Cloudy in Beijing Blogging about my time in China

Wan sheng jie (Chinese for Halloween)

They don't really celebrate Halloween in China, so I've been deprived of free candy and the sight of costumes. The only thing I did related to the holiday was play Michael Jackson's Thriller on my iPod.

It makes me feel guilty. The day is almost over, and I've done hardly nothing to make it more festive. Instead I spent part of my day at a Buddhist temple and museum, then later visited the college's Chess club, where I lost my first game in less than 15 moves.

It's raining and I'm too tired to try and make up for it. I imagine that many of the foreigners on campus are out at some Halloween party. I sit here finishing up some part-time work.

Holidays are weird in China. I always feel like I should do something to celebrate the American one's, but I'm too lazy to do anything. I might buy a plastic Christmas tree the size of a potted plant, or eat at McDonald's to commemorate Thanksgiving. But it just leaves me feeling more inadequate; like how now I just feel like a nerd for having played Chess on Halloween.

Meanwhile, the rest of the student body is studying, and probably had classes to attend this evening. My roommate, who is Korean, decided to go to bed before it was 10:00 p.m. Recently I learned that even people in Australia don't celebrate Halloween.

(I took this picture today at the Songtang Zhai Museum in Beijing. "Cao beauty  throws watermelon at father's corpse" read the display to this centuries old piece of art.)