Sorry it’s been so long. Here is what December was like.

One of the regular attendants of English corner wanted to throw a party in our honor one weekend. That Sunday evening, we and a group of ten high school students walked along the beautiful Water Street to his home, where we began setting up the barbeque pit and piercing the meat with skewers. I was in charge of cooking the meat to make sure that the organs and chicken feet did not burn, and Tyler took on the role of Seasoning Man. The meat was...unusual, but Tyler was brave and gave them all a try, even tasting the pig penis, wrapped around a stick like a lollipop. The Chinese waste none of the animal, so it was no surprise to me that pig penis would be consumed, or even be a favorite treat. To this day, I am bewildered by the lack of bacon though. Lots of Penis-Popsicles; no bacon. I cannot deny that I could continue on about the penis-on-a-stick consumption, like how firm they get when heated or the possibility of penis mills to explain the surplus of pig penises, but my grandmother will read this and surely disapprove.

I had originally thought that life as a vegetarian would be quite common in China, but I was sorely mistaken. I passed on the pig and chicken massacre and opted to eat roasted corn, broccoli, and fried bananas instead. I was perfectly content with this, but the boy beside me was not. The idea of not eating meat was more shocking to him than to most hunters in America, for at least they have heard of the mythological vegetarian. To him, it was simply unheard of. He continually badgered me about my diet and offered me various parts of chicken, all of which I graciously turned down. Eventually, he inquired about my reasons, which were too difficult to express to one who knows so little English; thus, I simply said, “I love animals very much and killing them makes me sad.” This is true, but not entirely the reason, but it would do. To my surprise, it satisfied him and launched him into a personal tale of woe.

“Aaah! This I understand!” he cried. “I love animal too, but there are, I think, other ways to love animal. Like my dog. You know ‘dog’? I had a dog, but I went on holiday. I came back and he was gone. You know where he go? I call my neighbor and they tell me that my dog was stolen for barbeque. So now, I will never have a dog again. That is my way of loving animal.”
For a moment, I was speechless. The backward logic had confused me and the story left me horrified. His dog had been stolen...and eaten. I could not say that I was surprised though. Since arriving in China, we had seen hardly one ounce of consideration and kindness towards animals. I had been solicited to buy the pelt of a German Shepherd, which was probably the cleanest dog in the country. Cats and dogs were barely kept as pets, and if they were, they were still malnourished and extraordinarily filthy. Any trip to the market would provide a view of chickens and ducks, crammed into mesh laundry bags, while frogs were piled in bowls, with their legs bound by rubber bands to eliminate the possibility of escape. I had seen two chickens hanging from their feet, dangling from the back of a motorcycle, their heads knocking against the exhaust pipe. We had witnessed a dog being ordered to enter the luggage compartment underneath a charter bus, where hopefully he was able to avoid any tumbling bags when the driver erratically maneuvered his way to the destination. Tyler had even passed by a man in the act of grilling the carcass of a medium sized dog. It was no wonder the vegetarian diet was so unfathomable to the boy; animals were thought of as nothing more than delicious, moving plants.

~*~

Almost the entire month of December was devoted to teaching the kids about Christmas. It was our last full month of teaching and we wanted to let the students have more than just a lesson about Christmas. We wanted them to experience it. Although illegal, I thought downloading Home Alone would be worth it. And it was. Although not the greatest screenplay ever written, it is set around the holidays and is easy to understand and enjoy, even if you do not speak one word of English. The students of every age loved it, even if only for the fact that they were watching a movie in class, instead of listening to a middle-aged teacher dictating from the front of the room. We made a Christmas PowerPoint presentation, gave all six hundred students pieces of chocolate as a gift, and sang them Christmas carols.
Although the Chinese do not celebrate Christmas in their homes, it is becoming increasingly fashionable to acknowledge the holiday. The shops decorate their store fronts with Christmas decorations and employees wear Santa hats, which looks very foreign, but the familiarity is also refreshing. On Christmas Eve, we spent the day shopping for gifts for our Chinese mom, dad, aunt, cousin, and our best Chinese friend, a student named Jun. During our spree, we passed a man buying shoes, with hair was so blonde it was almost as white as his skin. We did not go in and talk to him, because that would have been creepier than simply staring at him from outside. The tables had been turned. In the months of being stared at by the locals, we had become one.

That night, we were treated by the school to a Christmas dinner and show at Lemandi, also called Merryland, a famous Japanese-owned theme park and the crown jewel of Xing’an. The dinner was a buffet that had many of our Chinese favorites, but also provided a few of our Western dishes, such as turkey with gravy, fruit salad, shrimp chowder, and salad. I threw my vegetarianism out the window and went to town on that turkey. To eat white meat instead of dark meat still clinging to an unintelligible bone was a Christmas gift in itself! The show consisted of the traditional routines, such as a Chinese Santa who did a balancing act, a knife thrower, and a group of scantily clad dancers, performing to The Nutcracker and gyrating to American hip hop music.

After the show had ended, Mrs. Xiao, our Chinese mom, and her husband took us to the hotel’s nightclub. Once through the entrance, you are led through a small maze, the walls of which were made up of large pictures of strippers on poles. Instantly, I feared that I was about to watch exotic dancing with the vice-president of the school and her husband. The dark room had the bar in the middle with tables surrounding it. When I spotted a group of Muslims and a few children with their parents, I was even more confused as to what was going on. We sat down at a tall table and watched clips of Demi Moore’s performance in Striptease, a montage of Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls, a 1980’s MTV Summer Beach Party, and an old Madonna video. After about twenty minutes, the stage lit up and a Chinese man in a Santa costume appeared and began throwing candy at people. As I blocked my face from being pelted, I realized that before a certain time, the gentleman’s club was apparently a family hotspot! After finishing the candy accosting, he began the show. The first competition required a couple to pop ten balloons in between their bodies. After watching the first four couples, we knew that we had to show them how it was done. The task was simple, run to the balloon, run back to him, pop it. The error the other couples made was attempting to pop the balloon by hugging. My technique involved simply running into a body-bump with the balloon between us. The balloons were popped immediately and all were finished in fifty-three seconds. We were awarded with a stuffed Santa Claus with three testicles on his face, which failed in their efforts to emulate a nose.

Although a tad unconventional, our Chinese Christmas was a blast.

Now, I have strep. I went to the doctor. I’ll write a blog about that and other January things later.

© ← BOOM. (Once there was a girl I had never met, who copy/pasted my blog to hers. She changed my name to hers and the season. She was a creeper. Or maybe I’m just that entertaining. When she knew she was caught, she deleted her blog. Crazy pants.)