I’m a month late posting this; I’m so sorry. In October, we had our Halloween festival. Officially, the school celebration wasn’t Halloween but instead “Autumn Festival,” thanks to the Chinese government’s decision to not allow western holidays to be promoted in schools, but the Chinese are quite adept at skirting around roadblocks like this. Plus, I honestly didn’t care what the government said; I still put up a “Happy Halloween” banner and stood by it.

One thing I noticed a difference in is the variety of costumes here vs. the kids back at my other school in Guangzhou (although there were several kids who came in with the same outfit but dressed slightly differently). I was also surprised by the number of parents who dressed up. Some wore very simple masks, while others seemed to have gone all out. I was pleasantly surprised by this. I’m sorry I didn’t take photos (my excuse being that I had to tend to the kids while out on the field).

The events for that day were for everyone to gather out on the sports field so parents and kids could all try to dance along with some of the foreign teachers as they did two dances. Needless to say, this didn’t really work out as too many people didn’t know the dance and there were too many parents and kids in costumes who were distracted. Later on, the kids went around the school trick-or-treating and went to each classroom to do whatever activity was going on in there. My co-teacher and I weren’t really in the mood to go all out, so we just opted for the standard (boring) traditional activity of having a child and parent try to hold an object between themselves and try to walk to the other end of the room without dropping it. In this case, it was a soft, pillowy pumpkin that I bought online. Maybe next year I’ll opt for something grander.

The school also decided to get a pumpkin for each class. I haven’t carved a pumpkin in many years, so in theory, it would have been fun to get to relive a part of my childhood. However, I also realized that it would be messy, and I also didn’t quite trust that the kids wouldn’t get overexcited and disrupt the carving. So, I opted for allowing them to “decorate” the pumpkin by drawing on it with markers. The pumpkin didn’t go to waste, though, as my co-teacher and our ayi (maid/cleaner) chopped it up to take home. I assume they tried to wash off the marker (maybe).

Hopefully, I will be able to get more holiday material as Christmas (or perhaps “Winter Festival,” as the school will likely call it) and Chinese New Year are on the way.