We decided that this year we would make our Christmas Day special by attending church, especially as it fell on a Sunday anyway. We had not attended church in China before - we have had considerable difficulty finding out when and where to go.
Church
The church in Wuxi is a big obvious building, but it is in a busy construction site - all the buildings around it seem to be being re-built or renovated. There is a massive hole in the ground right in front of it, and the air is full of the sound of jack-hammers. I suppose that eventually the church building itself will be out of sight behind some monumental sky-scraper building.
We worked our way along the hoarding around the site, and finally found an open gate with people streaming in. There seemed to be a service of some sort already going on in the church itself, and a large crowd was pressing into the doorway trying to see what was going on. There were also crowds of people heading into another building nearby which was labelled as church offices. Then there were other people sitting around on wooden chairs outside just having a cuppa. Others were just standing gawking at the construction pit and machinery. No one paid much attention to us, not even the other couple of foreigners we saw standing around.
After we had wandered around a little, a Chinese couple came up to us and said hello. They had been in Australia for a few years, and had just come back to visit Wuxi for a few months. They tried to find out for us when and where there was an English service - information we had was 10 am, but they were told by someone around it wasn't until 10.30. So we all decided to go across the road for a cuppa at Macca's while we waited, it gave us a chance to get to know each other a little.
When we came back we went into the big church - there were already a lot of people in there, but no foreigners and it wasn't really looking like it would be an English service.
We sat in a pew - this one had obviously been left empty because the floor there had been used as a toddler's toilet during the previous service - and Peter was having fun taking photos of a cute baby nearby. Suddenly a lady in the pew in front noticed us and started excitably explaining something to us in Chinese, she kept grabbing my arm and trying to drag me away toward the front of the church. Our Chinese friends realised she was saying we were in the wrong place, and we let her lead us right up to the front of the church, across to the other side, out a door and up some stairs.
The "English" service had obviously been going for some time - since 9.30 we found out later - and the tiny classroom sized room was packed. We were grabbed again and led down to the front where they found a couple of spare kindergarten-sized chairs for us to sit on. We were hard up against the piano, and right under the noses of the young pastor who was preaching in Chinese, and a Chinese lady who was translating into English.
And a movie
Our new Chinese friends said they had been planning to meet other friends and go to see a movie at the cinema - would we like to join them? Well, why not, do what the people are doing.
She phoned her friend who went to find out whether this new exciting Chinese movie had English subtitles, and the message soon came back that it did, so we decided to give it a try. Soon we were seated in a small cinema with a tub of multicoloured popcorn, right down near the front.
The movie was magnificent. There is no other way to describe it. Everything was extravagant, overdone maybe, very Chinese. And yes, there were subtitles - in Chinese. Our friends got up and took us back out of the cinema - we had been promised English subtitles. Well, unfortunately we would have to come back to the 3.30 session for that. We considered going in to a different small cinema to watch "Harry Potter" with English subtitles, but that would somehow spoil the experience. So we went back in and sat and watched it in Chinese. We were amazed how much we did understand, both of the spoken and written words, and of course we had our friends there to explain and interpret.
It seems that every Chinese person would like to be a super-hero, to be able to run at the speed of light, and to fly, and to fight by leaping and spinning, to appear and disappear. I have endured small amounts of Chinese movies on TV that are full of this stuff. But this one was so big in every way, and not just because it was on the big screen. It was like a peek into the Chinese psyche, and a reminder that our cultures are so very different.
Christmas Dinner
We came out of the movie with that funny lost feeling you can have after watching an epic - it had felt like about five hours, but apparently it was only two - and we were hungry. A friend in Australia had asked me what I would be having for Christmas lunch, and this was the moment to find out.
We went across the road into a food court - we had thought to eat there before the movie, but it was too crowded to get in the door. We are often in the city at lunchtime on a Sunday, and it is always difficult to find somewhere that's not too crowded.
We had a big bowl of noodles each, and a little plate of meat. It was very filling and satisfying, and different from any other Christmas lunch we've had.
Bus ride home
Well, the city was packed, far more than usual. We decided to catch a bus as close as possible to it's starting point, because the buses were all bursting full. As we approached one of the stops where there are buses heading in our direction, there was a crowd that extended out into the road, filling the first traffic lane. There was a bus just arriving, not one we wanted, and the crowd surged towards it. Then we saw down the street our bus approaching. We forced our way through the crowd and arrived just as it pulled up. We were almost the first ones there, but in no time there were shoulders and elbows pushing their way between us and the bus door. Being slightly taller than many of those around him, Peter managed to reach over their heads and grab hold of the rail on the door of the bus. A strange murmur went through the crowd as he pulled himself towards the door. I grabbed hold of the back of his jacket so as not to get separated, and was amused to see several other hands holding on there too.
We managed to get on, and grabbed a standing space quite close to the back exit door. The people just kept pouring on, and we just stood our ground and held on to our selected handles. Finally the bus rumbled off the mark and around the corner. At the next stop it halted only long enough to let one person leap out of the back door - the driver did not open the front door to let anyone on. As we drove on we heard yelling and someone banging on the side of the bus.
When we clambered out at our stop and climbed up to our apartment we felt like we had had a long day, but it was only about three o'clock in the afternoon. Plenty of time still to settle down and watch a good $1 DVD in English.
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