China's response to the crisis: Will we all be soon speaking Chinese (我们快能用汉语说话了吗？)?

China's current leaders may not be warm and cuddly fellows, but when it comes to economic and social policy, they manage, more often than not, to do the right thing. This includes fairly recent reversals of some very bad policies enacted during the 1990s by the country's previous leadership. And now, in order to respond to the current economic crisis, China will institute a massive stimulus package that dwarfs what is being proposed by the Obama (奥巴马) administration.

After China's economic growth (经济增长) slowed dramatically last fall, the Government announced that it would spend an estimated 4 trillion RMB, or $586 billion, over the upcoming year on a wide variety of infrastructure and social welfare projects. That's an enormous sum for any country, but especially for one whose GDP is still less than half that of the United States. And that figure has more recently gone up to over $800 billion.

I should say a brief word or two about how economists typically go about comparing the GDPs of different countries, as it's not as simple a matter as one might think. You could, of course, calculate China's GDP in dollars simply by using the current dollar-RMB exchange rate. If that's done, the country's GDP amounts to $3.3 trillion.

However, this approach overlooks the fact that the cost of living here, particularly for non-traded services, is much lower than it is in the US. For example getting a haircut in the next door hair salon costs me 15 RMB, or just under $3 at the current exchange rate (back in Henan, I spent under 10 RMB). In the US even a basic, no-frills haircut costs at least $11-12. Failing to take such price differences into account seriously understates Chinese living standards and, by extension, the country's GDP.

International economists adjust for such differences by using the so-called purchasing power parity (PPP) formula. This idea takes into account the lower cost of living and adjusts it as if all income is spent on local goods.

Thus the long-run PPP equilibrium exchange rates between currencies will often differ from their short-term nominal rates. In fact, when viewed in this way, the RMB remains substantially undervalued—perhaps by as much as 50 percent—against the greenback, even after its recent appreciation. According to information I shagged off the internet, calculating China's GDP using a PPP approach, just about doubles the above figure, to $7.1 trillion.

So it can be inferred from all of this that China’s GDP is probably higher than $3.3 trillion. Of course, PPP is a long-run theory. Moreover, Chinese wages are also much lower than in the US and other developed economies.

Finally, one should also be cautious about the official Chinese economic data. For example, I recall hearing a year or so ago the government suddenly announce that it had underestimated the size of the retail sector. Anyone who lives here can't help but notice all of the small mom and pop stores, little restaurants, and the like in Beijing and other Chinese cities. Thus China's retail sector certainly is enormous. So after the State Planning Commission re-calculated its size, it substantially boosted its estimate of China's GDP.

So China's GDP is probably somewhere between $3.3 and $7.1 trillion. But even if we accept the latter high figure, the Chinese stimulus package is still much greater relative to the national economy than the one being proposed by Obama. The $800 billion plus that will be spent next year represents over 10% of China’s GDP. By contrast, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package—it may get a bit larger over the next few months—is spread out over the next two years and accounts for just 2.5-3.0% of the US economy's estimated $14 trillion plus GDP.

To be sure, some economists argue that the $800 billion figure for China's stimulus package is a bit high, noting that some of this spending was already in the budget. However, shaving a $100 billion or so off the Chinese spending figure still leaves China's stimulus package much bigger than the US stimulus package when measured against the size of its economy.

Moreover, payroll and business tax cuts account for a good chunk of the Obama stimulus package. In fact, word has it that funds for mass transportation projects, which American could desperately use more of, is being reduced to make room for these tax cuts.

The problem with doing this is twofold. First, there's no guarantee that people will spend these tax cuts or rebates. In fact, given the uncertainty about employment, better off consumers are more likely to save this extra cash for a rainy day, rather than spend it. And with consumers reluctant to buy things, especially expensive big-ticket items, it's unlikely that businesses will use their tax breaks to expand production by hiring more workers.

China's stimulus package, on the other hand, is driven entirely by government spending. While much of this money will be spent on infrastructure projects—expanded subways, railways, bridges, airports, and the like—some of the funds will be spent on social welfare projects. In particular, the government has made continuing to improve rural health care a key priority (a major effort to do this was started a few years ago as part of the “New Socialist Countryside” initiative [社会主义新农村]).

