Tea, Books and Christmas at Zhongshan Road
- Dec 12, 2023
- 6 min read
Christmas in China
Christmas in China is at shopping malls and on shopping streets. In Xiamen, its at commercial hubs like China City Shopping Mall, SM Shopping Mall, and Zhongshan Road. It's unashamedly commercialized, and for a foreign student, alone in China, looking for Christmas, I will take what I can get.
For the second time in 4 years, I am spending Christmas in China. I am fairly positive I am in a better mental state than I was the first time around to handle being away from family during the holidays. As the holiday is nothing but an ordinary working day in China, I spent the first one knee-deep in exam prep, feeling painfully sorry for myself. I was experiencing my first winter with snow abroad as an adult, and if you have lived in any province in the south of China you will know how miserable it can get. Most homes are not insulated in the South compared to the North where winters are harsher. However, this slight difference makes winter in that much more unbearable.
This time I am taking everything with a "second time around no regrets" mentality. This basically means I am resolutely electing not to feel sorry for myself and make my own holiday like an adult. However, China is just another reminder of how childhood memories can be highly capitalized., when I paying for my own new memories.
The Christmas of my childhood, "sekukulu" as we affectionately call the holiday in Uganda, was just an excuse for an extravagant feast. The scent of freshly cut cider would permeate the house from a branch propped up by bricks covered in gift wrapping and decorated in garlands of colorfully wrapped sweets, balloons, Christmas cards and the fluff of surgical cotton, to make a Christmas tree.
It was the late legendary Ugandan musician Philly Lutaya songs on repeat on the radio, late evening drives around Kampala city to see the Christmas lights. It was the new Christmas dress to be worn at church on Christmas morning, the Christmas carols, the feasts, and criminally abundant indulging in sweets, cakes, and carbonated drinks. It was being surrounded by family, watching The Grinch, Home Alone, Rush Hour or whatever new blockbuster movie we had rented or downloaded probably illegally off the internet. It was that feeling that one can only get by being surrounded by one's people feeling the same thing, grateful to be around them at the end of a long year.
This year I'm left feeling a certain type of way around people not feeling it. So I am trying to conjure that magic within myself, drawing on those memories, wrapping myself in them and then radiating to unsuspecting bystanders.
That is how I ended up at Zhongshan Road, on the second floor of a bookshop, having tea, and playing dress up with my tea host.
ZHONGSHAN ROAD
📍Zhongshan pedestrian street, Siming District 56
中山路步行街思明区中山路56号
Zhongshan Road is part pedestrian street part shopping district. Built in 1925, Zhongshan Road is one of the oldest and largest commercial districts in Xiamen, the length of the street connecting the center of the city to the sea, facing Gulang Island. It is most especially known for the Qilou-style architecture of the buildings lining the length of the strip.
BOOKS
In a second-tier city like Xiamen, there are only a limited number of ways to find books in English. Foreign books translated into Chinese? Plenty.
My options usually are;
a) making a trip to Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong or a first-tier city with a large settled English-speaking community
b) having books shipped to me from home, abroad
d) buying ebooks
Options A and B are unavailable on my student budget.
Option C is a literal landmine of hits and misses. Due to copyright laws, most online sellers have closed their shops, resulting in the general hiking in pricing at those still hanging around. One also needs to have a grasp of more than basic Mandarin to navigate the apps to find a book in English. The irony is not lost on me.
The available books are also limited to textbooks, classic literature, bad business manuals and children's books. On the off chance one finds contemporary fiction in a genre of one's interest, the pricing is ridiculous and you are likely to receive a copy of a book that looks like it has been printed in the back room of a sweatshop.
Option D is fantastic if you have a VPN or you came prepared with the necessary apps pre-downloaded. Despite my intuition, I failed to consider this option while preparing to travel to China. Amazon is slowly exiting the Chinese market and taking Kindle with it.
Which usually leaves me with Option E.
