Finding Momentum

 
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I am at the clothes mar­ket on Christ­mas Eve, try­ing hard not to feel fool­ish. It is dif­fi­cult because 1) I have ter­ri­ble Man­darin abil­i­ties and 2) I’m really not that inter­ested in buy­ing any­thing. The ven­dors believe oth­er­wise, con­vinced I’m play­ing games with them. “Come on,” one of them whines, play­fully jab­bing me in the arm, “the leather on these shoes are high qual­ity! These are totally in fash­ion! Why won’t you buy it?”

One of them, upon dis­cov­er­ing I’m from Amer­ica, grabs me by the arm, “Look, it’s Christ­mas Eve! It’s your hol­i­day! Let me give you a present.” She pro­ceeds to name a price. Ouch, it’s ridiculous.

–

Shang­hai, my Dad decides, is a col­or­less city. “It’s noth­ing like Spain or France,” he remarks. “Look, it’s all black and grey!” Really, all we can see are winter’s clouds and pollution’s haze. Dad, tot­ing a big dig­i­tal cam­era and pho­to­graphic aspi­ra­tions to pro­por­tion, comes away a bit dis­ap­pointed. The city com­pen­sates at night by wear­ing a neon quilt for us; its dizzy­ing arrays of lights and col­ors keep­ing us warm.

–

Christ­mas morn­ing enters with a shat­ter­ing roar; I hear car alarms her­ald the intruder’s song. Hark! The door­men shiver in their long, trench coats.

It is busi­ness as usual. Peo­ple walk to and fro. Lights, signs, and brands assault the land­scape and the senses. 可口可乐! NOKIA! Some­body, every­body, is shout­ing some­thing, sell­ing you some­thing, push­ing cards and fly­ers into your face. You learn to find shel­ter in a steely, for­ward gaze.

Some­body has bro­ken into our neighbor’s car; we see the shat­tered glass as we walk out into the bit­ter cold. The thief has, how­ever, over­looked a stuffed ani­mal in the back seat.

–

You should see all the plas­tic Santa fig­urines, far skin­nier than the canon­i­cal Coca-Cola Santa, pale-skinned and decked out in red out­er­wear, on sale at the tourist mar­kets. They wear eerie gazes, pla­s­ticky smiles, unnat­u­rally wide grins. I’m not sure how to think about it: is Santa a jolly good fel­low, spread­ing Christ­mas cheer to the East as an Amer­i­can ambas­sador?  Or per­haps he’s a cul­tural hostage, cre­ated, altered and mar­keted in the image of the Chi­nese? Per­haps he’s the love child of glob­al­iza­tion and free trade–born in the West, man­u­fac­tured in the East and sold to both.

What­ever. All I know is I can’t look at him. He’s creepy.

–

Xin­tiandi (新天地) means “New Heaven and Earth” in Chi­nese, and by the looks of it, Heaven looks like an upscale shop­ping mall.

Christ­mas, my mom says, is largely a West­ern hol­i­day. “They see it as a time to go shopping.” Sounds like the West.

But what does Christ­mas mean to them?

Sales­peo­ple in Santa hats beckon me from tables brim­ming with scarves and gloves. I won­der if China’s Christ­mas is a car­i­ca­ture of Christ­mas in the West, or the other way around.

–

She clenches her teeth and wrests her baby away from the wind’s icy clutches. She’s trapped by con­struc­tion cranes and chain-link gates. The cold, the cold, she can­not escape. It bleeds through her tat­tered clothes, her pants are stained with soot. She can­not make eye con­tact, but bows even lower. Her baby, swathed in a thin jacket, is peace­fully asleep.

What is this place? I can­not sleep. Maranatha.