Compared to the US, the Chinese Government has several key things going for it in its efforts to stimulate its economy. To start with, even though tax revenues have fallen rapidly since this fall, China's national debt remains small, particularly compared to America's. Since the latter ballooned during the last eight years, mainly on account of tax cuts, the Iraq War, and big increases in overall defense spending, Louis XV’s famous comment, “Apres Moi L'Deluge,” is a fitting epitaph for George W. Bush's Presidency.

Not only is the Chinese Government in a better position than its American counterpart to spend money, it also has, when it comes to building infrastructure, a lot more “shovel ready” projects on which money can be spent. For example, here in Beijing work will be accelerated on three new subway lines being built within the city. The same goes for several lines that will connect Beijing with outlying cities, such as Changping.

Recent historical experience suggests that spending money on these projects will help boost China's economy. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis broke out, the Chinese Government earmarked large sums to accelerate construction of the country's huge highway and toll road system. This move is seen as playing a large role in maintaining economic growth in 1998 and 1999.

The Chinese Government also has much more leverage in the monetary policy area. Indeed, as recently as last summer, China's Central Bank (中央银行) was raising interest rates in an effort to cool down the economy. Now that it has confronted, practically overnight, the opposite problem, the Central Bank has significantly reversed course. However, according to one article I shagged off the internet, monetary policy here is still just “moderately loose” and thus still has some traction.

By contrast, the Fed in the US has cut interest rates to practically zero, so it can't lower borrowing costs any further. But despite these efforts and the rapid increase in America's money supply, banks are still reluctant to loan money and credit remains scarce. In other words, the Fed is pretty much shooting blanks at the moment.

Moreover, the fact that banks in China are state controlled gives the government enormous leverage over the financial system. For example, before the current crisis broke out, China's Central Bank required banks to hand over nearly 1/5 of their deposits. The Central Bank used this money to buy foreign bonds, especially US Treasury Bills, in order to prevent the RMB from appreciating and harming Chinese exporters.

Now, however, China's Central Bank is reducing these long-standing requirements on Chinese banks. It is instead pushing them to lend more money within China. In particular, banks are being ordered make more loans to small and medium-sized industries—precisely the ones that have been hardest hit by the downturn in exports.

America's recent banking bailout provides the US Government with the opportunity to exercise similar leverage over the financial system. The US Government could now, as Roosevelt did during the height of Great Depression, when a third of the banking system had effectively been nationalized, demand that financial institutions lend money in return for receiving help from Washington. Of course the Bush Administration resisted, mainly for ideological reasons, any attempt to tie strings to its $700 billion TARP bailout plan. Hopefully, Obama will reverse course here.

To be sure, Obama will face intense political pressure to limit the size of his fiscal stimulus plan in the face of long-term fears regarding US budgets deficits and rising national debt. However, the US Government does have one remaining trump card to play here, namely the continued willingness of foreigners to loan money to the US. While China's appetite for US debt appears to be diminishing—readers can refer to Keith Bradsher’s excellent January 8th NEW YORK TIMES article on this matter—investors in the troubled Euro zone are still eager to snap up US Treasury Bonds and securities.

The fact that the US is able to continue to find foreign lenders for its debt is one thing setting it apart from Asian countries in the late 1990s, Argentina in 2000, and the new financial basket cases on the euro-zone's periphery, Ukraine and Latvia. Another key difference is that unlike these countries, the US debt is denominated in its own currency. Thus a falling greenback, which would boost American exports and stimulate the economy, will not increase the size of the US debt.

America's budget deficits will certainly have to be addressed some time in the future. Continued large-scale borrow from foreign lenders also will also undermine the dollar’s position as a reserve currency over the long-run. However, at the present moment, the greenback is actually appreciating against other currencies.

Indeed, as former IMF chief economist and now Harvard Professor Ken Rogoff puts it, with more than a little touch of gallows humor, “The more we screw up, the more the world seems to like us.” And long before this financial crisis, my former UCLA colleague turned chaired Harvard professor, Jeff Frieden, argued that the dollar's future as a main reserve currency is uncertain at best (this outstanding scholar and all-around mensch's musings on the latest crisis can be accessed at http://www.bigthink.com/user/jeff-frieden). Finally, addressing America's immediate and very severe economic crisis should now have priority over long-term worries regarding the dollar's future as an international currency.

