Halloween in China

I wasn’t optimistic about celebrating Halloween in China. Not least because my Halloween track record has been pretty damn abysmal over most of my son’s childhood.

Halloween has loomed pretty large on our horizons for the big end of a month. Larger, in a way, than Z’s imminent birthday, which we will be spending in Beijing.

Birthdays, you see, can be enjoyed anywhere (last year we went ice skating in Brisbane). Christmas, too. (We’ve had one in Kenya, one in Oz.)

Halloween?

Well, on Halloween, the boy likes to go trick or treating. Something that’s not so easy to arrange in climes as foreign as China.

Still, I figured, we’re in Chengdu. Now, Chengdu is only the second city in Sichuan province — Chongqing is three times its size — but it’s still bigger than either London or New York.

Ergo, someone, somewhere in the city will be trick or treating. Right?

Right.

According to the local expat website, GoChengdoo.com, there’s a full trick or treating outing planned, complete with list of participating houses. Said list is necessary in a city of over ten million people, 99.9% of them unfamiliar with handing out gifts to small boys in devil masks.

Image credit: HalloweenExpress.com

Now, when I say Halloween hasn’t gone well for Z for much of his childhood, I mean that Halloween has been a series of unadulterated cockups since the year after he was old enough to care about it.

Last year we were in Ubud, Bali, with H. Indonesia, like China, does not have an indigenous Halloween culture (though they do make some splendid monsters at Balinese New Year).

Our options? Exxy dress-up ball with the expats in Ubud. Or kids party with face-painting in one of the less swep’-up beach bars in Kuta.

“Don’t worry about the costume, Mum,” says Z. (I’ve never been the kind of alpha parent that can whip up a plausible ladybird outfit using only cardboard boxes, poster paints and double-sided sticky tape. I do, however, occasionally suffer delusions of alpha.) “We can just buy a pumpkin, cut it out and turn it into a mask.”

A blinding idea, right? Classic on-the-road improvisation?

Up to a point, lord copper.

I tootle up to Ubud Market and return with their biggest pumpkin, plus a smaller one for practice. I borrow a knife, a chopping board and a bowl from the guesthouse where we’re staying.

Z starts hacking at the pumpkin then gives up. I start hacking at the pumpkin. It’s a tough pumpkin, a real biggie, and not a particularly sharp knife.

H observes the proceedings silently for a while and says, “Would you like me to do it?”

It’s not quite this bad.

But it’s pretty bad…

You see, the more we dig the more it becomes clear that you need a REALLY BIG pumpkin before it will fit over someone’s head.

It also becomes clear that, even when excavated, a pumpkin is rather too heavy for anyone less physically developed than, say, Arnie in his Pumping Iron era to wear on one’s head with any sort of grace.

Further, that if one excavates too much, the thing begins to disintegrate.

End result?

It’s less a mask than a hat.

And, rather a heavy hat at that.

A sort of cross between mid-Victorian deportment training, a diving bell and some abstruse form of Chinese torture.

It also stinks.

“Don’t worry, Mum,” Z says, wiping a few stray pumpkin seeds out of his hair. “I don’t have to wear it the whole time. I’ll just wear it to make my entrance…”

“F*ck it,” I say. “I think it looks great!”

We hop in the car and head through two and a half hours of heavy traffic to the Discovery Mall…

Where the party is even more of a bust than the pumpkin.

Now, in 2008, Z was in Greece, with granny and grandpa. Hilltop villages in the Mani do not celebrate Halloween.

So in 2009, when Z was also in Greece with Granny and Grandpa, he was so keen to do Halloween properly that he flew back on the 31st to attend his best friend’s Halloween party.

The flight left on time. It arrived on time. It then sat on the runway at Gatwick for three solid hours because the stairs wouldn’t fit on the plane…

They saved some apples for bobbing. But it wasn’t quite the same.

2007? Now, that was the GOOD YEAR. That was the year Z went trick-or-treating, in a street not far from our old house where the local families go all out for Halloween.

2007 was the year against which all other Halloweens will stand or fall.

The Halloween to end all Halloweens…

The trick-or-treating Halloween…

Against which Chengdu has to pass muster.

