Christmas in Xinxiang

Christmas in Xinxiang

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Xinxiang. Trips downtown over the past two weekends have revealed some evidence of capitalist Christmas in Xinxiang, something totally unheard of in years past. Of course, it all has to do with promoting shopping. A couple of stores have life-size Santas in the windows and one of them is playing a sax out in front of the store as Jingle Bells wanders into the street from somewhere inside. Of course, the stores with this Christmas hype are the more upscale places, where both customers and owners alike are just looking for one more excuse to buy and sell. In the biggest stores, all of the check out and sales staff, virtually all young women, are wearing red elf or Santa hats or whatever. I've seen literally hundreds of them in the past week or so. There was even one comely young woman totally in red velvet with a mock ermine trim cape at one sales station, and I was wondering what was so special about her get-up until she turned around and I saw Coca Cola embroidered in white across the back of the cape. Many other downtown stores have snow flakes, tinsel, streamers, trees and Santa faces taped to the windows.

In fact, the Christmas spirit has belatedly migrated from downtown to other parts of the city. Even our local department store, the Star Market (the title appears in both English and Chinese), has its clerks wearing Christmas caps, though these young (and not so young) ladies are less dolled up than their downtown counterparts. The neighborhood store even has a scrawny plastic Christmas tree right inside the entrance. The campus guest house next door also has fancy Santa faces taped to the restaurant doors with "Xmas" across Santa's chubby face and beard. A nice touch. I was out for a walk the other day and saw that one of the local internet bars also had Santa faces taped to its doors. Old Saint Nick's likeness happened to be right under the sign that said "No admittance to those under 18 years of age." Good advice for those venturing into capitalist Christmas. Caveat emptor.

For sure the biggest displays were at the city's biggest department store, Pang Dong Lai (胖东来). This store has everything you could expect to buy before Christmas in the upscale shopping districts of the Twin Cities except it's just more concentrated due to the fact that the number of people who can afford such stuff is smaller. There are Hong Kong jewelers, French wines (Bordeaux for about $25 US—I passed), European watches and plenty of brand name clothes. In the basement one can find a lavish food store with many fancy things hard to get elsewhere. It very much reminded me of similar places in Kobe or Taipei complete with an extensive food court. It's the one place where we can get nice western style bread and butter as well. There are sweepers and moppers constantly moving around in the crowds getting up every bit of trash and every stain from the highly polished floors. Target managers would be envious.

The characters in the name of Pang Dong Lai literally mean 'fat' 'east' 'come,' "Fatness Comes to the East," referring to the idea, I would guess, that China—the heart of the East—has arrived. Fat city is here, at least for some. How appropriate to connect it with Christmas, the ultimate fat city for sellers around the world and now for China as well.

A few days ago the local newspaper had an interesting article on the phenomenon of Christmas decoration shopping. They quoted one "happy" manager, who reported that the sales of Christmas items are going up every year. "Christmas is getting closer to the common people (老百姓) every year," he said. He noted that it used to be only stores that that bought Christmas decorations, but now average people are also buying them up. The place was hopping with people who were "wondering if this Santa sings or how many snowflakes are in that package." About half the article talked about how most of the Christmas articles were shoddy or even potentially toxic without indications of who made them or where they were made—Disney toys from Haiti perhaps!? In any case the reporter indicated that these issues were not of concern to the enthusiastic shoppers s/he spoke to.

Needless to say there are no religious items or themes in evidence, not because China is a godless communist country, but more likely just because there's no money to be made in selling them. But that day may not be far off.

On a personal note, this is not my first Christmas in China, but maybe because there's just one other American working here or just because we are thousands of miles from the hard core source of Christmas hype, I seem totally unaffected by it. We're far from family and the 25th is just another work day and my stacks of essays are even higher as the semester draws to a close in two weeks—not much time for the holiday spirit. Anyway, on the bright side, there are still 367 shopping days till Christmas of 2008. Happy Holidays!