Foreign Territory: Different kind of Christmas

The holidays will be different this year. There's just no getting around it. Forgetting for a moment the fact that we're living in a culture that doesn't observe Christmas, it's also a first for celebrating away from our families. So, feeling a little down, I set out in search of a flower market that I had heard would be selling Christmas decorations. I wasn't expecting much, maybe a tiny snowman or a box of candy canes, anything to make the apartment feel more like home at Christmas.

We didn't know exactly where we were going. Since it was more than an hour's trip away from the apartment I had dragged Joel out with me for the expedition. I had a general idea of which metro stop to take and from there I was relying on a rough translation of the words "flower" and "market" to get us there in a taxi.

We hail the first cab we see upon exiting the subway. We recite the prepared words we've studied that we think mean "flower market" and after a few minutes of confused arguing we get back out of the cab. Seeing that plan A didn't work (and we can't say we were surprised, really) we decide to phone a friend. We hail a second cab, more confident this time because we have a native Shanghai-er on the phone to translate for us. With a few rough grunts that indicate he has at least understood what we want we're off. Our friend told us to expect a 20 minute taxi ride, so when we get dropped off in the middle of the road not 5 minutes later we're a little wary. At any rate, with no other options to speak of we enter under the arch the driver is pointing to and find this:

The market


The arch. Not very promising is it?

Really loud birds.

The clump of white in the blue cage is a bunch of rabbits.

It's an animal market. Full of birds and dogs and rabbits huddled together for warmth. We search high and low looking for a secret entrance to the flower market that I know must exist, but to no avail.

We exited the market and walk around for another half an hour looking for any sign of it. I'll admit that at this point I was a bit...distressed. It was one of those days when disappointment over something small instantaneously floods into something bigger, missing home, missing friends, feeling like you're completely lost in the middle of a huge city with no way to communicate with anyone. And just like that, I was crying in the middle of the sidewalk surrounded by Chinese people.

Honestly, it wasn't so much a woe-is-me cry as an I'm-furious-and-there's-nothing-else-I-can-do-about-it-right-now cry. Nevertheless, I took a few moments to get it out of my system, and set back towards the metro to go home. We must have asked a dozen people where to find the market and no one knew what we were talking about. Finally I happened on a tiny boutique store that had some interesting looking things in the window, so I slipped inside hoping to find something to make my journey worthwhile.

The shop owner was friendly, and I bought items that fit the bill. As we were leaving I decided to try one last time for the flower market. Low and behold- he knew! He said we were just five minutes away. [I had him write down the address in Chinese to be safe].

And we found this...

A winter wonderland of Christmas! They had giant trees and tinsel and snowflakes. I was in heaven! It was all completely ridiculous, of course, none of it quite made sense. Like, the angels would have bows and arrows or the snowmen salt and pepper shakers would all be for Pepper, no salt, but it was so much fun to explore. I got some ribbon and a couple of strings of lights to put on our little tree that mom brought over. And then there were the flowers...

Stalls and stalls full of fresh cut flowers waiting to be arranged! Entire shops full of orchids or other exotic plants. It was delightful. On the way out a grabbed some white ranunculous, a purple cabbage flower, a few stems of eucalyptus and some lavender wax flower to make a nice wintery arrangement. So here's the end result. Our "Christmas apartment."