Thus Obama should emulate China's boldness when it comes to devising a stimulus plan for the US economy. As his own chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, has declared, “In this crisis, doing too little poses a greater risk than doing too much.”

Even though the US doesn't have all that many “shovel ready” infrastructure projects to spend money on at the moment, a strong case can certainly be made for long-term spending in this area. And over the short-term, money could go to help people in need, particularly ones who've lost health insurance, and assist America's financially strapped states.

Indeed, as I write these words, my home state of California faces a $41 billion deficit, or half of the state's total annual revenues. In a very short time, California will literally go broke and unable to pay its bills. The tax increases and spending cuts needed to close this gap certainly won't do Golden State's economy, which already has one of the highest unemployment rates in America, any good.

I suspect that if Obama errs on the side of caution while China forges boldly ahead with its economic stimulus, then the long American Century will give way sooner rather than later to the Chinese Century. I want to emphasize that such a prospect doesn't disturb me as much as it might disturb other Americans. But if it does happen, all of us might want to begin learning a bit of 汉语. Or, as was asked in the title for this post, 我们快能用汉语说话了吗?

The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.

我们快能用汉语说话了吗 (wo3men1kuai4neng2yong4han4yu3shuo1hua4le5ma5).
奥巴马 (ao4ba5ma3) Save for the fact that the first character, 奥, is pronounced like the “ou” in “ouch,” this is actually a pretty good transliteration of “Obama.” It's certainly better the Chinese characters for President Bush's last name, 布什, which sounds like “Boo Sure.” The senior is Bush is just called 老布什, or literally “old Bush.”
经济增长 (jing1ji4zeng1zhang3) The first two characters mean “economy” while the other two mean “growth” (in this kind of sentence).
社会主义新农村 (she4hui4zhu3yi4xin1nong2cun2) The first four characters comprise the Chinese word for “socialism”, while the fifth character means “new”. The last two characters can mean both “countryside” and “rural/farming village.”
Apres Moi L'Deluge: My historically knowledgeable readers—and those who can speak some French—will know that this statement in English is “After me, the Deluge.” Louis XV wasn't much of a monarch, but he could see pretty clearly the direction France was heading after his death. Epitaph in Chinese is 墓志铭 (mu4zhi4ming2).
中央银行 (zhong1yang1yin2hang2) The first two characters is one way of saying “central” in Chinese, while the latter two is the Chinese word for “bank.”

I'd like thank my good colleague (同事; tong2shi4), 姚玲玲 (yao2ling2ling2) and 路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4) for helping me with some of the above vocabulary.

How is China affected by the economic crisis (经济危机)?

My readers who follow the economic headlines know full well that like the rest of the world, China has been greatly affected by the current global economic and financial crisis (财政危机). Economic growth, which had been averaging churning along at double-digit rates over the past few years, has slowed dramatically. It's estimated that China's economy will expand by no more than 7% in 2009. And more and more forecasts call for significantly lower growth.

Americans would be delighted if the US economy, which contracted during the last two quarters and is expected to shrink through the first half of 2009, was expanding at a 5-7% annual clip. However, the 7% growth figure is something of a critical number here in China. Economists have argued that unless the Chinese economy grows by at least 7% every year, it won't be able to provide jobs for all the new people entering the labor.

My own first hand observations, particularly the stories I hear from Chinese friends, tells me that the job market here has indeed deteriorated significantly for new entrants to the labor market. The sophomore students I taught two years ago at the Second Beijing Foreign Languages University (二外) are now looking for work. While most of them have had at least a few interviews, very few have found jobs. And we're now moving past the first peak hiring season, i.e. the late fall and early winter (the other is the early spring).

Many of my former 二外 students majored in finance. These job-hunters are having an especially hard time finding positions. They're all naturally keen to find positions in banks and other financial businesses like security and brokerage firms. However, very few of these companies are hiring people at the moment; indeed, many are getting rid of staff (more on that below).

However, university students who majored in technical fields are also scrambling to find work. One of my good Chinese friends works at a sister company—both our firms are China National Petroleum Company subsidiaries (分公司) doing bore-hole and well testing and servicing work—as a recruiter in their HR (人力资源) department. My friend said that they were swamped with applicants at job fairs this fall.

