Happy Day-After-Boxing-Day!

Well, Christmas has already come to Jilin City and gone, quickly as can be. Truth be told, it was almost like a blur. One minute it was suddenly here,  and then the next it was gone, leaving behind another 364 days of waiting. In all fairness, that's probably to be expected in a country where the holiday isn't exactly widely observed. Nevertheless, we still tried to make the bes tof it here in norhteast China.

We all started off the celebrations with a hot pot dinner at Nick's apartment at Beihua University. Actually, the fact that we had dinner was quite an unexpected surprise to me. Both Nick and Brad live with Beihua's sizable foreign student population at the so-called "Friendship Hotel", a place that doesn't exactly live up to its name. We found that out the hard way during our first week in Jilin, when they refused to let Kate and I visit except for a few minutes at a time. Thankfuly though, at some point they loosened their restrictions, if only a little bit. We're allowed to visit, but we have to leave our passports at the desk when we sign in. That, and after a few hours someone will come around to let us know that they think it's time for us to depart.

For those of you who don't know, hot pot is a Chinese dish that's....well, it's almost exactly what it sounds like. It's literally a large broth-filled pot is placed that's kept constantly simmering at the center of a table while various ingrediants are dropped in and cooked right then and there. Supposedly, it has its origins here in the north, where nomadic Mongolians and Manchurians would cook stews in their upturned metal helmets. However, that's just the story a few have told me in Jilin, not actual fact. While it's quite popular and widely eaten here, it's hardly a solely northern tradition - different variations of the dish are consumed throughout China, from the west in Sichuan province all the way to the southeast.

Regardless of where it came from, it's a very nice dish to have in the midst of these punishing winters. We had ours with thin slices of beef and lamb, a variety of mushrooms, tofu, and a heapload of green leafy veggies to balance it all out. This we all tossed into a simmering pot filled with a fairly spicy stock to give the taste of every slice of meat or mouthful of cooked vegetable a nice zing.

Pictured here are some pretty clear signs that we may have gone just a weensy bit overboard buying leafy veggies.

 

Wang Wei joined us for the meal, and personally prepared what I now think is a staple for northern hot pot - a kind of thick sesame sauce which is spooned into one's private bowl and mixed with everything fished out of the simmering stock with one's chopsticks.

 

She wasn't the only other one there - joining us were three Korean students whom Nick had befriended (students whose names I was never able to remember) and another American, surprisingly enough. Nick's college friend Robbie (sitting on the far left) came up from his job in Beijing to join us. As he put it, he wished to spend the day with people who carried the same appreciation for it that he did.

On Christmas morning, the five young Americans plus Wang Wei and her mother all congregated at the apartment of Father Tim, a Maryknoll priest hailing from one of the twin cities in Minnesota (but God help me, I simply cannot recall which one). A week earlier he had generously thrown out an invitation for mass and breakfast at his residence, something for which we were all quite thankful for considering how desperately we lacked any major holiday plans at the time. So at roughly ten in the morning, we all gathered together, joined around his coffee table, and had a tiny Christmas mass.

Afterwards, most of his headed into the kitchen to prepare breakfast (you can see Fr. Tim pictured above, chatting it up with Wang Wei and Kate).

Nick took command of the eggs, Robbie manned the bacon, Brad kept his eye on the toast, and I....er, could only do various odd jobs. That's not to say that I made no major contributions whatsoever.

Hopefully you'll recall the delicious little cheesecakes that I mentioned a few posts back. Just the day before, I made a run down to the bakery and bought a heapload of the tasty little treats, which folks agreed were little bits of heaven compacted into pastry form. It was definitely worth the surprised and confused look I received from a particular bakery employee the day before when I pointed and said determinedly in Chinese, "Twenty, please."

Breakfast was relatively simple - cheesecakes, eggs, toast (with choice of peanut butter, jelly or plain butter to spead on top) bacon, fruit, and Gouda cheese. There was hardly anything fancy about the menu. However, that did absolutely nothing to prevent every mouthful from tasting like a little bit of nirvana. After subsiting on Chinese food for so long, it definitley does wonders going back to the scumptous basics, even for just one morning. Everyone there ate until half of us felt ready to collapse into food comas (with the exception of Wang Wei and her mother, who understandably don't care all that much for western style breakfasts.

