Round Two of China...Fight!

This is my second year of being in China and I believed that it would be easier. In ways, it is. I am better at the language for sure and I am more familiar with the culture. 

In one way it is not easier. That is being away from my family and friends, especially during holiday seasons. 

Halloween is coming up this month and I am sort of dreading it. I love Halloween but when I was in college my friends and I would make the entire month into a celebration. We would go to pumpkin patches, carve pumpkins, go to haunted houses, watch a Halloween movie every weekend, and then do something big for the actual day. In the past we went to a theme park, had a sleepover at the library (it was a library event-we aren't weirdos), and went ghost hunting in Peru, Nebraska to find the infamous ghost bridge. 

Not to mention I worked as a tour guide at a haunted house the weekend before.

Halloween is a thing in China but it is definitely not the same. Many citizens don’t celebrate it. Only shopping areas really promote the holiday along with Disney. As mentioned in a post before the government does not want us to teach the holiday in school this year which is another downer.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are hard to deal with as well. Last year my co-workers and I substituted things that I would usually do on that day. Instead of turkey we had chicken feet, instead of pumpkin pie we had pumpkin-rice dish, instead of mashed potatoes we ate potato wedges.

Christmas, I made apple cider successfully but the cookies were difficult. No one owns ovens in China which means no baking. I only own a small toaster oven. Only foreigner grocery stores or bakeries would have the ingredients needed for baked goods which include:

Powdered sugar, all purpose flour, baking powder, vanilla extract (I had to get it in USA), food dye, ground cinnamon, cinnamon sticks, cloves, ground ginger (I can get a root but not the powder), yeast, shortening, cocoa, and nutmeg.

So even when I tried recreating my type of Christmas it fell short last year because I had to substitute all these ingredients I was missing and I wasn’t able to find a ham or a turkey to have a proper holiday supper. It sounds so small but when you are in a country with people who have no idea what your holidays are and no one you love nearby, it gets really depressing.

Not to mention that I am the only foreigner in my building. The other foreign teachers are in the other building so I’m extra isolated.

I kept telling myself that it was fine, that it wasn’t going to be so bad but of course that didn’t happen. Sadly, I had to change my gym when four of my coaches decided to quit the gym I was at. I figured I would join a gym that one of my former coaches was now a manager of. When I said goodbye to my last boxing coach at the gym, he seemed so blasé about it. Then when I realized I wouldn’t have another boxing class until three days later at my new gym…all I can say is that my brain broke. The second I got home I tried to go to sleep and found myself staring at the ceiling until I was in a puddle of tears.

Thankfully my sister is just a phone call away and she picked up to a sobbing me. She was shocked and asked what was wrong and I pitifully said, “I can’t sleep! My boxing class won’t happen for a few more days! What am I going to do?”

What we realized is that the reason it was so hard for me is that going to the gym was a way to socialize with other people and get me out of my empty apartment. The second the class was taken from me, the feeling of loneliness washed over me.

Don’t get me wrong, I have friends that are local Chinese or Taiwanese citizens, but when something that is in your schedule is taken away, and you are a foreigner where you can’t speak the language, no one has your holidays, and you can’t even bake some gosh darn snickerdoodles without going across town to find a small bottle of cinnamon to remind you of home, your emotions get out of hand.

To be honest, I am not sure how well this year will go with the holidays coming around the corner. All I can say is that I am more prepared than last year because I stocked up on baking good supplies and I know that I still need to celebrate those holidays in my way. Last Christmas I thought by working on the holiday I could get through the day better, but it only made me resent being at work. Currently, I am on a group chat with other foreigners who are in Jiaxing. Who knows, maybe I will meet another American my age who can relate to my plight.