I spent much of last week helping to do English assessments on job candidates for my company. For readers wondering about this, our firm's clients are all foreign clients, and the language of the international oil business is, of course, English. Hence anyone hired here must be able to speak at least intermediate level English. Most of our recruits were completing their M.S. degrees from the China National Petroleum University (a few were completing doctoral degrees). This place is the country's top institution for studying petrology, petroleum engineering, and the like. One of the people we interviewed told us that many of his classmates were having difficulty finding jobs, despite their high-powered educational backgrounds.

China's manufacturing industries that depended heavily on exports (出口) to the US have certainly been hard hit by the sharp downturn in the American economy. Scores of small toy (玩具) factories (工厂) in Guangdong province have gone bankrupt (破产). And lots of what are called 农民工—factory workers from small villages who leave their families to live in cities without permanent residence permits—have lost their jobs (失业了). These men are returning home early for the Spring Festival.

The crisis has affected not just manufacturers, but the banking and financial sector as well. A very good Chinese friend of mine works at Hong Kong Shanghai Commercial Bank (HSBC), which is one of China's leading commercial and investment banks. She recently informed me that HSBC's Hong Kong Branch has shed some 10,000 employees.

My friend told me that HSBC had invested heavily in Australian securities. The bank thus lost lots of money when the Aussie $ plunged, causing the value of these Aussie $ denominated assets to fall sharply. My friend added that HSBC also had some money invested in Madoff's funds. It looks like this swindler's tentacles reached very far and wide indeed.

Thanks to the problems in the financial sector and a bearish stock market—the latter downturn preceded the crisis in the US—many urban middle class Chinese people have seen their nest eggs dwindle. My friend at HSBC, for example, has seen the value of her savings' stock portfolio has shrunk by more than half, from 70,000 to 30,000 RMB (at the current exchange rate, that's $10,250 to $4,400).

In the past few years, buying property has become an attractive investment strategy for middle- and upper-middle class Chinese city-dwellers. Housing prices have risen sharply in Beijing and other big cities over the past decade. For example, the Irish lawyer, Diarmuid O’Brien, who got me the tickets to the Olympic Basketball games, bought an apartment in Beijing's exclusive Central Business District (国贸) area. The apartment's market value has risen several times over this period, and Diarmuid was getting lots of calls or sms mobile phone message every day from people interested in buying the place.

It now appears that this long run-up in property asset values is coming to an end. People who thought that housing prices would keep rising forever are learning the hard way that in the investment (投资) world, when asset prices skyrocket, they often come back down to earth a bit. Indeed, THE ECONOMIST ran a story late last year about apartment prices falling from 15,000 RMB per square to 9,000 RMB per square meter in an exclusive Hai Dian District apartment community. The angry buyers sued the developers over this sudden collapse in the value of their properties.

A fellow laowai colleague at the company I work for named John Gormican is married to a Chinese woman, Rebecca, who has a real estate business. When I sent him an IM about THE ECONOMIST story the other day, he replied that yes, his wife had heard many similar stories. John added that they “were expecting it to be slow after Olympic Games, but not like this.”

Rebecca is lucky. Her business is a one-woman show, which she runs from out of her apartment. Since Rebecca's overhead is absolutely minimal, she won't have a lot of problems weathering this downturn. The same, however, can't be said large big real estate companies. John anticipates that many of them will soon be facing big problems.

The economic slowdown is also affecting foreign companies. I have a Chinese friend who works at another integrated well services provider, the French giant Schlumberger, the second largest firm in the business after Halliburton. She informed me several weeks ago, when we were exchanging IM's, that Schlumberger recently moved out of its old China corporate headquarters in the expensive Lido area near the Holiday Inn. They did so mainly to cut back on costs.

Schlumberger's new headquarters—or “operations base” as they now call it—is located in an old factory building converted into an office space. The new digs are not only fairly crummy, but also very hard to find. My friend told me that visiting client spent over an hour trying to locate this place and was not very happy about that.

One of my laowai friends living in Shanghai has a boyfriend who is an engineer in GM's China operations. She informs me that GM has, is or will be stopping production altogether or cutting it “way down” for two weeks here. VW, the biggest foreign car manufacturer in China, is supposedly doing the same.