XINHUA BOOKSHOP
📍Siming District Zhongshan Road 151-159
⏰9:30 - 22:00
In every city in China is the state-owned publishing house and bookstore, Xinhua. The bigger the city the more elaborate and well-stocked it is. Most Xinhua bookstores come with a bilingual section, stocking classic literature copies or popular fiction. Again, you take what you can get. Last month it was a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
I read those books in stolen moments, a few chapters a week, usually as a way to cover the fact that I'm eating alone at the cafeteria. Don't feel sorry for me. It's a blessing. Plus I look that much more intellectual to Chinese people who dare to peek over my shoulder to see I'm reading in Mandarin (I mostly glance at the Chinese section when I'm curious about curse words). I console myself with the thought that this way I'm immersing myself in the language, with the hope that next year I can elevate to children's books without an English crutch.
I unfortunately finished reading both books in the first two weeks of November, despite nearly annotating The Pricture of Dorian Gray to bits. I was on the verge of death by boredom.
This month's treat is the second Harry Potter book. I have also sharpened my Option C hunting and I'm hoping to come up with something readable soon. Again, don't feel sorry for me.
TEA
If one is looking for a tea experience, granted commercialized for tourists, look no further than Zhongshan Road. Xiamen has a strong tea culture and Zhongshan Road has tea shops a plenty to sample what it has to offer.
Some shops will let you sample the tea before you can buy it, and let you have some of the biscuits and accompanying tea cakes (I love these. They usually have preserved fruit fillings!). My last trip to Zhongshan Road left me 100 yuan poorer for tea marketed to get rid of my "female problems", insomnia, and shortsight. Again, the irony is not lost on me.
This time I took extra measures to pointedly walk past that shop. And into another.
The tea room on the second floor of the Xinhua bookshop is down a brightly lit passage, edged with traditional Chinese crafts, and the end of which is a two-sitter table, and dangling from the ceiling, beautiful paper lanterns.
It was with curiosity and the feeling of being underwhelmed coming away with only a copy of the Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets, particularly after gazing longingly at the beautiful covers of trashy youth novels in a language I am barely proficient in, that I lowered my guard and headed down that passage.
The tea room appeared abandoned, understandably, as it was the middle of the week (why I chose to venture into town). The tea host looked up from her register and with a broad smile rounded the counter bearing down on me and pulling me into the room, excitedly pointing out things in the room.
Like a lost kitten I followed after her nodding absently and looking about me for an escape route. There was an open window.
When she arrived at a table sitting four people she gently nudged me into the seat. I had the foresight to ask the price of the tea before she reassured me about the menu. She came back with the menu and a card machine in hand, to help me pick the tea. Resigned I picked a type of red tea (红茶 hongcha) because it came with the promise that she could help me pour it.
She directed me to the register to buy my book while she set up the tea.
If I'm being honest, I had a really good time from this point on.
I was practically vibrating in my seat the entirety of the simple tea ceremony. She then took me around the tea house explaining the traditional activities of the Chinese people who would go to these tea houses to listen to storytellers, poetry recitals and watch musicals and plays.
For that afternoon I was taken back centuries, on the second level of a tea house, the street outside below bustling with commercial activity, merchants bringing in their wares from the harbour, and inside, I (a male version of myself) a literati, sipping fragrant tea as I listened to the storyteller.
.
She showed me traditional shadow puppet shows seated beside me while we played out the monkey king story. I let her dress me up in hanfu and posed for several photos for her.
In exchange for her gentle, excited tea tour, I responded appropriately by humming with interest, clapping with excitement and fumbling with joy through repeat demonstrations of the all activities.
The afternoon was passed like this. I was given a constant supply of delicious tea and kept company between chapters of my book. I left with a full heart and bladder. And at onl 45 yuan!
I had found a small piece of Christmas at Zhongshan Road.
Until my next accidental adventure.
Love,
Pat in China.
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