Z is taking more and more of an interest in our travel planning. This in Chengdu, means earmarking the Science Museum for in-depth inspection, readying himself for a 6.30am start to the Panda Breeding & Research Centre, scouting around for new Sichuan foods, and scrolling through the Chinese leaflets at our hotel.

“LOOK!” he says, hurling the panda leaflet to the ground. “They have a THEME PARK! And it’s open for Halloween!”

Zaijian expats! Ni hao Happy Valley!

We to and fro about costumes. “How about a hockey mask? Like the guy in Friday the Thirteenth?”

“I’m not sure my Chinese is up to finding one of those,” I say. “Do they even play hockey in China? I mean, it’s an Olympic sport, so I guess they must do, but I don’t remember seeing any pitches anywhere…”

In the end, someone tells us they sell masks at the theme park.

For Halloween in China, it appears, is all about the masks. For the guys, it’s full face horror masks, particularly Scream. For the girls, it’s all about glittery masked ball affairs, with the odd set of kitten’s ears or devil’s horns, worn with the uniform of skinny jeans, leggings or shorts and tights.

We go with the flow, well, at least once I’ve found a mask that has space for my nose.

And it’s lovely. The entrance is decked out in ranks of pumpkins. The ferris wheel reflects in the water.

And I realise we’ve never been in a theme park after dark. It’s magical.

Now, mainland Chinese aren’t quite as keen mobile phone photographers as the good folk of East Indonesia, but they’re getting there. Z’s blue eyes make him a magnet for chicks of all ages, including his own.

We have a merry romp through the haunted house, staffed in places by real people and enhanced by a line of Hungry Ghost style dignitaries.

As fans of rollercoasters (especially Battlestar Galactica), we’re disappointed to see that Happy Valley’s coasters are closed for the night. It’s more of a fairground vibe, in fact…

And maybe that’s what you want on Halloween?

We eschew the eight-storey high bouncing descent of death. Much as I’d like to act out that bit at the end of Zombieland, my vertigo, while improving, is not entirely cured. Z has done one of those in Queensland and has no desire to repeat the experience.

Instead, we make our way to what seems like a fairly innocuous octopus-type affair and join the queue. Shortly before we reach the front, I realise that the thing spends half its time spinning you upside down.

We’ve never seen anything like it anywhere. I’m guessing that in most part of the world some sort of safety legislation governs how long you can spend upside down at any one time. Blood on the brain and all that.

Anywise… We’re in, so we board.

Our harnesses click tight. Very tight on me. Rather less tight on Z, who grew an inch overnight last week without compensatory weight gain — quite the reverse in fact.

Still, I figure, we’re not going up that high, and he’s probably 10cm over the minimum height requirement, and, hey, we’re in China, so it’s going to be OK, right?

I grab his hand with my left hand, check I can reach across with the other in case of disaster, and relax into the ride.

We are upside down and spinning on two axes and I’m actually feeling not just unscared but positively zen, in a place of calm triumph over vertigo, when I hear a volley of Anglo-Saxon obscenities.

“What’s the matter?” I yell, over the blast of Lady Gaga, turning my head as far as it will go against the G-Force and noticing, in the process, that my son’s feet are locked around the supports.

“This thing is f*cking unsafe!” he says. “F*cking b*st*rds! I could sue!”

“I’ve got your hand!” I yell.

A particularly vivid stream of swearing follows. (One of the things that is motivating Z to study Chinese is that the language has some of the most vilely graphic obscenities known to man. Even in translation, they’re positively awe-inspiring. I should add, should you, perchance, be contemplating him as a house guest, that he does not swear in non-swearing company.)

The axis spins us slowly down to seated. He gets off, fast.

“So did you really think you could fall out?” I say.

“Hell, yeah!” he says.

“Oh dear,” I say. “I guess that means the really high one is out…”

“F*CK!” he yells. “RUN!”

“What?” I say, vaguely bewildered, and surrounded by Chinese in carnival masks. I don’t see how we can be in any imminent danger…

Well, I mean, no more than we were before…

“RUN!” he says, all fear of falling forgotten. “It’s Justin Bieber!”

I figure anything involving heights and harnesses is out for the foreseeable.

