This year was my first Christmas without my family and it was a really interesting Christmas.
China is probably the least Christmas-y place to spend Christmas. Practically no one knows what Christmas actually is and very few people knew when it was. Nevertheless, we tried to make our own Christmas spirit.
We bought a Christmas tree on Taobao (the Chinese equivalent of Amazon) for about $5 and decorated it. We covered the whole flat in fairy lights. It felt very festive. We also frequently blasted Christmas music in the flat.
I have had more mulled wine this month than I ever have had before. It was pretty much the only Christmas-y food that we could make here, so we made it at every possible opportunity. We put a Chinese spin on it by making it either in a wok or a 火锅 (hot pot). We had a bit of trouble finding all the right spices, but it still turned out alright.
This year, Hangzhou put on its first Christmas market. I went with my flatmate and with Stephanie,
while she was in town. We didn’t find anything very good – most of it was Korean stuff and wine.
But it was pretty cool to walk around for a bit.
Also, nearby there was an 18-meter tall Christmas tree. We of course had to go check it out!
We found some mistletoe and took some ridiculous pictures. We also taught some Chinese girls what mistletoe means. Before we explained it, they thought we were especially strange.
On Christmas Eve, I spent the morning in a cafe writing an essay. This was probably the hardest part about spending Christmas in China – I had to go to class leading up to it and right after. I also have an essay due in mid-January, so I have been working on that a lot this past week. Luckily, I had plans to have friends come over that evening. We made soup, watched Love Actually, and made crafts to decorate the flat even more.
On Christmas morning, I called my family and had a slow morning. Then I got a little dressed up, tidied the flat, and got ready to have people over.
We watched the Sound of Music and ate some snacks. For our Christmas meal, we had KFC and pizza. Very traditional. Some of my friends were surprised that they have KFC here, but it’s actually the biggest fast-food chain in China. The whole restaurant was decorated for Christmas!
We ordered pizza and it turned out to be kind of weird. One of the pizzas turned out to have berry jam on it…
We had a really good time watching the movie, eating, and hanging out.
On Christmas evening, we went to the grand theatre in Hangzhou to see Swan Lake performed by the Russian ballet group!
The ballet was absolutely beautiful. The only bad thing is that etiquette is very different in China than in other places. People were talking throughout the whole show. On top of that, pretty much everyone brought a child under 5 years old. It was a bit difficult to focus on the show, but it was still nice. I’m really glad we found out about it!
Christmas in China wasn’t quite as hard as I thought it was going to be. I got to hang out with a lot of friends, I called my family a lot, and we did everything we could to make it as festive as possible. We ate yummy food, watched lots of familiar movies, listened to Christmas music, etc. I think the key to getting through it was being with all my friends and keeping busy. If I hadn’t had something going on all the time, I think it would have felt very different. I’m also looking forward to my trip to India in just a few days. I’m going to be going with family friends, so that will be really nice. I actually managed to have a pretty good Christmas here in China.
I was thinking though about a few things. I really thought about all the people who can’t be with their families for more serious reasons. With everything that’s going on in the world right now, I do consider myself pretty lucky to be in the situation I’m in, to have a good group of friends, and to make the best out of the situation.
I also think next Christmas is going to be even more special. I can’t wait to be home for Christmas next year. Last Christmas, my family came to Scotland. We had a very non-traditional Christmas. It was really nice and of course I still got to be with my family. But I am very excited to have Christmas a little bit more like the ones I’m used to next year.
