ABOUT three weeks ago a six foot high Christmas tree was erected in the foyer of our apartment building in the suburbs of east Beijing and decorated with twinkling fairy lights. In the big hotels in the city, special Christmas menus are on offer and big papier mache models of Santa Claus in red robes have dominated the foyers for the holiday season. Restaurant pianists have been churning out an endless diet of Christmas carols for the tourists.
For a Westerner in the Chinese capital, Christmas here can feel just like anywhere else (if colder). But the tree in our entrance was only put there by a thoughtful management because foreigners live in the building. Santa Claus and his reindeer are mainly for outsiders. For the vast majority of China's 1.2 billion people, December 25th was just a normal working day.
The celebration of Christmas in China was introduced by missionaries three centuries ago but never really took off. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 it was banned as foreign Old superstitious.
When Western ideas and consumer goods became fashionable in the early 1980s it became a fad among university students to celebrate Christmas and exchange cards. One Beijing graduate recalls attending a Christmas party in the early 1980s and being made to write a self criticism by his party branch afterwards.
But now the communist authorities do not interfere, recognising that, as in the West, it is more a commercial festival than an expression of ideological or religious fervour, and that it fits into a culture which is getting more pragmatic each year. The few Christian churches are, of course, packed on Christmas Eve by Christian believers and it is not a punishable offence for a Chinese citizen to attend services, though government workers tend to be discreet about their church going.
Aside from the small number of believers it is also now a yuppie and undergraduate thing to celebrate the December 25th festival, and some students bankrupt themselves for a month sending expensive Christmas cards. Christmas dancing parties are also held in some colleges.
But the big winter holiday for the Chinese is the four day celebration of the Chinese New Year, which on the Chinese calendar falls around the end of January or the beginning of February. In 1997 it will be on February 7th. For the Chinese this is like the Western Christmas and New Year and the American Thanksgiving holiday all rolled into one. The whole country is on the move for a few days. Airports and railway stations are jammed. It is the time for visiting family, drinking a lot, having lengthy banquets - with traditional pork and shrimp dumplings - and imparting gifts. Children are traditionally given presents by aunts and uncles in the form of a red envelope into which are tucked crisp new bank notes. "You would be expected to give a 50 yuan (£4) note but if you really wanted to show off you would put 100 yuan in the envelope," said an acquaintance in Beijing who will go to Wuhan for the festival with a red letter in his pocket for his niece.
DESPITE its location in midwinter the Chinese New Year celebration is called the "spring festival", in the evening families settle down to watch CCTV's special Spring Festival Show of music, dance and entertainment from 7.30 p.m. to 1 a.m. The next day people will crowd into the local "temple fairs" to listen to comic dialogue or story telling, watch some Beijing opera or shadow theatre, stuff themselves with delicacies or just wander around. The temple fairs can last for six or seven days.
The Chinese New Year is synonymous with firecrackers but a huge controversy rages every year now over a progressive ban on fireworks by city councils, because they have resulted in so many people filling hospital wards with burns and other injuries. Shanghai banned firecrackers two years ago and Beijing followed suit last year.
The people by and large accept the ban somewhat to the surprise of my friend who said fireworks had been a tradition for hundreds of years and to ban them was like taking bullfighting away from the Spanish. The ban is supported by the medical services and the fire brigades and some nervous members of the public. The prohibition is rigidly enforced with police mounting special patrols outside towns to prevent the transport of firecrackers from rural factories, and heavy fines are imposed on those who are caught.
For those used to being deafened for hours by the cacophonous noise of the firecrackers, it has given the phrase "a peaceful New Year" a whole new meaning in China.