Even the IT sector is being affected by the current economic problems. One of my Chinese friends, a very pretty and delightful young lady, is a software engineer at a Japanese IT firm. During a recent night out, she informed me that recently business has been really slow at her company, so she isn't very busy and has a lot of down time at work.

Lastly, as one would expect during an economic crunch, the hospitality business is really suffering at the moment. I have breakfast once or twice a month at Paul's Steak and Eggs restaurant. This place is very popular with Beijing's expat community, and I enjoy hearing the patrons, as well as the owner, a French-Canadian named Paul, chat about business conditions in the capital. During my last visit on January 3, I overheard Paul noting that the occupancy rate at the luxury Ritz-Carlton Hotel is now just 15%. The Ritz Carlton and several other luxury hotels have fired their executive chefs.

The current problems in the hotel business are exacerbated by the overbuilding that took during the run-up to the Olympic Games. This surplus capacity is especially severe in the high-end housing area. Lots of luxury full-service apartments and other less expensive but still arguably upscale housing, built to accommodate wealthy tourists and business guests coming to Beijing for the Olympics, now stands vacant.

However, the glut in high end housing and the overall drop in apartment prices can also be seen as a silver lining in Beijing and China's overall cloudy economy. Laowai and Chinese people who hold on to their jobs or are even lucky enough to get better paying positions, will be able, for the first time in recent memory, to find nice housing at relatively affordable prices.

Finally, a few people I know have remained unaffected by the economic downturn. One of my Chinese friends is an HR consultant at Hewlett Packard—yes, they have an HR consulting branch here in China. She does lots of work advising state owned enterprises and was recently put in charge of a big project near Xinzheng City in Henan Province (I spent my first year in China living in Xinzheng City). This lady informed me that business remains brisk and they were paid their usual annual Christmas bonus this year.

Throughout the first half of last year, many people speculated that China and India might somehow get “decoupled” from the brewing global economic crisis (THE ECONOMIST magazine was a prominent proponent of this view). It now looks like such thinking will have to be put on ice. China will definitely feel some economic pain over the next year. The good news for the country is that it's arguably in a much better position to respond to the crunch than is the US. I'll have more to say on that in my next post.

经济危机 (jing1ji4wei1ji1). 经济 is economy or economic, while 危机 is crisis.
财政危机 (cai2zheng4wei1ji1). 财政 is financial (another word for financial is 财金 [cai2jin1]).
二外 (er4wai4).
人力资源 (ren2li4zi1yuan2). 人力 literally means “human power,” while 资源 means resource(s).
分公司 (fen1gong1si1).
出口 (chu1kou3).
玩具 (wan2ju4).
工厂 (gong1chang3).
破产 (po4chan3).
失业了 (shi1ye4le5).
投资 (tou2zi1).
地产 (di4chan3).
国贸 (guo2mao4).

Chinese Santas (中国圣诞老人) and "Christmas with Chinese characteristics" (中国圣诞的特色)

Well another Christmas in China has come and gone—2008 marked my fourth Christmas in a row here—and I would be remiss not to include at least one post about the holiday in this blog.

As the photos above make clear, Santa Claus is alive and well in China. Both of these pictures were shot in front of a large children's toy store located in the middle of Beijing's famous 王府井 pedestrian shopping mall.

In this particular display, Santa Claus was flanked by another Christmas icon, Frosty the Snowman. I could add that one would have a very difficult time building a real snowman in Beijing right now, as there's virtually no snow on the ground.

Winters here are both bitterly cold and very dry—this part of China receives three quarters of its precipitation in July and August. We did get some snow around the 25th of December during my first year in Beijing, when I taught English at the Second Foreign Language University (二外). However, that was the only white Christmas I've had in China.

In my own neighborhood, practically all of the restaurants on the “Ghost Street” (簋街) were festooned with big cutout Santa Claus faces. And one of them had a plastic Santa Claus playing a saxophone standing beside its front door. Readers will also notice the decorated Christmas tree (圣诞树). During the Christmas season lots of public places, particularly the lobbies of high rise building and shopping malls, sport large Christmas trees. The high-rise office tower I work in, for example, had a Christmas tree.

