Halloween

I have always loved Halloween. I grew up looking forward to Halloween each year once the leaves started to change their color and I felt that nip in the air. My childhood best friend also loved the holiday and we would spend time dreaming up the best costumes, watching semi-scary movies, carving the best jack-o-lanterns and most importantly, plotting out our dream haunted house. She had a few Halloween parties and since she lived on a farm, hayrides and hay bale mazes were always on the bill. We got older and replaced trick-or-treat with haunted houses complete with guys wielding chainsaws above our heads. Scary, yes. Magical, no. Now that I am an adult, I have to hope for an opportunity to dress up either for a house party or for going out to a bar or club, which to me, just isn’t the same. It seemed more fun as a kid somehow. I confess a couple years have slipped by with no celebration at all, but I still love Halloween. I still dream of the best party I could ever throw. I still hope trick-or-treaters will come to my door. I still carve jack-o-lanterns, setting them outside with an eerie flickering candle inside. Gotta try to keep the magic alive.

The Chinese do not celebrate Halloween, but they do have a ghost culture. Similar to western cultures, ghosts can be good or evil. They are visible to some, but invisible to most. Many ghosts avoid the light, so fires are used to keep them away. Evil ghosts are thought to travel in straight lines, so many paths, such as the bridge at the Yu Yuan Garden in Shanghai, have many bends in them to keep such spirits away. The seventh lunar month, which falls in July, is considered ghost month, a time when ghosts are able to cross back through to our world. So those who believe give offerings to ghosts, many times their own ancestors, but sometimes they also must appease “homeless” ghosts who do not have any living relatives. Sometimes fake money, or “ghost money” is burned to keep the spirits happy.

Since coming here, I have heard that many Chinese people sincerely believe in ghosts and are quite scared of them. Many people on the mainland are now atheist and do not believe in the old traditions of ancestor worship or appeasing angry ghosts. I read that many more people in Taiwan, having left the mainland before Communism and the elimination of many old traditions, kept the old ways alive, many of them fully believing in ghosts.

I am fascinated by this. Generally I am not superstitious. I do, however, love a good ghost story, a tale of the unexplained by someone who swears to its happening. The only weird thing that ever happened to me was that a lamp went off a few seconds before I reached the dial. I chalked it up to something electrical, but had fun thinking of it as a sign of a meddling spirit. If I were truly superstitious, the house I grew up in was prime territory for potential ghosts. One segment of the house is over 100 years old, existing in the days when the canal still ran through Groveport. Some say the house was the ice house on the canal, selling ice chunks to the passing boats. Others say that it used to be the town jail. If that isn’t fodder for some spooky stories of lingering ghosts, I don’t know what is. Did I mention that the town cemetery is across the street? Childhood games of “Ghost in the Graveyard” played in my front yard had a little more punch, the looming tombstones dimly glowing in the pale orange flood lights just yards away.

Despite grim prospects for any sort of Halloween this year aside from my carved baking pumpkin and some imported Halloween Peeps in the shape of ghosts, I was pleasantly surprised with an opportunity to sneak in some festive fun. An American we met here, Mike, and his Chinese wife, Vicky, have started an English school in Jining. They invited us to come to their Halloween celebration. So, with last year's costume props in tow, David and I came to help. They had trick-or-treating, a costume fashion show, games, decorations, and a haunted house! They turned one of the classrooms in the small school into a haunted house complete with cobwebs, spooky music, and the required costumed performers jumping out at every turn. And this is how I learned first hand how scared Chinese people are of ghosts, because I volunteered to be one of the ghouls. Armed with a spooky mask and a good hiding spot, I scared the pants off of young children and parents alike. I tried not to scare them too badly, but in truth, some people did not make it through the whole house, opting to turn back. But they all seemed to be laughing once they came out, so I felt confident no one was going to have nightmares that night.

It felt really good to have helped a handful of kids in a small corner of China experience a little Halloween fun. I have realized that many holidays are simply much more exciting and magical when there are kids around. I certainly enjoyed my Halloween this year, as they gave me a good excuse to pretend to believe in spooks for an evening, helping me to keep my inner child alive and kicking for yet another year.

If you would like to read more about the belief in ghosts in Taiwan, check out this article.

Up Down Up Down...

The past two weeks: classic China experience, in the sense that it was filled with random experiences spanning the entire range of human emotions. Just another mini Shanghai thrill ride. This one starts with Halloween.

Up to mischief (or the day David let me give him temporary tattoos)

I had decided that I wanted to celebrate Halloween this year. I love Halloween, and I didn’t do much for it last year. So, with the promise of plenty of places to get our spook on, I brought the idea up to friends and David and everyone seemed game. So Kellie and I set out to find a rare costume shop to get a few costume pieces. She needed a costume, David needed one, Sanami just wanted some animal ears, and I was undecided as to whether to be a pirate, as I already had a striped shirt and boots.

