After a Christmas weekend filled with festive parties and rich food (along with seemingly endless rounds of dishwashing), Ruth and I made the natural choice tonight – we went out to a restaurant. A Chinese restaurant, of course.

Christmas in Lanzhou has been full of surprises. The first was the appearance of holiday merchandise early in December. The supermarket Santa whose picture I snapped was animated and sang Christmas ballads, in English, in a Bing Crosby-esque voice. The cashiers in that same supermarket were already wearing their red and white stocking caps, and it wasn’t long before tinsel appeared everywhere and Old Saint Nick smiled from every shop window. On the other hand, Ruth and I eventually gave up our quest to buy nativity figures. There were none to be had, even with the help of our best local detectives.



I had missed mass on the fourth Sunday of Advent, so I was unprepared for what awaited me when I turned the corner toward church on Christmas morning. The courtyard from a distance looked like a cross between an Olympic village and the grand opening of a car dealership. As we entered the courtyard . . . well, I’ll let the photos do their job. The creche was tucked away behind the tree.

























Inside the church, the creche occupied one corner of the nave. It wore a giant canopy ablaze with flashing Christmas tree lights. The nativity scene itself was delightfully, childishly out of scale with itself and its surroundings. Rae and I joined others kneeling on a strip of carpet before the Christ child. Later, as we took our seats, we saw that the church was lavishly decorated with tinsel garland, the windows filled with dozens of Santa decorations. "Oh, look!" Rae whispered to me, giggling, "Santa is giving Bambi a gift right beside the fourth Station of the Cross!"


The Bishop was present, and baptized a large group a adults during the mass. I took advantage of the luxury of being a foreigner in China – one can act weird and automatically be excused. So I wandered up to the front and joined the group of children who had gone to get a closer look. The
Bishop intoned the name of the each candidate three times before pronouncing the words of baptism and pouring the holy water from a pitcher. The congregation applauded loudly, despite the fact that most of us wore gloves or mittens in the unheated church. Questions of style aside, the celebration of Jesus’ birth, and delight in the growing numbers of Christians, is wonderful.


Our colleagues and students have all been enormously enthusiastic about Christmas. One day last week the English Department treated us to an afternoon of karaoke followed by a lavish dinner. I have received many cards and phone greetings – my favorite was a group of second-years who sang to me over the phone on Christmas eve. They then merrily demanded that I greet them in Chinese. The only thing I could muster was, "Wo ai nimen!" (I love you all!)
I knew for certain that Christ is alive and well in China last Thursday afternoon, when I met my adult students at our extension campus. These are middle school teachers, married adults, who are returning to university to get their bachelor’s degrees. They were poor people before they came back to school full time! So you can imagine how moved I was when they presented me with a beautiful mother-of-pearl necklace, a gift from the class. In the midst of review for the final exam, one of the students slipped out and came back with a sack of hot roasted chestnuts for me – another extravagance. Almost embarrassing. Later I trudged through the frosty twilight to the university bus, clutching my gift and my fragrant sack of chestnuts, humbled by the generosity of these impoverished teachers. As usual, my Chinese colleagues were waiting at the bus stop, stamping their feet against the cold, laughing and joking in the warm circle of familiarity that never includes me. But this day I had a sack of roasted nuts to share, and for a brief bus ride, I became part of the circle. They seemed grateful not only for the treat, but for the welcome news that the "foreign teacher" is, in fact, a real human being. I still don’t know enough Chinese to understand their jokes, but God’s grace transcends language.