Halloween in China

Happy belated Halloween!

Although Halloween is not a holiday celebrated in China, I certainly got my Halloween fix here. The week leading up to Halloween I gave a special Halloween lesson in all of my classes to explain the traditions of the holiday in America. For the classes that have projectors I was able to show a powerpoint with pictures to explain what witches, ghosts, candy corn, corn mazes, etc are. For the other classes I had to be more creative in my explanations. Fortunately American movies and TV shows are very popular in China. So between Twilight, Harry Potter, and the Vampire Diaries, explaining traditional Halloween costumes was actually pretty easy. I was surprised to find that most of my students watch the AMC series The Walking Dead--a post-apocalyptic zombie series that takes place in Atlanta. When I told my first class that zombies are dead people that walk, one student said, 'you mean like the walking dead'. At least one student in each of my classes had seen the TV series, but because it never uses the term zombie, none of them had ever heard the word before.

On Saturday I went into the City for an expat Halloween party/buffet. The event was hosted by Xianease, an expat magazine for Xi'an. It took place at a very nice Italian restaurant, the first I've seen in China, and cost 75RMB for the buffet. Unfortunately the event was underwhelming. Only about 30 people attended the event, and that includes Chinese nationals. The 'buffet' was only hors d'oeuvres and a few pizzas that we discovered hidden in the corner of the room. The highlight of the night was pumpkin carving, which was worth the 75RMB in itself.

I forgot how messy pumpkin carving is...

...or how dangerous carving pumpkins is with dull knives in a dark room

My Jack-o-lantern

Here's a shot for the Xianease magazine

On Monday the foreign teachers and I threw a Halloween party for our students. We each contributed 100RMB ($16) a piece for decorations and food. We were able to convince the manager of a local bar to let us use his space to host the event. The alternative was a classroom which lacks the sound system, dance floor, colored lights, and fog machine necessary to throw a real Halloween party. We told our students that we would provide candy and refreshments for free, but they had to wear a Halloween costume. Turn out was great. We had more than 100 students attending and about 90% wore costumes.

The one holding the bamboo is a panda

Waitresses at the bar

Chinese Princess, Burglar, Vampire

Vampire

I recognize that panda from somewhere

One of my students told me this was her first time dancing in public

It wouldn't be Halloween in Asia without at least one Anime character