MERRY CHRISTMAS POO DING

How Mark Swallow

celebrated the season in darkest China

THERE are 22 Christians in the Yellow Sea port of Weihai, Eastern China. Teaching English there last year, I was the 23rd, and I thought we might all get together on Christmas Day.

So, like an obedient 'Big Nose' in the People's Republic, I telephoned the For- eign Affairs Bureau, that state-imposed substitute for initiative. My conversation with the bureaucrat went as follows: 'I hear there are 22 Christians in Weihai. Would it be possible to meet them at Christmas?'

'In fact there are only eight Christians. The other 14 are Catholics.'

'But they are still Chri .

'And anyway the oldest is over 80 and youngest is nearly 60.'

'I don't mind that.'

'Of course, most of them live in the countryside. They have no activities. They have no installations.'

'I understand all this. But I would still like to meet some Christians on Christmas Day. Are you saying there is no way I can do this?'

'Yes, there is.'

'Yes, there is what?'

'Yes, there is no way.'

Weihai was ruled by the British from 1898 to 1930 and missionaries were active in the region. Sir Reginald Johnston, the last British commissioner, estimated there were about 130 converts — both Protestant and Catholic — in 1910. An ardent Confu- cian himself, he deplored the high-handed Christian assault on traditional beliefs and would have probably applauded the Com- munist bureaucrat's stonewalling of my request.

Nevertheless my students at the Weihai Science and Technology Centre were de- termined to mark the occasion. Anything Western, from break-dancing to Jesus Christ, now has appeal and they duly arranged what they called Afternoon Mer- ry Christmas Party. The baffled directors in their blue Mao suits announced a day's holiday so the Foreign Devil could be entertained.

At eight o'clock on Christmas morning the first event began — the world premiere of a play I had written entitled The Friendly Acupuncturist. Full of civic junk- eting, it was blatant propaganda for the 'friendship link' recently signed between Weihai and Cheltenham Spa. Actors and audience may have been affected on a subliminal level but they did not appear to understand a word. It was an incoherent production. There would be no second night. The play's very few reasonable lines were murdered by my students who beamed throughout, even during the nerve-racking kidnap of the acupuncturist.

A little deflated, I bicycled down to the public baths — Weihai offers hot sulphur springs — to relax before Afternoon Merry Christmas Party. Lying in the scorching water, clouded in thick steam with my fellow bathers' dead skin lapping against my chest, I was warm and invisible. The rest of my life in Weihai being cold and highly scrutinised, I had come to depend on this unhygienic retreat.

Back at home, in the Government Re- ception Building, there was great concern that I was going to miss lunch yet again, concern quite justified because I missed it as much as was possible without imperilling a moderately good relationship with Chef. Today, however, I knew. I would have to face his long-threatened interpretation of a Christmas pudding and I slipped into my seat with some foreboding. Disposing of the usual cabbage and pork fat — on the floor, down my jacket and into my mouth in equal measure — I looked up to see Chef advancing on my little table.

'Poo Ding,' he exclaimed and lowered the cannon-ball of sweet dough, studded with sugary delights and glistening purple against his apron. As I unhappily crammed it into my mouth, Chef knelt in mock prayer, muttering incantations. He was beginning to enact the crucifixion when I excused myself and went up to my room with the remaining Poo Ding.

Working swiftly, I moulded it into a more occidental pudding shape and forced grubby Hong Kong coins into the side. As I finished, a deputation of students ham- mered on the door: I was to come; After- noon Merry Christmas Party would soon happen.

A meeting room had been rearranged and the tables were pushed back against the wall to provide what looked ominously like performing space. Sunflower seeds, apples and teapots were everywhere and the banner overhead read 'Merry Christ- mas Party'. The streamers, tinsel and coloured lights were still up from the previous February's Chinese New Year celebrations.

Class Monitor, a burly young lady who had chosen Kirsty as her English name, ordered students into seats on the outlying tables and then led me on to Table Number One. Here I was joined by the directors of the Science and Technology Centre, still apparently baffled, and some officials of the Foreign Affairs Bureau who looked more at ease (they had presumably re- ceived training for such situations). We greeted each other and began popping sunflower seeds.

As Mistress of Ceremonies, Kirsty began the party by yanking out an especially shy student whom she forced to sing some Chinese dirge. After this it was decided that performances should be in English and the braver students recited great chunks of our textbook. An older classmate (they ranged in age from 18 to 50) sang the first verse of 'Away in a Manger', which he would never have dared to do in less tolerant times, and another juggled badly with two apples. Percy Bacon (assumed English name), a middle-aged eccentric given to sneaking up behind me and shouting 'Shakespeare' very loudly in my ear, delighted us with his one-legged, Christmas tree pose. One of the bureau- crats managed a bit of Peking Opera, which was politely clapped.

By now we had eaten hundreds of sunflower seeds and drunk large amounts of tea. The party was in full swing. My performance had passed quite satisfactori- ly, a mumbled rendering of three lines of 'Jingle Bells' repeated several times, and I felt I could relax a little.

But Kirsty had decided on some disco next, which was certain to involve me since all foreigners are thought nimble in this art. The bureaucrats made a swift exit now — they had seen enough paganism for one day without having to jig to it as well — and I too contemplated escape. But Depu- ty Monitors Numbers Two and Three were flanking me and everyone was drumming their fingers and tapping their feet to Michael Jackson's energetic squeals.

Commanded to perform, I anxiously jerked out some unambitious dance steps, the damp, slimy floor lending them a semblance of fluency, and I slipped the light fantastic, to furious applause, for one whole song. Then, since no one even looked like joining me in my discomfort, I came to a skidding halt at the music machine, turned it off and quickly handed round the Poo Ding as a substitute activity. It went down very well but once swallowed had the immediate effect of destroying all merriment. After a hurried photograph session, the party abruptly ended and most people rushed off.

Eager not to let me feel lonely for a moment — a customary and suffocating aspect of Chinese hospitality — a student called Lincoln led me down to the bumper cars housed in a permanent building on the sea front. Here he had good 'back door' with the operator so we were granted five consecutive rides for free on the deserted rink.

Then I went back to my room to recuperate, tempted even to have a second sulphur bath, but found an invitation pushed under my door: would I attend a Christmas dinner as a guest of the Weihai Municipal Government that very evening?

My Chinese Christmas was happening at such furious speed there was no time to reply and 20 minutes later I was in the back of the government's Toyota, bound for the city's only restaurant, the Weihai Roast Duck. This feast was completed with some pleasant civic junketing, the friendship link being toasted in their lively rice fire-water, so that I was soon enjoying the annual feeling of Christmas excess — with Chinese characteristics.

As I staggered home, I realised I had not paid my daily tribute to Old Wang, the gatekeeper of the Government Reception Building, and so I collapsed into his tiny office/home.

Of course he produced more fire- water, which tempered our usual frus- tration at failing to understand each other's language (I wanted to ask him about snipe-shooting and whoring in Weihai with the British in the Twenties and he wanted to know why there should be hair on my forearms and how it was possible to have such big feet). So we just smiled inanely at each other, toasted the future and when we could not go on I drank one more to the extraordinary, exhausting, excellent hospi- tality of the Weihainese at Christmas.