OCTOBER 31, 2007
I thought it might interest my readers to know how Halloween is celebrated in Shanghai. Halloween is something recently brought to the Orient via American expats, but being that the Shanghaiese would be loathe to relax their grip on their mercenary ways, Shanghai has found numerous ways to exploit the wish of most expats to provide the Halloween experience to their offspring.
In a number of ways, Halloween merchandising is similar to that back home in the states. The department stores are full of ready made costumes, with an abundance of Disney character "princess" type dresses filling their racks. What I didn't find quite so much were the cardboard displays of large bags of candy which back home seem to come out around mid-September tempting us sugar addicts to buy early and often. This could be due to the fact that sugar (and therefore, candy) is still a more recent taste developed by the Chinese .... but they are catching up very quickly!! The Chinese have not perfected the art of chocolate making, and for the most part, the only chocolate worth purchasing here is exported and expensive.
At the inquiry of some of my expat lady friends who have kids, the management here at Yanlord put their collective brains together to make a Halloween celebration for the children of the compound. Postings announced that there would be a puppet and marionette show at 7:00 on October 30 (OK, they were a day off, but close enough), and anyone wishing to participate in the trick or treat portion of the evening could collect a blue sticker to place on your mailbox (located in the lobby of each building) to indicate that you'd be happy to have hungry goblins visit your apartment to collect a treat. Seemed like a pretty good plan.
With Randy still working in Brazil, I pondered the idea of passing out Halloween treats by myself here from the apartment. I hadn't a clue as to how many goblins (or is it gobblers?) to expect, and the price of candy is still somewhat cost prohibitive here. I was sort of leaning against the entire idea, when Suely, my daily walking partner, invited me to her apartment for a pizza party prior to the show. The plan was for 4 other moms to bring their costumed kids over for dinner, and take advantage of the Melrose Pizza 2 for 1 on Tuesdays deal. This seemed a pretty good alternative for me. I walked to a local market and picked up one small box of chocolate cookies for each child and a bottle of red for the moms, happy about the fact that I wouldn't have to miss all the festivities.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite seasonal activities. I have many fond memories of trick or treating with my brother and cousins in the small village where my grandparents resided when I was young, and it made me homesick to think about all the fun I would be missing back home. Back in the states, I LOVE lighting jack-o-lanterns, passing out the treats myself, and seeing all the kids in their costumes, and I lamented that I'd be missing all of that this year. The pizza party invitation was a fair compromise, and I was looking forward to providing the treats that I'd purchased.
Pizza was a nice treat, although I have to say that we have still not found a particularly satisfying pizza here in Shanghai. Pizza here normally has very little sauce, and what little there is normally comes closer to tomato soup. But one learns to make do here (as previous posts have reported, we're hardly starving), and kids are not terribly difficult to please when it comes to pizza. All the children were loud and excited about the evening, and we had no less than three princesses on hand bedecked in long pink dresses and twinkling tiaras, as well as a Darth Vadar and a Spiderman. My friend Toni managed to come up with a grass skirt and flower leis to don over her jeans and was appropriately festive in her get-up.
I have to say that I was amazed at the number of people gathered for the show on the steps of the plaza in front of the management building. A dark green velvet curtain about 4 feet high had been erected across the top step and provided a screen for the puppeteers, and large spotlights lit the "stage" area as well as a small table selling beverages. As you might expect, the children were loud and riotous with excitement, and parents and ayis were having a difficult time keeping a handle on their children who seemed to be already experiencing sugar buzz even prior to the trick or treating.
I had to laugh about some of the costumes. There were the traditional pirates, superheroes, fairies and princesses, as well as wizards, witches, and a devil or two. But the Asians are somewhat new to the Halloween game and some didn't quite have the gist of the costume idea. I saw one little girl wearing a red dress, a pink cape under white fairy wings with black boots, red flashing devil horns, and whiskers drawn on her face. I couldn't have guessed what she was meant to be, but I have to give kudos to the parents .... they pulled out all the stops for their little cherub!! There was a clever costume of a child with his or her father's overcoat worn over some sort of frame giving the appearance of a headless man walking about (somewhat reminiscent of the character from the performance of Cirque du Soleil we'd seen this summer ... maybe that's where they got the idea).
