January 8th 2011

Hi everybody.

First of all: I wish you a happy, successful new year 2011! It’s been two months since my last email and this time I can report about Christmas and New Years in China. By the way: If I say “in China” I mean here in Changchun where I am staying. I am pretty sure that things might be different e.g. in Beijing or Shanghai.

Compared to Germany you don’t feel Christmas coming in China. There are no trees, no season songs in the shops, no Christmas markets, no special lights, nothing you are used to from Germany. It appeared really strange to me. This changes a bit the last week before Christmas and you can find plastic trees with American style decoration occasionally. Still, Christmas here is not being celebrated and it is really hard to get a Christmassy feeling. Luckily for me, Christmas was on a weekend this year since there are no holidays either. I invited my colleagues and my boss with his family over to celebrate Christmas on the 26^th and show them how it is done. After all I am also a cultural ambassador here! My colleagues helped me to prepare food for everybody (the first time I saw someone cutting open a still living fish to take out the innards). ZhiYong is our main chef, who was secretly making fun of Chinese girls who, according to him, cannot cook (except for really simple things like tomato with egg). I left the cooking to him and prepared a salad. My colleagues obviously didn’t know that one can eat vegetables like an iceberg lettuce in an uncooked state! They seemed to like the result. I also prepared roasted peanuts like on the Christmas Markets (third attempt worked out fine) and as a special treat: hot spiced wine. When I started to heat the wine with all the spices and some slices of orange and apples they thought I was crazy. They didn’t tell me but I could see it in their eyes. However, I think they liked the result. To set the proper mood for our celebration did I buy a plastic Christmas tree and put the picture of a typical nativity set on the TV. Almost like at home. I also played a tape of typical German Christmas songs like “Stille Nacht”, “Oh du fröhliche” and “Ihr Kinderlein kommet”.  After dinner they taught me a Chinese card game called “red 10”. I am still not sure whether I understood the rules. But I know that I won a few times.

 

New year’s in China isn’t celebrated either. The Chinese celebrate Chinese New Year (according to the moon calendar sometimes in January or February) and with it the Spring Festival. At midnight of our New Year there were roughly three rockets and that was it. People also didn’t meet to celebrate but stayed at home. My boss however invited us last week to the German restaurant in Changchun to celebrate. I think he was doing that as a special favor to me. The German restaurant is called “Bratwurst Rösslein” and maintained by a Chinese who has spent several years in Germany. You can get Rostbratwurst, Schweinshaxe, Schnitzel, Weißwürste with sweet mustard, Brezeln, Schweinsbraten with Spätzle, … and of course: German beer (Pyraser Bier, a small brewery in Franconia) which I think was mixed with water to reduce the alcohol level to Chinese standard. The restaurant inside looks like it has been imported from Nuernberg. I took the chance to explain why Weißwürste have to be eaten before the clock strikes noon. I also demonstrated how to build houses from beer mats to my boss’s 4 year old daughter. Like I said: cultural ambassador. After dinner they took me to a Karaoke bar which is something you can find everywhere here. My rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” almost got standing ovations … almost. To me, most Chinese Pop songs sound like German Schlagermusik. Well, it was really funny.

And in other news:

If you come to Changchun you might find banners in Chinese, English and German when entering the Jingyue district. The German one has been translated by yours truly: „Willkommen im Changchun Jingyue Entwicklungsbezirk, Willkommen in der Changchun Jingyue Oekostadt, Staatliches Pilotprojekt für die modern Dienstleistungsindustrie.“ Don’t you like it?

In China people peel grapes before eating them. I’ve never seen that before.

You’ve read about the census going on in China? Everybody is getting registered. Even me! The people with the forms looked a bit worried when they saw me. But together we put my name and birthday in the form. They didn’t even start with the (as I estimated) 200 other questions on the form.

I’ve tasted frog! Not bad, tastes a bit like chicken.

If you want to get money from me, wake me up in the early morning on a Saturday by knocking persistently on my door, talk in Chinese and hand me some tickets which look official. After finishing my sleep I checked the tickets. I might have paid for the waste disposal service. Still not sure …

My foot is almost completely healed. I still have to avoid heavy impact (so still no sports) but I have a very good feeling about it.

Temperatures here right now are between -15 and -20 °C during the day. I do not dare to leave the apartment at night. I cope by wearing several layers of clothing which can still be rendered useless by strong winds sometimes. Employees in restaurants and shops tell you “man zou” – „walk slowly“ when you leave. The temperatures in my apartment are usually around 18-20 °C. They dropped for a few days to 13 °C when I was not using additional electrical heating. The reasons: The cold had frozen the coal for the district heating plants together and they had problems to fire them. Additionally, one of the plants had a little incident with a mouse biting a crucial cable. Don’t tell me this is not funny!

 

The dusty air in Changchun stopped my computer at work. The repairman had to clean the RAM modules before I was able to use it again! This appears to be a common problem here. My colleagues however tell me that the air in Changchun is still much better than that in other places in China like Beijing or Shanghai.

My boss here got robbed. Thieves entered his apartment and took his digital camera and laptop. The police have very little hope to get it back. My boss’s theory is that they know exactly who stole from him but don’t want to risk social disruption. If I understood his theory correctly he thinks they consider it as a social redistribution process done in an act of individual initiative with government toleration. His main argument: when a colleague of his got robbed of his laptop with secret data on it the police got it back in a day. Well, you never know …