Card from one of my classes.
In mid-December, greeting cards flocked through the marketplace and perched on strings slung across stalls. Merry Christmas, Best Wishes, the messages read, accompanied by images of birds and flowers, umbrellas and children. May the joys of this season be with you throughout the coming year.
The Chinese didn’t celebrate Christmas. They just gave each other the cards.
I received a few from my students. Please accept my best and sincerest wishes for the Christmas, they wrote inside. May it brighten your prospects wherever you go.
That year Christmas landed on a Saturday, a morning numb with emptiness. I woke, ate oatmeal, skimmed an old Reader’s Digest. Checked for hot water (Santa hadn’t brought any). Around midday I joined the four other American teachers plus the lone German in our apartment building for a potluck lunch. We exchanged Chinese cards and gifts of dongxi we’d found in the marketplace: tart fruit candy, paper cuttings, figurines, Mao coins.
Of all things I expected out of Chinese Christmas, the last was Christmas cards. Who printed and sold them? Why were they exchanged? How long had it been a tradition?
Yet another cultural mystery to giggle at, and enjoy.
April 3, 2008 at 7:20 am
I don’t think so far there are christians in china…., but quiet happy there is also democracy.. good, keep going,…..
April 3, 2008 at 8:09 am
I know the Chinese government operates some Christian churches — I once attended a worship service at one of them, and it was packed.
Wikipedia has a modest article on Christianity in China here.
I also traveled through Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist areas of China, even visited both temples and mosques. So while Communists would have loved to quash religion altogether, they must have made some practical allowances for the religiously persuaded.