But while the Chinese and American plastic and cardboard Santas are pretty much alike, the same can't be said for the live Santas. Since St. Nick is a plump old fellow, live Santas in America tend to be fat and puffy-faced 50- and 60-something men.

As the film director John Waters wrote in his hilarious essay, “Why I love Christmas,” for chubby older men who like fondling little kids, playing Mr. Claus is a dream job. I suspect that most American parents are now reluctant to let their young ones sit in some stranger Santa's lap. By contrast, during my first year in China, when I lived in rural Henan province, I was struck by how eager and willing Chinese parents were to let us laowai hold their small children.

Since very few older Chinese men are really fat, there aren't very many suitable live Santas in China. The country is certainly suffering from epidemic of childhood obesity—Chinese children have fallen in love with junk food (垃圾食品) and spend too much time sitting on their butts playing computer games or watching TV. However, unlike older folks in America, most Chinese adults are not overweight. The same also goes for the laowai here: you can distinguish long-term expats living in Beijing from visiting tourists by the size of their waistlines. For example, I've gone down one pant size since living here.

So you won't see very many male Santas around Christmas in Chinese stores and shopping malls. Chinese Santas are typically pretty young girls (小姐or 女孩儿). The limited supply of chubby 50- and 60-something Chinese men certainly isn't the only reason why most Chinese Santas are cute little 小姐. The other reason is that Chinese merchants discovered some time ago that putting a sexy babe in front of product display is a sure-fire way of boosting sales.

Thus while China's female Santas wear the traditional Santa cap and red coat, their waist down garb consists of a short miniskirt. The two young lady Santas in the photo below were pushing different types of drinks in front of 二外’s small convenience store located on the east side of the campus.

For most Chinese people Christmas is mainly about Santa and Christmas trees rather than the baby in the manger (耶稣). To be sure, the number of Christians (基督徒) in China is now growing rapidly; these people also enjoy much more freedom to worship than was the case in the past. And the churches (教堂) are always jam-packed for Christmas Eve (平安夜) services.

This is especially true for places like the lovely North Cathedral, which located just north of the 王府井 mall. According to one a former 二外German teacher colleague who's Catholic, if you want to go there on 平安夜, then you'd better make reservations well in advance.

Many Chinese people who go to Church on 平安夜 do so mainly to enjoy the special shows that are an integral part of these services. These shows include singing—Chinese people love to sing—dancing, and other performances. At least this is what the laowai named John, who is one-half of the duo doing intermediate and upper intermediate Chinesepod.com Mandarin listening lessons, said in a recent lesson about 平安夜 (their URL is www.chinesepod.com and it's the best study aid out there for learning Mandarin).

Before moving to Shanghai—Chinesepod's excellent listening lessons are broadcast from there—John helped organize Christmas Eve services at his Catholic Church at Hangzhou. He notes at the end of the 平安夜 listening lesson that putting together such events was always pretty hectic and crazy. John adds that because of these programs, many young urban Chinese people think that it's real hip and cool (酷) to go Church on 平安夜, even if they don't attend services any other time of the year.

For China's Buddhists (佛教徒), who still considerably outnumber the country's Christians, Christmas has no meaning. These people generally don't even celebrate the commercial side of the Christmas. For example, when my good colleague and friend, Mike Watts, asked his Buddhist girlfriend if she wanted a present, the answer was “no.”

But for non-religious (不信教 or 没有信仰; 我也是) Chinese people, who still comprise a majority of the population, gift (礼物) giving at Christmas has caught on big-time. This is especially true in the large cities, where the western influence is greatest. The large shopping malls and department stores are always jammed with people during the weeks and days leading up to Christmas. This year I gave the ladies in my office chocolate, also gave two very special lady friends chocolate, and bought English language novels for several of my former 二外 students.

I could add that one will hear lots of Christmas music, albeit of an entirely secular nature, while window shopping in the department stores and malls. One song, “Jingle Bells,” is usually sung in Chinese, and the refrain “Jingle Bells/Jingle Bells” is 丁东/丁东. Most of the others are sung in English—you'll often hear “Silver Bells” and “We wish you a Merry Christmas.”

Chinese people living Beijing and other big cities who don't go Church on 平安夜often have dinner and drinks with friends that night. Indeed, restaurants and bars are always very crowded on the evening of the 24th, making the mood and atmosphere (气氛) very lively (热闹).

