Boxing Day 2015             0030

So Christmas eve wasn’t  celebrated in western style. So what?

Dumpling had invited me to a dumpling event in a classroom (yes I know, Dumpling and dumplings!) and I stupidly thought it would be a few students and that was it. No matter how old you are and how experienced in your environment you can always be surprised or look a complete idiot.

I prefer to think I fell into the first category when I found the entire class manufacturing dumplings ready for boiling on my equipment and I think a Chinese teachers as well. Hmmm, this was bigger than I was informed - the giveaway was the balloons taped outside the classroom door!

Not realising it was a full-blown do I never took the camera but suffice to say everyone ate dumplings. I will not be so unkind as to say they were shit because they weren’t, they were quite simply bland but none of them had made dumplings in their lives before and probably never cooked anything either. If only they had consulted me, I am no expert and Michelin will never even offer me a half a star but I do have the stuff that could have made all the difference to the taste.

A good evening nonetheless. Even though at the end I think one of the games was engineered so that I lost and had to sing a song!

Christmas morning as you well know it was sick kids in hospital duty.

Flipping heck, we were given a room on the fifth floor and had to climb the stairs to the seventh floor to the children’s ward. Why? So the TV crew could film on the way up!

Fine, Santa actually didn’t even get out of breath and then I, my six elves (requested green and red elf outfits somehow having been transformed into mini Santas!!!)  entered the children’s wing.

Ho ho ho and all that and great to see the look on parents and grandparents faces as we entered, let alone the children. With TV crew preceding us and a journalist from the local paper present, after previous media exposure I must say it was easy to forget they were there so I have no idea what footage will be shown and if the Grinch  doesn’t like then great.

Somehow I think yesterday we only got to see kids with very minor ailments, we were barred from one room with really ill children (and rightly so although I did make sure gifts were left with the nurses for them if and hen they felt better) but although it was hard work it was worth it. All I can ask is that I hope some little Chinese children will remember being ill and Santa visiting and giving them a balloon and a gift box.

All credit must go to Sally at the foreign affairs bureau of the city because without her it could never have happened. And of course to my six helpers. I never had a Christmas morning before where I felt I was doing so much good apart from the time I took a war veteran to see his wife in a hospice.

Afterwards of course the TV station wanted an interview but I needed a few minutes to cool off. The air-conditioning was on so as luck would have it the temperature was mild (it’s been frigging freezing of late) Plus I wanted a few puffs. Once the costume was off I started to cool down and so then came the dilemma - who did I grant interview tine to first? TV or paper?

I threw it open - I know enough about China now to never make a decision when others can do it for you. TV won and as it happens it was the right result because the guy from the paper came to the lunch afterwards. Everyone (I hope) happy.

I am happy. I think everyone today was a star and I think we did some good instead of the Me Me ME! culture that has derived over the years. Stuff that, I’m an agnostic but sometimes it just seems right to do something for those less fortunate.

I managed to get precisely one hour of sleep later ( reminding me why I hate taking naps because it is better to feel shit once a day rather than twice) and then it was off to the number 7 bus to at least get close to our restaurant for Christmas dinner.

Well the number 7 NEVER has any more than half a dozen people waiting at the west gate and remember - Christmas is NOT celebrated in China. I have never seen so many students waiting. And of course when the bus stopped, I am not so fleet of foot as once perhaps I was, I ended up being one the last in the  queue to board. My comment to Joan. Andrei and Juliette was that if I didn’t get a seat I would drag a student out of one. I didn’t need to because a girl very kindly offered me her seat. They were going Lord only knows where but it was standing room only already at the first stop.

Next stop was the outside the supermarket.

You know that scene in Poseidon Adventure when Capt Leslie Nielsen looks through his binoculars, says Oh my God, hard RIGHT!??

Well on a smaller scale that was pretty much it. Never in five years have I seen the number seven crammed to overcapacity on the outbound journey but Jesus the driver couldn’t stop to pick up anyone thereafter. Apparently they were all going to Baihe park for something.

Our Christmas dinner?  One of the most expensive I have had in China!

For four the equivalent of £80.

But.

Andrei and Juliette did get a bottle of Johnnie Walker black label (and tit for tat I had Jacobs  Creek) so the food itself would have been reasonably priced.

Suckling pig as advertised previously, baby squid with veg, something the others ordered with cabbage and sturgeon Juliette selected for execution from the live tank. I hope she can sleep tonight knowing that had she not, tomorrow it would die anyway!

Oh, and they had fresh oysters.

I bloody love oysters and could have eaten a dozen and called that my Christmas dinner, I didn’t. We ordered one apiece. Joan had never had one. We had to prevent the restaurant from cooking them (which would have been a travesty in my eyes) and simply asked them to shuck them and give us some lemon.

Bloody hell, I wish I HAD ordered a dozen! Really nice oyster but then Joan sat toying with it with chopsticks. Oysters with chopstsicks? No.

She was encouraged to just “drink” it from  the shell and then I would tell her what it was.

Ok, she took half and chewed it and to her credit finished the rest. Then I told her it was still alive. I’m not quite sure from her reaction to that as to what she thought! To be honest, I could still have ordered a dozen more for myself.

So a damned busy day for myself considering it was Christmas day and one I will not forget.

More importantly I hope some sick children in Chizhou Number One Peoples’ Hospital never forget the day Santa visited.