A Chinese Christmas, December 2015

Cycling through the Yangshuo countryside
There isn’t one. Well, what I mean is that there is no Christmas holiday for most people in China. 

Tomorrow is Christmas Day, 25th December, but for just about everyone it will be just an ordinary working day here in the Middle Kingdom. I am a foreign teacher at Green Oasis School and so I am getting a two-week holiday, whereas teachers at ordinary Chinese schools get no holiday and neither do their students.












Today is Christmas Eve, 24th December, and it is a Sunday, so my church, Shenzhen International Fellowship, had a Christmas service this morning. Afterwards we invited our dear Chinese friends, Bill and Julia, to have lunch with us at our apartment. It was nothing too fancy, as Irena had been on the worship team and so she wanted something quick and easy: jaozi (dumplings) and salad, with Julia’s excellent apple pie for dessert.

(As readers of my blog will already know, the best thing to do is to boil the jaozi and then fry them in hot oil, so that the pastry is a bit brown and crispy.) Diudiu, the naughtiest little doggie in the whole of China, kept us entertained as usual. Then after lunch we looked at the photos of a special Christmas we had together two years ago, in Yangshuo.



Guinness in Guilin!





With Bill and Julia, next to the River Li

Sitting pretty in Guilin

Supper in Guilin




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