Halloween on the other side of the world
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2007
1
16
42
Trip End
Jul 04, 2008
Kaifeng,
China
Thursday, November 1, 2007
"Erin! Emily! Erin! Emily!" they started screaming at us.
"Oh my God," I said as I turned to Erin. Our expressions were the same - giant wide eyes, open mouths and shaking heads.
"Were you expecting this? I wasn't expecting this!" shouted Erin to me. It was the only way we could hear each other.
"Old Man Tank Top and Mama Tank Top are going to hate us!" I shouted back.
Carrying the bags of Halloween candy, we started to go down the stairs. The guys quickly got behind us to get some space from the crowd.
"Candy! Candy! Candy!" people started to shout as the crowd surged forward a little bit.
"Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God!" I thought. I quickly thought of my mental Top Ten Ways to Die in China list I have, and being stampeded by a crowd of students wearing Zombie Samurai Warrior costumes suddenly became number one.
I held up my hand to get everyone's attention. The crowd stopped moving. Everyone stopped talking. They all looked patiently at me.
"Wow, I just became Eva Peron," I thought.
For the past week and a half I've been explaining and discussing Halloween with my students. It's my favorite holiday and this is the first time I've ever missed it. I'm not really sure if what I said in class about the holiday made any sense to my students, but they could tell from the tone of my words (that happened to be shooting out of my mouth like rapid fire) that I was excited. They were a little confused as to why I liked a holiday that is associated with death so much, but because I was excited, they got excited. I should have seen what was going to happen. I should have known that it would have been insane. But I had no idea.
Erin and I had been talking about having a Halloween party for awhile. The grand goal was to convert the courtyard outside of our apartments into a haunted house and have our students go trick-or-treating, bob for apples and listen to scary music. We were expecting to be the only people wearing "real" costumes and to look ridiculous as we usually do. But from the first moment the doorbell rang and Michelle, Tianey, Kelly, Cherry, Icy and Nancy stood outside screaming "TRICK OR TREEEEEEAAAATTT" in their beautiful make-up, glittery sparkling clothes, giant wands, ornate masks and jeweled faces, I knew my feeble Hello Kitty costume didn't stand a chance. They understood what I said about Halloween and they were making their teacher proud.
Our small courtyard quickly became filled to capacity with at least 300 of our students wearing costumes that ranged all over the spectrum from dead Asian pop stars, a Chinese hippie, a dead Buddhist monk, and to a herd of oxen. As I wove through the crowd, moving from the bobbing for apples station, to the watermelon carving station, to the safety of the steps up to our apartments, students would grab me to "make a picture with them."
"Teacher! Teacher! Make a picture with me!" they would shout as they grabbed my arm and I was suddenly blinded by a flash.
"Do you know who I am?!" they would ask. And for once I could gladly say that I didn't, I had no idea what their name was and they wouldn't look sad or dejected. They thought I was complimenting them on their great disguise, not simply being truthful that I haven't learned all 400 of their names yet.
It would take me what felt like thirty minutes to walk across the courtyard that usually only takes me three seconds to walk across. The number of pictures that I was in last night literally made me feel like I was in a photoshoot.
As I pushed through the crowd, trying to get to the steps so I could have a little space to breathe, I would say "Excuse me, I'm sorry. Excuse me, EXCUSE ME." Suddenly the person in front would turn around, see me and start yelling in English "It's Emily! Let Emily through! Move move move move move!" to the people in front of the crowd.
"Oh my God, this is what it must be like to be famous," I thought as I was at times, literally picked up by the throng of people and pushed to the front.
Eventually, after the apples were all bobbed for and the watermelons had been carved, we needed to start trick-or-treating. There were clearly logistical problems with this since the courtyard was too packed for free movement. That was when Erin and I ran up to get the candy and came back to the stairs.
After I silenced the crowd with the wave of my hand, I felt a wave of power rush over me that was incredibly unsettling and disturbing. I turned over to look back at Erin and Max.
"How did that just happen?!" I asked, but they clearly had no idea since they looked equally as surprised and stunned.
"Oh my God, I could make them do ANYTHING," I thought.
Erin and I took turns explaining that we were just going to throw candy into the crowd because there were too many people to go trick-or-treating. Once the first handful was tossed, large amounts of clapping ensued and the crowd began to surge and sway once more. People started shouting our names and sticking their hands through the railings, trying to get our attention to give them candy. Candy was flying left and right and constantly whizzing past my head. Students were screaming in delight as they caught candy and laughing as they jokingly battled with one another to get a piece.
"It's sort of like a metaphor for what Asia wants from the West," Max said later. He started to cast his hands out like he did when he was throwing candy, "Economic relations! Movies! Western Toilets!"
Once all the candy was thrown, the crowd looked at us again patiently. This time, we had eleven rolls of toilet paper to make eleven mummies and over 300 students to divide the rolls between. While trying to figure out the logistics of this, much to my dismay Max started chanting my Chinese name, Yang Guifei. Soon all of the students were chanting "Yang Guifei" over and over again. Embarrassed, I hid behind Erin's fork costume, but that prompted them to chant it a little bit louder.
"I hate you Max!" I said, as he laughed. He was now trying to get them to pump their arms in the air as they chanted my name.
Finally, after the name chant ended, we decided that throwing was most effective in this situation and after dishing out the toilet paper, we quickly had eleven mummies. Adding to the mayhem, we made our now mummified students spin around thirteen times and then run around our apartment buildings as they stumbled and tripped about.
"Teacher, teacher! What's next? What's next?" our students asked as the Mummie race ended. Everyone was looking for Erin and I to tell them what to do next, but we suddenly felt exhausted and very overwhelmed.
"You're going trick-or-treating at Ben and Alex's!" Erin shouted, "Follow me!" And with that, our costumed students began to excitedly file out of the courtyard.
Eventually, after Ben and Alex ran out of candy in their dormitory and Erin told the students a ghost story, they slowly filed back to their dormitories with big smiles on their faces and slightly broken costumes from all of the jostling.
"Emily! This was my first Halloween ever! It made me so happy! We had a good time!" My students shouted to me as they left.
"Well team, that was an incredibly successful Halloween party," Erin said. We all gave each other high-fives as Max, Ben and Alex talked about our newfound status as cult leaders.
I was exhausted, my feet hurt from a full day of teaching, my cheeks hurt from smiling in so many pictures and I no longer had a voice from all of the shouting, but I was happy. It really was the best Halloween ever.