Ironically, 平安夜 in Chinese literally means “peaceful/quiet night,” and here in China, this particular evening is anything but quiet and silent. It's the actual Christmas day that's peaceful and quiet (maybe they should call it, 平安天, or peaceful day). Unlike the Western New Year's Day, Christmas day isn't a holiday here, so if it falls on a weekday, people are at their jobs, rather than relaxing and celebrating. The Chinese company I work for gives the foreign employees, including a Muslim fellow from Yemen, Christmas Day off. However, when I taught at Erwai, I spent Christmas day teaching English.

While Laowai typically opt for a traditional Christmas meal, such as turkey (伙计)—restaurants like Paul's Steak and Eggs, typically charge 100-200 RMB for such a dinner—most of the natives go to a Chinese restaurant. In particular, Chinese people really hate eating turkey (火鸡). All my Chinese friends believe it's bland and tasteless and to dry to boot. I couldn't agree more and have always thought that turkey is what one gets served Sunday afternoons at college dormitories as punishment for hanging around on the weekend. I think Beijing Duck (北京烤鸭), which I really love to eat, would be a great alternative to turkey!

Interestingly enough, one Western restaurant that is exception to this rule is Pizza Hut. Despite its relatively high prices, Pizza Hut is hugely popular in China and has lots of franchises in Beijing and other big Chinese cities. While spending my 2006 平安夜 people watching in the big 东安 shopping mall on the north side of 王府井, I noticed a huge line snaking down the hall from the entrance of the mall’s Pizza Hut. Mini-skirted 小姐 Santas were passing out menus to the people waiting in line.

So like most everything else in China, Christmas here is a fascinating mix of Western influences and Chinese characteristics. The holiday also illustrates just how rapidly the country is changing. Even though I'm a bit late in doing this, I wish all my readers a belated merry Christmas (圣诞节快乐) and happy New Year (新年快乐).

I'm now putting the Pinyin, or Romanized spelling of the Chinese characters that appear in my blog posts at the bottom of the posts. The number 1 is a flat tone, 2 a rising tone, 3 a falling and rising tone, 4 a falling tone, and 5 a neutral tone. The characters are in the order in which they appeared in the post.

圣诞老人 (sheng4dan4lao3ren2). The first two characters mean Christmas, while the last two mean old person.
中国圣诞的特色 (zhong1guo2sheng4dan4de5te4se4). Readers who are fellow sinoafficionados will notice that this Chinese is a play on the phrase, “Socialism with Chinese characteristics”—有中国特色社会主义 (you3zhong1guo2te4se4she4hui4zhu3 yi2). 中国 is the Chinese name for China, and it literally means “Middle (中) Kingdom (国).” 特色 means special feature(s) or characteristic(s). And 社会 is “society/social,” while 主义 means “socialism.”
王府井 (wang2fu3jing3).
二外 (er4wai4).
簋街 (gui3jie1). The first character actually doesn't mean ghost, which is鬼 and has the same tone and pinyin. It instead can mean a ghost's dinner set or an ancient cooking and eating vessel.
圣诞树 (sheng4dan4shu4). 树 means tree.
垃圾食品 (la1ji1shi2pin3). 垃圾 is garbage, 食品 is a general term for food.
小姐 (xiao3jie2).
女孩儿 (nü3hai2er2).
耶稣 (ye1su1).
基督徒 (ji1du1tu2).
教堂 (jiao4tang2).
平安夜 (ping2an1ye4).
不信教 (bu4xin4jiao4) 没有信仰 (mei2you3xin4yang3). 不信 is “not to believe” and 没有 is “not to have.” 我也是 (wo3ye3shi4) means the “the same goes for me.”
礼物 (li3wu4).
丁东 (ding1dong1). This is another transliteration, as 丁 means “nail” and 东 means “east.”
气氛 (qi4fen5).
热闹 (re4nao4).
火鸡 (huo3ji1).
北京烤鸭 (bei3jing1kao3ya2). The first two characters stand for Beijing, the second for roast, and the last for duck.
东安 (dong1an1).
新年 (xin1nian2).
快乐 (kuai4le4). This can mean both “happy” and “merry.”