little more than 50 cents.

Getting Samuel’s pants hemmed. Alterations are very cheap here and tailors abound.

Friday was also a big day of errands. After my morning classes I had lunch with Tyler at the Korean restaurant (my favorite) and then I rode my bike to the video store to indulge myself in some extraneous shopping followed by the Merida store where I (Santa Claus, actually) bought Samuel a bike light and then to the foreign import market for some Christmas and dinner-party shopping. I made it home just in time to rest a moment before I went with He Qing to her class at Nong Da (Inner Mongolia Agricultural University). She wanted me to talk about Christmas. It was one of those performances that I'm becoming so good at--talking about American holidays, the NBA, American movies, American family-life, and whatever else comes to mind. Her students had some good questions for me. One stood in the back row and said that her family "believes in Jesus Christ" and they go to church on Christmas Eve: "Is it customary for American families to go to church on Christmas Eve"? “Some do and some don't,” I answered. I told her we didn't go because we're not church-going people. It was one of those funny upside moments: a Chinese Christian asking a secular American about church. This happens to me all the time since people here assume that all Americans are devoutly religious (and yet also believe, a la Hollywood, that we all shoot each other and have illicit sex). The fact is: most of the Americans here are practicing Christians. In fact, ALL of the Americans that we’ve met here are devoted Christians (more on that later…).

It was nice to go to He Qing's class. The students were eager and energetic (I'm realizing that my IEC students are pretty low-level....). It was also nice to help out He Qing because she has done so much for us. But, alas, she insisted on taking us out to dinner this week to pay me back for my efforts. That is the way things go here.

When we arrived back at our apartment, I found a large package waiting for me from the "English Department." In fact, Ms. Na, the department chair, had called me while I was in He Qing's class and invited me to English department's Christmas banquet this week. Then she had left me a present with our door-keeper. It was a beautiful box with a beautiful silver tea pot. I was feeling the love, I'm telling you.

A Mongolian tea set just for teaching a few seminars! I was overwhelmed.

The love-fest continued the next day: I went out with Athena (Guo Yin Ping) who helped me to get our DVD player fixed and to buy a beautiful necklace for Arienne. Athena is a shopper extraordinaire and without her help I could never have done it. First we took the DVD player to the mall where the lady unsuccessfully tried to fix it by cleaning the parts with a cigarette filter (it worked last time!) and then we took a taxi to a repair shop in a different part of town where, remarkably, the man fixed it for us as we waited.

Athena asking these guys where to find the Malata repair shop. Easy: go down the alley, turn left, and cut through the apartment complex.

Found it! How could we have missed it?

Then it was a taxi ride back to the mall (me trying to hand the cab driver money before Athena who would pay the fare every time if she had the chance) and to the jewelry shops where Athena deftly questioned and bargained until we had a lovely white gold necklace with a phoenix on it for a price that I could afford.

Then it was back to our apartment for dinner-party planning, cooking, and watching the Simpsons (the DVD player is working!). Helen, her husband (Lao Li--or Old Li--we called him), her daughter Alice, and Pegaleg came for a "typical" American dinner: spaghetti with meat sauce, salad, and pie. We drank wine and beer and orange drink; the kids actually played!; we talked about taboo subjects like religion (Helen's Aunt is a "believer in Jesus" who admonishes Helen and weeps in spiritual rapture...) and the differences between American and Chinese cuisine, culture, and education. It was a great evening--including watching all of them try to choke down a black olive, which they made no pretension about liking. That culture barrier seemed to dissipate even further during an evening spent with good friends. They invited us to our house at a future time and Lao Li invited us to visit the "peasant village" where he was raised so that we could "see how Chinese peasants really live."

The day before Christmas we went skating at Shi Da. The snow was falling--like today--and with all the Christmas decorations about there was a holiday spirit, even though I had to "teach" three classes on the 24th and two on the 25^th (and two more today). I say "teach" because all I did was show a movie--the "Polar Express"--and on Christmas morning He Qing actually showed the movie to my first class, allowing me to open Christmas presents with the family, eat breakfast, and enjoy Christmas morning.

The rest of week will be filled with more activities: dinner with He Qing tonight; the English Department banquet tomorrow night; dinner with students from my software class on Friday (the same class that gave me the big red thing, above), dinner with students from my tourism class on Saturday.

It's been strange to be teaching during the holidays, but classes finally come to an end on Friday followed by a study week and then final exams. By mid-January I'll be done with my professional obligations here and we'll go on a short trip to Xi'an, Shanghai, and Hangzhou followed by some more Inner Mongolia travel in February. And then home on March 1. We have just over two months left there, and I'm starting to feel like time is too short!

Happy Holidays everyone!