We poddle, sedately, around the various haunted areas of the theme park. Z makes shapes with mobile phone photographers, skeletons, ghosts and combinations of the above.

We eat the largest candyfloss I have ever seen, spun to Z’s prescriptions in shades of blue, pink and yellow. We ride the carousel and debate the ferris wheel.

And then we head to the plaza outside, where they have, oh joy of joys, our favourite Japanese noodle joint in China, Ajisen Ramen. After eating lunch there almost every day during our first three weeks of learning Chinese, we know the menu off by heart.

All that remains? To get back home. We’re off the subway map here at Happy Valley. There aren’t many buses at this time of night, and it took us the big end of an hour getting here in a cab anyway…

Still sporting our masks, we head out through the grass to the eight-lane highway. Whose first two lanes and what might once have been a parking lot are wall to wall with three-wheelers, private cars and — ooh! look! a taxi.

Clearly, the reason no one’s in it is that it’s been prebooked, but all the same, I figure it can do no harm to try.

“You busy?” I ask, in rubbish Chinese.

The dude says something fast in a Chengdu accent. (One of the joys of learning Chinese in China is that every time you hit a new province you have a completely new accent to cope with.)

“I don’t understand,” I say, helplessly. “Slow-slow.”

“Don’t understand,” says one of the guys around the car, helpfully.

Does he mean THE DRIVER doesn’t understand? Or THE CRAZY FOREIGN LADY doesn’t understand? Either way, he’s right…

Alarmingly, this is the kind of basic conversation I can normally cope with quite well.

I’m beginning to feel, well, frazzled. I want to get a lift before the park empties out and I’m competing with five thousand Chinese for, well, a mere few hundred hire vehicles.

It’s hardly the aftermath of a rock concert, and Z’s sharp enough to beat the locals to seats on buses and subways (you can take the boy out of London…). Still it’s not the perfect moment to be grappling with the language.

“Where do you want to go?” says a chick behind me. She’s wearing city shorts, lacy tights and knee boots, a look that seems to be the mark of the Chengdu minicab tout.

“I want to go to Xinnanmen owmniboos station,” I say, in rubbish Chinese.

“Xinnanmen BUS station,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Xinnanmen…”

She, the loitering chaps and the driver all look at me blankly. Holy crap! I haven’t got a dictionary, or a written address, and my Chinese has fallen to pieces.

“My hotail,” I begin, tentatively, my Chinese disintegrating under pressure.

“Your hotEL,” she says, helpfully, unnerving me further…

“…Near my hotel,” I say. “Is the Xinnanmen bus station…”

“Ah!” says the minicab bloke. “Traffic Hotel?”

“Yes!” I say. “Traffic Hotel!”

“80 yuan,” he says.

And decades of negotiating with minicab drivers kick in. “No,” I say. “Too expensive.”

I grab Z, and we walk.

He follows me. “70,” he says.

I keep walking. “60,” he says.

“50,” I say. “From there to here, 50. I buy 50.”

He emits a flood of Chinese which, I assume, translates as, “Not at this time of night, luv.”

“55,” I say.

“60,” he says, making the Chinese number signs for 6 and 10 (in this neck of the woods, devil’s horns and crossed forefingers).

“OK la,” I say.

We arrive at his elderly Chinese sedan. “Wait here,” he says. “My friend comes with us, OK la?”

“Yeah,” I say.

From the window, I watch as he enters negotiations with three students. “Right,” he says, opening the door to the front seat. “You and the kid go here…”

“Oh no, no, no,” I say. “Three friends too many. Too expensive.”

The students start to walk away. This is the last thing I want to happen. We could be here all night while he fills the car up.

“No problem,” I yell after them.

Then, to him, “Sixty too expensive with three friends.”

We settle on forty. I pop Z on my lap, and we head off down the eight lane superhighway, in, actually, a remarkably jolly mood.

Z babbles about the meaning of dreams. It’s been a fine Halloween, all in all. No costume disasters. No death or serious injury. Plenty of new friends. And, in an odd way, distinctly Chinese.

“What theme parks do they have in Beijing?” asks Z, musingly. I’d been thinking he could turn eleven on the Great Wall. But it appears he has his own ideas…