First, let it be stated that Kellie and I had the “This Is Harder Than It Should Be” blues, as getting to said costume/decoration shop took nothing short of a miracle. ("Miracle" here means running into an acquaintance, chatting about the abandoned blow-up doll spread over the bushes in front of us near the subway, and getting some much better directions in the process.) Anyway, we made it, we found stuff for everyone even though the store was pretty cheesy and we made it back home in one piece.

"A pirate, a lady bug, a tiger and a biker walk into a bar…"

The night went well. We met another friend of mine and his crew at a British pub. They left a little past midnight, (on to “greener”, um, graveyards?) but we stayed there the rest of the night, throwing back some pretty generous portions of wine and Duvel (which means devil in…oh heck, I don’t remember what language). We stayed until closing time. I saw parts of Rocky Horror Picture Show that I hadn’t seen since I was 16 hanging out with the theater kids. The bar tender gave us a free round. We had a great time. However, I think in the future, I will abstain from drinking with the Devil. I’ll leave it at that.

Rock Bottom

After a care free night like that, the next morning was in stark contrast. One text message changed everything. I will not get into too many details, as it is long, involved and not my business to spread around, but a situation at David’s work came to a head Saturday morning and it was not the hoped for outcome. It was a situation David felt partly responsible for and there was a great sense of wrongdoings on the company's part going on. So, we felt pretty crappy the rest of the weekend, mulling it over. Feeling like something needs to be done to fix a situation, but not feeling like you have any power to change it is a hard thing to go through. David is a man of morals, and it just felt very wrong to him, like the type of situation where someone needs to stand up for what is right. To cut to the resolution, things were more complicated than we realized at first and the “victim” turned out to be dealing quite well with it. Just another example of how it’s virtually impossible to truly understand what is going on here. All we can do is trust our gut, and things still feel sour in regards to the powers that be, but the storming of the Death Star has at least been put on hold, with no immediate need to stand up against the empire for the sake of the people. (Yes, I AM making that a bit more dramatic than it needs to be. I just liked the image.) In conclusion, things are fine, for now. For all my worrywarts out there, don’t. Apologies for the vagueness, but we’re fine.

Up, up and away!

So, with that mostly behind us, we were able to concentrate on plans to take a real-live vacation. Sweet! So for the past week and a half I’ve been planning our trip to some islands in Thailand! The key words when deciding where to go were “nature,” “clean,” and “quiet.” Sounds like some islands in beautiful, blue water to me. Ah! But there's a catch! However relaxing this place will be once we’re there, it’s been less than simple trying to make the plans.

In a snapshot:

“How much did you say?!”
“No, no the red eye is NOT what we want.”
“We can’t pay with a credit card? You need CASH?”
“Password tries allotment exceeded” (This is the ATM talking, and it can be translated as "Stick that card in one more time and I'll shred the sucker!")
“Your requested transaction was rejected. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience. Again."

The booking gods hate me...

Hopefully, the results of my Thailand story will turn out way better than the beginning. At least we have all our plane tickets now, so we’re getting there at least! We leave this Saturday and we’ll be there for a week!

Down a peg

To give I. M. Nervous and Nelly another dose of adrenaline on another dip in this roller coaster ride, I hereby admit a blunder. I almost got robbed last Friday. Yeah, I know. It was partly my fault. Funny things happen to one’s well-honed paranoia when you actually live in a foreign country, in a city known to be quite safe. Luckily for me, a very nice Chinese girl told the dudes getting into my backpack that it was not a good thing to do because I was a foreigner. I wondered afterward if she would have stopped them if I had been Chinese… But regardless, after checking and seeing that the two small pockets on the bag were wide open with my money still inside, I thanked her profusely, swallowed my pride as she told me to be careful, and scampered off to the grocery store, hoping the would-be pick-pockets were not watching me. It was a very creepy feeling. Consider my paranoia back in fighting form.

Upside down

Amongst all this, we have had some nice dinners with friends, meeting friends of friends, checking out cozy little bars and maybe sneaking in a guilty-pleasure stop at McDonald’s. I discovered just how valuable public restrooms are after a long, painful, somewhat panicked walk back to the apartment a few days ago. I also soaked in some more local culture, wandering around Chinese neighborhoods with Sanami after a good Chinese meal in a hole in the wall shop one night last week. I was reacquainted with the wild and crazy world that exists outside the normal expat circuit: fruit and nut stands, food streets with piles of oyster shells and fake shoes and neon lights, a man selling rods of sugar cane on the corner…the usual.

This place is a lot of things, but "boring" is definitely not one of them!