Harry Christmas!

Christmas is a wonderful time in Beijing. Despite being a secular country, Beijing seems to embrace all the fun aspects of Christmas. There are twinkly Christmas trees on every corner, improbable-looking Santas on all the shop windows and Christmas greetings everywhere. HARRY CHRISTMAS! is my personal favourite.
Determined to put a bit of the Christmas spirit into our apartment we went to the market in Ladies Street to buy a tree. It's fibreoptic and changes colours at a rapid rate, which I find entrancing. Here I am with our tree in a taxi, on the way home.
We had some of our new friends around for dinner that night and they helped us put the tree up, a new experience for them.
Here it is looking beautiful.
And here's my very own Santa!

It seems that the pre-Christmas twinkly decorations are as far as it goes in China. December 25 is a working day, just like any other here. After some excited present opening, Ian went off to work and I went off to my Chinese language class! We talked to family in the afternoon when he got home, and then walked to Traders Hotel, about ten minutes beside a frozen river from our apartment. We had Christmas dinner, turkey, cranberry sauce, Christmas pud, gingerbread, the lot.