The show was cute, but in Mandarin, and the performers struggled to hold the attention of the children, most of whom were simply itching to get on with the trick or treating portion of the evening. I ran into Erica, an American friend who was looking for her son, Grant. She was clearly at the end of her rope already, and was ready to bag the whole evening. Luckily, "Batman" was located and collared fairly quickly.
After nearly an hour of the show, I was getting chilled and felt that the remainder of the evening could probably proceed without my supervision, so I headed home. I could very clearly hear the shouts and squeals of the children as they began their travels from one building to the next filling their plastic pumpkins and baskets.
During our walk this morning, Suely reported on the trick or treat portion of the evening. Apparently, it was decided that the entire group of children and parents should travel en masse from one building to the next. This group totaled several hundred individuals! Each building has two elevators which can hold up to approximately 10 people, so as you can imagine, this was something of a nightmare trying get all the children up and down to the indicated apartments and back into the lobby to wait for their comrades before heading to the next building (of which we have 30).
Apparently, the Asians don't have a clue as to the treating activity either. Suely said that the kids as well as the parents would reach into the bowls of candy to grab as much candy as they could possibly hold .... it was something of a free for all. Of course, the candy of any given apartment would run out fairly quickly before the remainder of the group could present themselves which made for more than a little chaos. Suely had instructed her ayi to only give one piece of candy per child but the children's cries for more than one had the desired result, and Suely's candy ran out very quickly too. She resorted to passing out some of Laura's candy (her 2 year old daughter) to help fill in the gap as she really didn't want Laura to consume that much candy anyway. But the management's plan for the trick or treating sounded rather preposterous to me, and quite frankly, I was very relieved to have not participated in that portion of the festivities. I suppose one must give them props for the attempt, and hopefully they'll take away lessons learned from the experience.
In a number of ways, Halloween merchandising is similar to that back home in the states. The department stores are full of ready made costumes, with an abundance of Disney character "princess" type dresses filling their racks. What I didn't find quite so much were the cardboard displays of large bags of candy which back home seem to come out around mid-September tempting us sugar addicts to buy early and often. This could be due to the fact that sugar (and therefore, candy) is still a more recent taste developed by the Chinese .... but they are catching up very quickly!! The Chinese have not perfected the art of chocolate making, and for the most part, the only chocolate worth purchasing here is exported and expensive.
At the inquiry of some of my expat lady friends who have kids, the management here at Yanlord put their collective brains together to make a Halloween celebration for the children of the compound. Postings announced that there would be a puppet and marionette show at 7:00 on October 30 (OK, they were a day off, but close enough), and anyone wishing to participate in the trick or treat portion of the evening could collect a blue sticker to place on your mailbox (located in the lobby of each building) to indicate that you'd be happy to have hungry goblins visit your apartment to collect a treat. Seemed like a pretty good plan.
With Randy still working in Brazil, I pondered the idea of passing out Halloween treats by myself here from the apartment. I hadn't a clue as to how many goblins (or is it gobblers?) to expect, and the price of candy is still somewhat cost prohibitive here. I was sort of leaning against the entire idea, when Suely, my daily walking partner, invited me to her apartment for a pizza party prior to the show. The plan was for 4 other moms to bring their costumed kids over for dinner, and take advantage of the Melrose Pizza 2 for 1 on Tuesdays deal. This seemed a pretty good alternative for me. I walked to a local market and picked up one small box of chocolate cookies for each child and a bottle of red for the moms, happy about the fact that I wouldn't have to miss all the festivities.
