Christmas Variety Special

We were asked to participate in a Christmas variety show with most of the other foreign teachers in the university. The show was on Saturday night, and evidently, it was the hot ticket of the night. Each teacher invited their students so we were expecting about 150-200 people. 30 minutes before the show began the 200 seat auditorium was full and all 300 of the programs were gone. This did not deter the people that arrived later, they just pushed in, and soon all the aisles were full of students. Unfortunately, we didn't charge for the event. Apparently, this was the first time any foreign teachers had performed a show for the students.

The event started with Mike Collier's (the "compere") speech about the meaning of Christmas, including a power point of the creation story which started with Genesis! As we expected, most people did not understand. Eventually, he made his way around to the history of Santa Claus. One of the more impressive parts of the show followed Mike's lengthy history lesson. The students from Pam Collier's (Mike's wife) class recited "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" by memory. You can see the video of the ending below.

As the students filed off the stage, the lights went down and when they came back up Santa Claus was on stage! 300 screaming, obsessed college students pushed forward in hopes of a single present from the jolly old elf (portrayed by Dan - you can see his pic in our last blog). It seems that the mixture of a giving, yet sometimes borderline commercial holiday with hyper-materialized, yet deprived young people, will create a mini-riot. Soon, Dan was on the floor with hundreds of college kids on top of him, grabbing his bag and ripping gifts out of his hand. All the foreign teachers ran to his aid, though we were a bit afraid he might have a heart attack! We all lined up like police officers at a concert with our arms outstretched trying to ward off the teeming crowd. Sadly, any time presents were mentioned, given, or even alluded to, the riots would begin anew.

Hopefully, the students also learned about Christmas fun that doesn't include presents. Like songs! Paul, a foreign teacher from England, and I were the musical portion of the evening. Paul plays an impressive guitar. We combined to sing "Santa Claus is Comin' To Town," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and we also led two songs with all the other teachers and the audience - "Silent Night," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." Chinese students LOVE music, and despite their shyness, can always break into song whenever, wherever; so the music was a big hit.

There were also student performances in the show. The German class sang "O Tannenbaum," completely in German and my speaking class sang "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer." Some of our other classes were jealous when they found out about their peers being featured, rather than them. Darbie's class kept coming up to her exclaiming, "What a pity that our class cannot participate!"





Each of the foreign teachers was given a role, either as leader of a game (i.e. charades, memory) singer, host, etc. To the right you will see some of Darbie's students who were picked to participate as a team in one of the games. For each game, the winners got to get a gift from under the christmas tree so naturally there was pandamonium whenever we requested volunteers for the games.


Thanks to the fact that we have foreign teachers from all over the world, the students also learned how Christmas is celebrated in their countries: Norway, Mexico, South Africa and Germany. Darbie read a Christmas poem complete with pictures on a large screen. After her successful reading, she also took it upon her tiny self to do much needed crowd control (remember Santa and the presents?). What an intimidating little elf!
Besides the rioting over 5 yuan presents, the Christmas show went pretty well. We ended with all the teachers singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," and Santa gave his famous line, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!" We thought the show was over, but in reality, it was just beginning. The students ran up to the stage and took turns taking loads of pictures featuring the foreign teachers, mostly with their cell phones. Most were our students, but we also took pictures with more than few eager strangers.



These are some of the girls in my speaking class. Shirley (back right) looks pretty angry that she's having to share camera-time. Meanwhile, Hillary is just about to enter Ice's nose with her "V" salute. We even managed to get a picture of ourselves! Here's our 2007 Christmas photo!



We should have one more before Christmas!

DB & KM

PS: Extra bonus video, click if you dare!