I sense much fear in you

China does not celebrate Halloween. While this is understandable given the nature of the holiday and its strange not-China-related origins, I find it to be a tragedy for a number of reasons.
Chinese people...
1. are easily entertained by costumes
2. love to eat candy
3. are ridiculously superstitious

Last week we were walking back from a dinner at one of our favorite restaurants that we like to refer to as "Rainforest Cafe" (due to the foliage/fruit on the ceiling, no such luck as to have animals and rainstorms during your meal). As we were walking, we noticed a number of people burning things on the side of the road. Burning trash, while illegal, is not an uncommon sight but the frequency of the event on this night far surpassed our previous encounters. After inquiring the reason for the plethora of mini bonfires, our Chinese friend told us that they are burning money to send to the ancestors in the afterlife. Intrigued and a little disturbed at the prospect of being a little short of some post-mortem cash money, I questioned where they got this ethereal currency. The short answer was that it was just fake money that didn't even really look like real money. After a few more minutes of discussion Jon made the excellent point that maybe if they really believed it would work they would burn their "real" money. Our Chinese friend dismissed this as preposterous and also illegal. A good point as well.

Because of the lack of Halloween awareness here in China, it seems that me and my fellow Americans have taken it upon ourselves to educate everyone we can about this sweet holdiay. For the past week and a half I have spent the majority of my class time teaching fun Halloween words and telling spooky tales which have gone over with more giggles than the screams I was hoping for. For the day itself we traveled to the Financial College where Jon and Ryan teach to have a movie night for students who were interested in watching a scary film. Evidently they were very interested as the big room was packed out with over 400 students who showed up to watch Poltergeist, a fantastic 1982 Steven Spielberg film. The film did not disappoint the viewers and it was really fun to watch the hundreds of students react to the movie with collective screams, laughs, and even applause. After the film we took some students out for coffee and had a great time creating our own tale by playing a game where everyone says one sentence of a story and proceeds in a circular fashion. It will remain one of my favorite Halloween memories ever (right after the time when me and my housemates in college each dressed up as characters from John Carpenter's horrific masterpiece The Thing, pictured here).

I have enjoyed getting to know students from my own college and have recently branched out to make about 1,000 new friends at Jon and Ryan's school as well. After receiving an invitation to come watch some students compete in a karaoke competition, I traveled to the first time last week to the campus of their Financial college. The competition turned out to be a diverse talent show-like operation with singers, dancers, and the occasional magic act thrown in just for the heck of it. Ryan joined the fray by singing Michael Jackson's classic hit, Man in the Mirror and then Jon and I joined him on stage in a collaborative American effort to sing our beloved Oasis song, Wonderwall. Aside from a few falters and lyrical errors, the song went off beautifully. The whole thing felt slightly reminiscent of playing Rock Band and singing the vocals with Jon on the guitar. It was slightly distracting when the students kept coming to the stage and wrapping us with these flamboyant tinsel scarves in the middle of singing but that is one of those things you just don't question. I have uploaded both performances for your viewing pleasure and apologize for the Chinese student who took pictures with the camera while taking the video, he couldn't help himself.





If Halloween turned out to be this much fun I can only imagine what the future holds for the holidays to come. I am slightly concerned at the prospects of finding a turkey here though, we might have to settle for some Peking Duck. Mmmmmhhhh.