Halloween in China

Walking across campus toward CDMU’s massive lecture hall, I hear Backstreet Boys’ “I Want it That Way” booming from a glowing classroom three floors up. I cringe, I smile, I know that must be the room I’m headed for, where the university’s English Club meets. Ask any student what their favorite kind of music is, they’ll respond, “gentle.” Jason and I gave a riveting performance about the joys of Halloween in the United States. Perhaps the only thing that stuck was trick-or-treating, but that’s the most important part, anyway.

After nearly two weeks of Halloween-oriented lesson plans and side gigs like our Backstreet Boys-infused night with the English Club, I have this to say about Americans who celebrate Halloween. What the heck is wrong with you? Seriously. Try explaining a holiday that glorifies gory murder, or why we scare children by telling them the bogeyman is hiding under their bed, or in their closet, or whatever. Explain to someone why you craft fake spider webs out of cotton balls to decorate your front porch. Define the words “slime,” “corpse,” “monster,” “vampire,” and “skull.” Do this upwards of ten times with a group of students who prefer the gentle croon of Nick Carter over any other musician ever, and you will start to feel like Satan himself, will begin to wonder how your culture became so twisted. I’m just happy we showed them The Nightmare Before Christmas instead of a more age-appropriate Halloween flick, like Saw or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They squealed and averted their eyes when the animated bogeyman died.

Halloween night, we found a KTV (karaoke bar) that was actually decorated for Halloween—the workers had great costumes and kept coming into our room to take pictures with us. I dressed as Mother Nature. Easily assembled with a flower-print dress and some leaves from the streets, it was neither the best nor the worst costume I’ve produced. It did become the most ironic costume I’ve worn, because on Halloween night the Chinese Weather Manipulation Gods created a massive snowstorm that dumped 16 million tons of snow on Beijing. A few flurries from the snow massacre drifted this way. Mother Nature was not involved, unless her weeping added to the poundage.

On an unrelated note, just in case you’re worried that I might be morphing into some sort of responsible adult now that I’ve been a college graduate for six months, take heart: This week I was locked out of my apartment for 24 hours due to a series of events that involved my own irresponsibility, Jason’s keys mysteriously disappearing days before, and our foreign affairs officer handing me a pile of six keys on an interesting mix of key chains that ranged from a shoestring to “I Love Minnesota,” none of which ended up being for my apartment. The saga culminated with someone making a run to campus, 30 minutes outside the city, around 10:00 p.m., and finally giving the correct spare key to a teacher who lives in my building.

My novel is up to 10,342 rambling words.