Shanghai Christmas 2005

And what a wonderful Christmas it was! Our first in China will certainly be one to remember. Of course we missed all of our friends and family back in the States, but luckily we had our good friend Cali Tran with us in Shanghai to help us celebrate.

Cali arrived on Friday, Dec. 23rd, and was immediately struck by a sensation of being caught in a “really, really big Chinatown!” but with much worse drivers. His observations helped Tiffany and I realize just how much we’ve adapted to life in Shanghai in our 4 months here.

Typical conversation:

(Cali, recoiling): “Omigod! Our cabbie almost hit those three kids!”
(Me): “Really? I didn’t notice…”
(Tiffany): “That was their fault for crossing in front of us; I mean really, who’s going to win in a game of car versus pedestrian?”

or,

(Cali, gagging): “Ack..ugh, eww… what is that awful smell??!?”
(Me, sniffing around): “What smell?”

Our big party was held Christmas Eve at our apartment. Cali and I busied ourselves with one of our favorite pastimes – cooking! Our guest list was as follows:

Me, Cali and Tiffany – The Hosts
Rachel, Stacey and Helen – Tiffany’s Chinese friends from her old job
Peter and Richard – Rachel and Helen’s boyfriends, respectively
Kevin and Vanessa – our friends from Abroad China (the program that set us up here in Shanghai)
Vivian – Rachel’s friend
Jan – Tiffany and my Chinese teacher (and Tiffany’s current language exchange partner)

Since most of our guests were Chinese locals, we had promised them an all-American menu. Tiffany prepared her famous appetizer dish – a layered dip comprised of shrimp, cocktail sauce and cream cheese. We laid out crackers to scoop it up, but they loved it so much they started eating it by itself!

Cali and I prepared steak, garlic mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese (with 3 types of cheese mixed in), broccoli, and banana bread. And Tiffany topped it off with homemade chocolate chip cookies. Oh, did we tell you? Tiffany and I bought a small oven (about the size of a large microwave)! Very exciting.

Anyway, we decked out the apartment in lights and our tiny Christmas tree with ornaments galore, candles all over and lots of garland and fake snow spray. Combine that with non-stop Christmas music and hot apple cider, and our Chinese friends were drowning in Christmas celebration! It almost feels like more of a Christmas when you have to explain everything to people. I guess since we’re used to celebrating it back home every year with people who’ve also celebrated Christmas their whole lives, it’s only natural that some of the “magic” fades. But when you’re trying to explain in simple English and broken Chinese what exactly is the purpose of the ornaments hanging from a fake Christmas tree and why exactly we hang Christmas stockings with care, well, it makes you think a little more. Not that I had any answers to their questions…

So it was a long and enjoyable dinner. We got to watch their faces as they tried exotic treats (mashed potatoes, oooh!) and fancy desserts (banana bread, aaahh!), we explained Christmas to them as best we knew how, and we all had fun getting to know each other better despite any language and cultural barriers. Now if that’s not holiday spirit, I don’t know what is!

There were sooo many pictures taken that I couldn’t possibly upload them all onto our blog. However, if you’d like to see more pictures from our Christmas party, you can do so by logging on to the following website:

www.kodakgallery.com
login name: tiffandzach2005@yahoo.com
password: tiffandzach