Apples for Christmas

Christmas has come and gone. It is increasingly a big deal in China, since there are more than 100m Christians here, and lots of commercial drive. This year was the first year I was swept up by the apples for Christmas craze. I think its a smart move by some apple farmers to create a link to Christmas. Everyone in our department got a few apples as a gift and there was as many messages on social media featuring apples as there were Christmas trees.

The tenuous link is as follows: Christmas eve is known as the silent night in China (I'm not sure where this comes from, apart from the hymn, silent night), as I'd never heard of Christmas eve being anything other than Christmas eve. The word for peaceful (close to silent) is "ping an" and since the word for apple is similar (ping guo), everyone now gives apples to each other on Christmas eve. So there you have it. Amusingly last week at one of Shenzhen's shopping malls the image accompanying the giant Happy Christmas sign was one of Pink Panther. I wonder where that came from? Maybe he is going to take over Father Christmas (and his saxophone, a Chinese peculiarity) sometime?

China is typically full of these kinds of word plays, with some fantastic puns. Well it was full of word plays. Now the government has banned puns, because people are using them to insult the government as well as get around censorship. Its quite amusing that at the same time as they are trying to downplay Christmas (they don't like religion much, and they are not too happy with Chinese people going crazy over western festivals) they are also trying to crack down on Chinese culture too. Well its all part of a strange atmosphere in China's political and media sphere linked to power and corruption that seems to continually be getting worse. Thankfully Putin is a few steps ahead of China in Russia so China does not seem so bad in comparison!

Come the end of the year, it is the usual time to open new subway lines in Beijing, with around 4 opening or being extended, including a new station opening near our house, though unfortunately one of the two lines that should go from the station has not been finished yet, and so they we'd need to wait several months for that (rather useful) line to go the extra two stations to us. And the other line, that will be open, is not going to have an interchange at a different line nearby because it is predicted to be too busy and thus dangerous. Oh well, we can get over the disappointment anyway so we don't really live there anymore anyway - the date has been set for Andrea to move out of the Beijing apartment at the end of January. I'll go back for the New Year one last time.

One of the benefits of Hannah being at kindergarten the last few months has been the acquisition of new friends. It will be a shame she will have to make new friends once she moves down, just as this has happened, but hopefully it will be ok. I expect we'll get quite a few tantrums about wanting to see Wanwan or Ciongciong or someone else for a short while.

Yesterday i called our nanny to confirm the dates Andrea is leaving Beijing, and thus her last day working for us. We'd already told her a few months ago this would happen, and for her, with us being at least her 3rd or 4th family, she's done this before, but for us it is the first time. To have someone look after your children and be in your home 10 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 3 years and then never see them again is fairly emotional. Well it was for me. I'll hopefully get to see her when I am in Beijing next week one last time, but there is only so much "thank you" can express.

Meanwhile Shenzhen's between 10 and 20 degrees, and occasionally wet. I suppose its preferable to Beijing's weather of between -4 and +9, but at least its dry there and there is heating inside. In Shenzhen I've not bothered using the air condition's heat setting to heat things up, and its just about ok. When we move things down from Beijing we'll also move down our two portable radiators, though by late February they might not be needed any more.