Wednesday, 24 December 2008

• Christmas in Shanghai

   
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  I am at the clothes market on Christmas Eve, trying hard not to feel foolish. It is difficult because 1) I have terrible Mandarin abilities and 2) I’m really not that interested in buying anything. The vendors believe otherwise, convinced I’m playing games with them. “Come on,” one of them whines, playfully jabbing me in the arm, “the leather on these shoes are high quality! These are totally in fashion! Why won’t you buy it?”

  One of them, upon discovering I’m from America, grabs me by the arm, “Look, it’s Christmas Eve! It’s your holiday! Let me give you a present.” She proceeds to name a price. Ouch, it’s ridiculous.

   — 

  Shanghai, my Dad decides, is a colorless city. “It’s nothing like Spain or France,” he remarks. “Look, it’s all black and grey!” Really, all we can see are winter’s clouds and pollution’s haze. Dad, toting a big digital camera and photographic aspirations to proportion, comes away a bit disappointed. The city compensates at night by wearing a neon quilt for us; its dizzying arrays of lights and colors keeping us warm.

   — 

  Christmas morning enters with a shattering roar; I hear car alarms herald the intruder’s song. Hark! The doormen shiver in their long, trench coats.

  It is business as usual. People walk to and fro. Lights, signs, and brands assault the landscape and the senses. 可口可乐! NOKIA! Somebody, everybody, is shouting something, selling you something, pushing cards and flyers into your face. You learn to find shelter in a steely, forward gaze.

  Somebody has broken into our neighbor’s car; we see the shattered glass as we walk out into the bitter cold. The thief has, however, overlooked a stuffed animal in the back seat.

   — 

  You should see all the plastic Santa figurines, far skinnier than the canonical Coca-Cola Santa, pale-skinned and decked out in red outerwear, on sale at the tourist markets. They wear eerie gazes, plasticky smiles, unnaturally wide grins. I’m not sure how to think about it: is Santa a jolly good fellow, spreading Christmas cheer to the East as an American ambassador?  Or perhaps he’s a cultural hostage, created, altered and marketed in the image of the Chinese? Perhaps he’s the love child of globalization and free trade — born in the West, manufactured in the East and sold to both.

  Whatever. All I know is I can’t look at him. He’s creepy.

   — 

  Xintiandi (新天地) means “New Heaven and Earth” in Chinese, and by the looks of it, Heaven looks like an upscale shopping mall.

  Christmas, my mom says, is largely a Western holiday. “They see it as a time to go shopping.” Sounds like the West.

  But what does Christmas mean to them?

  Salespeople in Santa hats beckon me from tables brimming with scarves and gloves. I wonder if China’s Christmas is a caricature of Christmas in the West, or the other way around.

   — 

  She clenches her teeth and wrests her baby away from the wind’s icy clutches. She’s trapped by construction cranes and chain-link gates. The cold, the cold, she cannot escape. It bleeds through her tattered clothes, her pants are stained with soot. She cannot make eye contact, but bows even lower. Her baby, swathed in a thin jacket, is peacefully asleep.

  What is this place? I cannot sleep. Maranatha.

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