Last Christmas,.....

Although we`re not that much in all this Christmas Mumbo Jumbo, we`ve decided to invite guests this year to compensate our being far from home, families and friends. And the clubs or bars for the After-Mumbo Jumbo.

In my girlfriend`s company about a dozen of her Chinese co-workers sacrifice half their lunch break every workday to meet and build up a DIY (or TeachIY)-german class, with one of them having lived in Germany for two years being their teacher.

Everybody knowing what role food is playing in Chinese culture ("Eating is the heaven of the simple man") can understand how big the sacrifice is these guys take.

As we`ve been out with them for Karaoke and Dinner before, we knew they were a lively bunch of wonderful and nice people hanging out with would be fun . So my girlfriend invited them, ten came, two bringing their children.

A few days before Christmas invitations made by the Chinese circulated through the company`s intranet, speaking of "exclusive outfits and masks welcome". Well, we didn`t bother much explaining that this is a different celebration a couple of months later, we weren`t planning a contemplative evening anyway.

What we had to put some thought in was what we`d serve for dinner, as of course the menu should be as german - or at least european - as possible.

For the food selection we were lucky in two ways - local short supply routes and support from Germany. With Ikea, Metro, Carrefour and Walmart all within 20 minutes walking distance as well as having received a 5 kg Christmas package from my girlfriends` parents we were able to provide German chocolats, lebkuchen and almond biscuits as traditional Christmas sweets for decoration and to shorten waiting spans. For dinner we offered Köttbullar (yes, from Ikea) with sauce chasseur, mashed potatoes, self-made red cabbage, salad and pudding as dessert (made from instant powder, I must admit, but as you hardly get that in China it was exclusive enough :-)

But dinner was just a tiny part of the eclectic Christmas Eve programme. When you invite Chinese people over, you should have that -  a programme, that is, a plan, a schedule what you`re about to do in the time you spend together. There`s seldom a mere casual "hanging out" - Chinese guests want to be entertained.

So we started in the afternoon with jointly decorating our Christmas tree - a 2m plastic fir from Carrefour.

What became a rather short activity as a dozen Chinese scurrying around a tree left it fully decorated less than five minutes later :-)

After that came the first highlight - we asked them to prepare "O Christmas tree" in German two weeks before, and they did. One of them even could play it on our piano (yes, we have a piano in our living room like every sophisticated burgeois is supposed to. The previous tenants left it there. Of course we ourselves can`t play a single note.)

So we had twelve Chinese standing in our living room singing "Oh Christmas tree" in German. Fantastic. Made a short video of it, just follow the link:

http://bit.ly/uRYKpR


As I already mentioned, I´m actually not that much into Christmas, maybe because I´m coming from a rather small non-religious family where Christmas never was that big a deal, and we never really sang songs. So this Chinese-German Christmas choir become my maybe most remarkable Christmas experience so far.

So far away from home - weird.

After that we exchanged gifts - as we had prepared one for everyone I put on a Santa costume (30 RMB at Metro :-) ) and gave them out. Was fun. Unfortunately (or luckily?) we have no picture of that yet, as Santa had no time taking pictures while handing out gifts. Maybe I´ll add a picture here when we`ve exchanged photos with the Chinese, as they made plenty.

After dinner we went on with playing games, like a mixture of charade and Chinese whispers (funny that`s it`s actually called like that, for Germans: "Stille Post"), which wasn`t that easy because there were mainly 成语 "chengyu" to guess, Chinese four character sayings. There are hundreds, if not thousands of them, and Chinese kids learn them in school, but they`re not necessary in everyday Chinese, so as a foreigner you mostly only know a few, if any. Still was a lot of fun, as they performed wery lively. Although most of the time I had no idea what they performed.

 This liveliness and action went on as we started playing "chocolate eating" - a game I´ve played last when I was a child, but as our Chinese guests haven`t had heard of it, it was time to refresh some childhood memories. For anybody not knowing the rules, they´re simple. You wrap a chocolate in several layers of newspaper. Goal is to eat as much of that chocolate as possible. You roll a dice. If you don`t roll a six, you pass on. If you roll a six, you can start unwrapping and eating the chocolate until the next person rolls a six. Of course you have to be fully equipped for chocolate eating - by putting on a winter cap, a scarf, and gloves. And you have to unwrap and eat the chocolate with fork and knife.....

It was a great success, as was the whole evening who went on for a couple of hours more with more games,games,games, later on also inluding loads of beer. We got so much out of it, co-workers became friends, we had tons of fun and everybody got opportunities to improve the languages they`re learning. Christmas 2011 is over, but it was an awesome one - the memories will stick.