A Tale of Two Dinners

The kids and Dave are out ice skating on this beautiful sunny day, temps around freezing, I have bread rising in the kitchen for Christmas dinner stuffing, Mozart’s Requiem is on the iPod, and I finally have a moment to sit down and write about our week.

Being as I only have about forty pages left in Bleak House, and that we listened to the “Christmas Carol” yesterday, I have Dickens on the brain; hence the silly title, slightly ripped off from my favorite Dickens novel. The title works, though, as we had two very different dinners this week: the IMNU Christmas banquet given for all the foreign teachers and students, and our “typical American dinner” which we gave for two of Dave’s graduate students from his seminar.

I am sure I have mentioned before—or maybe just in emails—that Hohhot is pretty well decked out for Christmas. Never in a million years while preparing to come to China did I think there would be Christmas here. The whole effect is a little surreal: shopkeepers have stationed fully decorated fake Christmas trees outside their doors; Santa Claus’ face is plastered in nearly every business window and the hotels are thoroughly wallpapered with the jolly guy’s image; Christmas carols play on the sound system as I weave through the aisles at the big grocery store; random students wish me “Merry Christmas” as they pass by me; students are standing on street corners selling apples wrapped in clear paper emblazoned with “Merry Christmas”. But don’t get me wrong. While there is a substantial population of Christian Chinese, the holiday here appears to be anything but religious. I don’t even know if anyone outside of Christian Chinese celebrate it in their homes. I think it is more like non-Irish serving corned beef and cabbage and dressing up in green on St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe it’s an excuse to decorate with shiny baubles (which abound everywhere), wear red hats with a white pompom, post up a bazillion pictures of Santa Claus, and depart from the routine of traditional holidays. There is a nightclub near our apartment which has a gigantic poster on it, advertising a Christmas night bash—drinking and dancing on Christmas? Like I said, it smacks of green beer at O’Malley’s or green milkshakes at McDonald’s.

When we heard of the annual Christmas banquet, Samuel’s first reaction was to scream “noooooo” and hide under his pillow. Remember, this is the guy who didn’t appreciate the sheep’s head banquet back in August. We reassured him that there would be no such repetition. I was fine with the idea of a banquet until I heard there would be a talent show. This kind of thing is most definitely not my cup of tea. Rumors spread that the foreign students (mostly Mongolian and Korean) were busy preparing their “acts”, and then rumors became reality when we found out that the American teachers would also be performing. Ack. The ELIC teachers (all the other American teachers with the exception of Dave, Tyler, and Karen) organized a dancing exhibition to Christmas music: one minute of waltzing, one minute of swing, one minute of hip hop (I know, hip hop Christmas music?). If there was a silver lining anywhere on this looming cloud, it was that Dave and I were asked to waltz (not that we had ever done it before, but it’s far less embarrassing to waltz than to do the other dances). And so, a week before this last Thursday we began “rehearsals”. Amazingly, Samuel and Grace wanted to participate, too, so we all practiced a couple of times and then the big day came this last Thursday.

As you can tell, the dinner part itself never posed a problem in my mind—it’s the talent show that I dreaded. The university held the banquet in a nearby fancy hotel (decorated top to bottom in Christmas regalia, complete with animal scenes inside the lobby and a gigantic tree of lights outside).

Decorations in the hotel lobby--a chainsaw??

This shows half of the banquet room--there were a lot of people there.

Peking Duck

The usual university bigwigs were there, along with some city officials, a visiting delegation of Russian students (a sister college to IMNU), the foreign teachers (American, Hungarian, Japanese), and all the foreign students—altogether about 200 people. The talent show went on, but no one really seemed to pay any attention as they were busy hobnobbing, drinking, or eating. When our turn came the kids (Grace in her Mongolian dress, Samuel in a new pair of khakis and a tie he picked out) took the stage alongside Jed, Lynette, Dave and me.

I know--we didn't arrange the kids very well. The audience just got to see Samuel's back. Oh well, the fact they're up there at all is the most important thing, right?

The Korean students. They sprayed "snow" around for their song, that's all the dots in the picture.

It went off without a hitch. The amazing thing about this? Our super shy kids performed in front of a lot of people that they didn’t know. Not being in school, they’ve never experienced the Christmas assemblies or shows kids put on for their parents. The mortification I experienced at having to waltz paled in importance to the fact that Samuel and Grace performed without the least nervousness, danced beautifully, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves, to boot. This is a good thing, too, as we have since been invited to the English Department’s banquet next week—yes, there will be a talent show there, too.

Watching the crazy acts--except Grace and Abby, posing for the camera.

The second dinner? Last night we had two of Dave’s graduate students from his seminar class over to dinner: Helen, her husband Lao Li, and her daughter Alice (8 years old), and Pegaleg (this is her chosen English name—I do not have the nerve to ask about Long John Silver or Captain Hook, but you can be sure I have wondered how she chose her name). Pegaleg also has a husband and five-year old son, but they are in Wuhai, a 9-hour train ride from here. Except for brief visits back home, she will be away from them for the next three years as she gets her Masters. Her mother-in-law is raising her son, apparently a common occurrence here, according to Pegaleg. We cooked a “traditional American dinner” for them: spaghetti with hamburger and sausage, a cucumber/tomato salad, and a sweet potato pie for dessert. A normal Chinese dinner involves a number of plates in the center of the table, from which everyone takes a little bit throughout the meal. As you know, most American dinners involve everything on one plate. In other words, there’s quite a difference between the way Americans eat a meal, and the way Chinese eat their meal: a communal shared experience around Chinese dishes vs. each diner having their own plate of food. It’s hard to tell if they enjoyed the food or not. Dave seems to think they did, but they were so polite it was a little hard to tell. They definitely did not like the black olives Dave set out beforehand—I guess they’re an acquired taste. And they politely observed that American food is less salty than Chinese food. I think that translated as: this food is not salty enough. Helen observed that Chinese love salt, and as a result they have really high blood pressure. So here’s the dilemma: high blood pressure and skinny, or fat from… fat, sugar, and more fat…and high blood pressure, too, of course. The exception is popcorn. The Chinese appear to like their popcorn sweet, while of course we like it salty. Even when the propane gas finally ran out, we were able to cook our noodles on Vanetta’s stove upstairs, so no worry—just a wait until maybe tomorrow to get new gas. Samuel, Grace, and Alice jumped on beds, ran back and forth slamming doors, and did the usual things three big kids do when hopped up on excitement in a tiny apartment. All in all, everyone was happy with the dinner and the company, and we have plans to go to Helen’s home for dinner in the near future.

And now it is Sunday evening, my bread is baked, the kids are back from skating and have had their showers. We’re having black bean burritos for dinner and afterwards will curl up with some popcorn to watch “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” borrowed from Harmony downstairs. Tomorrow the kids and I will bake some Russian Tea Cakes, I’ll do my last-minute shopping, we’ll have a Beef Daube Provencal for Christmas Eve dinner (that’s a fancy name for beef stew) and then go to bed, to have sugar plums dance through our heads and to dream of all the goodies to come. I hope you all have a cozy Christmas Eve and Christmas day, with friends and family alike. Cheers!