After our meal, we lounged in Father Tim's living room for some time, just casually chatting with one another. Between that and the breakfast, I would ahve to say that the gathering at that little apartment was without a doubt the highlight of our brief holiday. As we talked about whatever came to mind over heaping platefuls of eggs and toast....well, at times it felt like we were right back home in the states.

Right before everyone headed out, there was a small gift exchange. Kate, bless her heart, bought and assembled stocking for her fellow volunteer teachers.

Inside was an assortment of candy, and a few other bits and bobs from both her trip to Hong Kong and from the states, brought by her father when he paid us a visit a few weeks ago.

I have no idea whether the bottle opener in my stocking is from the US or Hong Kong, but I must say, it was definitely badly needed. Openers of this sort are unreasonably hard to find in this city - as of now, I still haven't seen any at all in any of the city's many shops and stores.

Brad gave me two small gifts. One of them was a small hard-plastic Chinese cabbage, which actually many people here keep around in their homes for good luck. If you think that sounds odd, then you'll probably even be more puzzled by the fact that I have actually pondered buying one for my self several times or so over the past few months.

As much as I appreciated that strange gift (me being definitely a strange fellow and all), I am pretty sure that my favorite gift was the sweater Brad gave me.

I'd like to think that no explanation is needed as to why this is one of the greatest things that I have ever received.

In return, my gifts to the others were pretty simple. I honestly had no idea what anyone else actually wanted or needed, except for a badly-needed break from the relentlessly chilly weather. So, that's what I gave them.....in a way.

Of course, my lack of funds prevented me from buying them all an immediate trip to Barbados, so I had to get creative. I dug through the collection of photos I've taken over the years, and for each Maryknoll volunteer, I picked a particularly nice picture of somewhere warm and sunny. These I then printed out, wrote small messages on the back, and inserted into nice wooden frames that I managed to find on the morning of Christmas Eve. That way, by looking at my pictures, the others can be transported to somewhere nice far away from Jilin City, if only for a few moments. This I tried to explain to the others, but unfortunately I tend to be far more eloquent when I write than when I speak.

For Nick - a visit to the Master-of-the-Nets Garden in Suzhou, or "the Venice of China", as its been nicknamed by some.

For Brad - a trip to Guilin in southern China, long-known as a place where one can became totally immersed in breathtaking natural beauty with extreme ease. 

For Kate, I gave her this photo of the Angel of the Waters fountain on Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, NYC. By doing so, I attempted to share with her both the beauty of one of my favorite places in the city, the peace I feel whenever I go there, and the spectacular autumn day upon which I discovered the fountain. Or, at least that was the message I wrote on the back of this photo, and attempted to tell her (like I said - speaking is not my strong point).

Of course, I couldn't forget Father Tim. In thanks, I gave him this photo of a mythical Chinese beast I took in the Forbidden City - it's a half turtle, half dragon creature that's supposed to represent sucess and good fortune.

Alas,that lovely little morning couldn't last forever. Once again, Christmas has passed, and now all that's left are several presents and a batch of festively wrapped apples from my students.

Apparently, apples are a very popular gift this time of year because the Chinese word for apple, pingguo, is very similar to a Chinese term for peace, ping an. However, as I have since learned, many here think that this tradition originated out in the west. So needless to say, I was rather puzzled when students kept asking me "Why do we have to eat apples on Christmas Eve?" to which I would reply, "......I.....I don't know. Why are you eating apples on Christmas?"

Finally though someone explained it to me, to which I had to reveal the unfortunate truth:

 

Apples are not a traditional Christmas food where I'm from.

All in all, it was a nice little holiday, if somewhat low-key and a tad too quick. The next day it was right back to work as usual, working on a review lesson for the upcoming final in my English Writing class. Christmas this year was all right, but it was definitely very different from the celebrations that I usually partake in at my grandparents home in Westerly, Rhode Island. 

...And by "different," I mean that in quite a few ways.

Comments

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