The IAPM Mall Killing Two Birds with One Stone Christmas and the New Star Wars Film

Naturally Christmas is not a big thing here in Shanghai, although the big hotels, the shopping malls and the western restaurants all put Christmas decorations up during the first couple of weeks of December.  But there is not the western shopping frenzy and or much Christmas music and if there is, it is usually Santa Claus Is Coming To Town or Jingle Bells although I did hear a jazzed-up version of Silent Night in City Super on Monday – I expect they didn’t know what they were playing.  There are Christians in town and a couple of churches, along with the temples and mosques of other faiths, and people are now allowed to worship in them, although I understand it is forbidden for anyone to preach about the Resurrection.

The Christmas Tree at Sasha’s – The Former Soong Family Home

Birch Wreath

Painted Baubles

With no family around us, there is the begging question of how much bother do we go to with our decorations and celebrations.  I have bought a birch wreath for the front door to our apartment, because I liked it and want to take it home with me, but it is the only

Cloisonné Baubles

decoration I have bothered to put up.  We did buy some painted baubles and some cloisonné ones each in their own red box at the German Christmas market a couple of weeks ago, because we liked them and they will be returning to the UK in a suitcase sometime next year.  And I have been to a number of Christmas lunches – the Brits Abroad one, the quilting group one and the one at work, the first two in the first week of December as people are heading home for Christmas so they are held before everyone leaves.  The one at Richard’s work was done last Friday, a week before Christmas.  I have found Christmas pudding and mince pies together with brandy butter at Marks and Spencer and I have taken these to take to seasonal parties, although if I were at home I would have been making my own from scratch.

It’s quite liberating not going through the whole rigmarole of Christmas preparations and maybe when we eventually get home to the UK we will have a less homemade Christmas then I’ve done before.  The family always complained that I was far too frazzled by the process anyway – I always thought that if they helped a bit more, I wouldn’t be that way.  But with Richard having his most frenetic season at work, with it only stopping at lunchtime on Christmas Eve when all the food was already in the supermarkets, I was never really going to get much help, except on Christmas Day. I always spread the shopping, card, wrapping paper, presents, mincemeat, pudding, sloe gin, sausage roll, decorations, stocking, parties, drink, goose, salmon, veggies, soups, flowers, party food, leftovers, New Years Eve process out as much as possible, but I do know I got caught up by the seductive festive food porn on television that made me think that next year I’d like to give that a go………I do think Delia Smith has a lot to answer for for that mad rush on Christmas Eve to go into the shops “go first thing to get the freshest produce possible”.  Anyone in the industry will tell you that if you buy it a couple of days before Christmas Eve it will be just as fresh as Delia thinks it is on Christmas Eve – no-one is out in the fields scrabbling around on December 23rd cutting down sprout stalks, lifting carrots or parsnips or carving a red cabbage from its outer leaves.  Give yourself a bit of sanity and shop after 6pm December 22nd or 23rd and you’ll be serving food just as fresh as everyone else and you might actually find yourself in a rather empty shop.

Despite all this I have found myself wanting to go out and find a bit of Christmas.  A couple of weekends ago we went to a Christmas Market in the grounds of the German Bier Keller, the Paulaner Bauhaus, in the former French Concession, where we were served mulled wine in blue porcelain mugs with rubber rubber lids and heat protectors, bought ourselves a german sausage or two and bought the above mentioned baubles, all in the rain.

The Butchers

Steamed Dumpling Shop

Last weekend we went to the once-a-fortnight “farmers’ market” at Jiashan Market.  A community project run by an enterprising Brit, there were 12 or so stalls run by people of various nationalities, selling presents, beer, mulled wine and an assortment of food.  The market itself was in a small courtyard down an alleyway off a lane

A Chinese Baby “Walker”

A Calligrapher Selling Fans

where there were locals with typical local shops.  Down the alleyway on the way to the courtyard was an antique shop, selling amongst other things a chair designed to hold a baby in a standing position a sort of baby walker – the frame below the plate is pulled in and out to trap the baby at the back of the chair – we’ve seen one of these chairs in use in Fujian Province – and a calligrapher selling decorated fans.

The Stalls at Jiashan Market

Father Christmas Selling Shanghai Roasted Coffee

Father Christmas No. 2

There were 12 or so stalls at the Farmers’ Market and two Father Christmas. We could have bought mince pies, mulled wine, Stollen, brownies, Christmas pudding as well as our  lunch.  Richard had an interesting conversation with an American selling British Beer brewed in Shanghai………

I liked the on-board panda and as we left the market the man having a haircut at the open- air barbers. And a little further up the street on the way back to the metro station, we passed this house.  Each time we see it we can see its former glory.  What a magnificent house it must have been, but nowadays smothered in post revolution detritis.