Halloween has always been one of my favorite seasonal activities. I have many fond memories of trick or treating with my brother and cousins in the small village where my grandparents resided when I was young, and it made me homesick to think about all the fun I would be missing back home. Back in the states, I LOVE lighting jack-o-lanterns, passing out the treats myself, and seeing all the kids in their costumes, and I lamented that I'd be missing all of that this year. The pizza party invitation was a fair compromise, and I was looking forward to providing the treats that I'd purchased.
Pizza was a nice treat, although I have to say that we have still not found a particularly satisfying pizza here in Shanghai. Pizza here normally has very little sauce, and what little there is normally comes closer to tomato soup. But one learns to make do here (as previous posts have reported, we're hardly starving), and kids are not terribly difficult to please when it comes to pizza. All the children were loud and excited about the evening, and we had no less than three princesses on hand bedecked in long pink dresses and twinkling tiaras, as well as a Darth Vadar and a Spiderman. My friend Toni managed to come up with a grass skirt and flower leis to don over her jeans and was appropriately festive in her get-up.
I have to say that I was amazed at the number of people gathered for the show on the steps of the plaza in front of the management building. A dark green velvet curtain about 4 feet high had been erected across the top step and provided a screen for the puppeteers, and large spotlights lit the "stage" area as well as a small table selling beverages. As you might expect, the children were loud and riotous with excitement, and parents and ayis were having a difficult time keeping a handle on their children who seemed to be already experiencing sugar buzz even prior to the trick or treating.
I had to laugh about some of the costumes. There were the traditional pirates, superheroes, fairies and princesses, as well as wizards, witches, and a devil or two. But the Asians are somewhat new to the Halloween game and some didn't quite have the gist of the costume idea. I saw one little girl wearing a red dress, a pink cape under white fairy wings with black boots, red flashing devil horns, and whiskers drawn on her face. I couldn't have guessed what she was meant to be, but I have to give kudos to the parents .... they pulled out all the stops for their little cherub!! There was a clever costume of a child with his or her father's overcoat worn over some sort of frame giving the appearance of a headless man walking about (somewhat reminiscent of the character from the performance of Cirque du Soleil we'd seen this summer ... maybe that's where they got the idea).
The show was cute, but in Mandarin, and the performers struggled to hold the attention of the children, most of whom were simply itching to get on with the trick or treating portion of the evening. I ran into Erica, an American friend who was looking for her son, Grant. She was clearly at the end of her rope already, and was ready to bag the whole evening. Luckily, "Batman" was located and collared fairly quickly.
After nearly an hour of the show, I was getting chilled and felt that the remainder of the evening could probably proceed without my supervision, so I headed home. I could very clearly hear the shouts and squeals of the children as they began their travels from one building to the next filling their plastic pumpkins and baskets.
During our walk this morning, Suely reported on the trick or treat portion of the evening. Apparently, it was decided that the entire group of children and parents should travel en masse from one building to the next. This group totaled several hundred individuals! Each building has two elevators which can hold up to approximately 10 people, so as you can imagine, this was something of a nightmare trying get all the children up and down to the indicated apartments and back into the lobby to wait for their comrades before heading to the next building (of which we have 30).
Apparently, the Asians don't have a clue as to the treating activity either. Suely said that the kids as well as the parents would reach into the bowls of candy to grab as much candy as they could possibly hold .... it was something of a free for all. Of course, the candy of any given apartment would run out fairly quickly before the remainder of the group could present themselves which made for more than a little chaos. Suely had instructed her ayi to only give one piece of candy per child but the children's cries for more than one had the desired result, and Suely's candy ran out very quickly too. She resorted to passing out some of Laura's candy (her 2 year old daughter) to help fill in the gap as she really didn't want Laura to consume that much candy anyway. But the management's plan for the trick or treating sounded rather preposterous to me, and quite frankly, I was very relieved to have not participated in that portion of the festivities. I suppose one must give them props for the attempt, and hopefully they'll take away lessons learned from the experience.
posted by Roxanne Gillett at
2:53 AM
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