Without family in Beijing, a bittersweet Christmas feast
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Abi Brown from Britain is spending her 5th Christmas away from home this year in Beijing. [Photo: CRIENGLISH.com] |
Christmas dinner in Beijing is a time for chirpy, multilingual gatherings and surrounding ourselves with new, yet close friends around the table laden with way too much western food and drinks that represent a bittersweet taste of home.
Even though we celebrate, being away from home during Christmas time does stir up a lot of old memories and makes us realize how far away from our families we really are. Culturally, we learn that Christmas is a time to be thankful and yet it's hard not to get a bit sentimental when your loved ones are thousands of miles away.
Many foreigners ambitiously moved here leaving a life behind in their countries to start fresh here in China. Moving so far away to a place so different can be a sense of pride in accomplishment, both on an individual level and perhaps for the family, but it also has its consequences.
Certainly, China is an amazing journey for us; as expats, we are truly fortunate to be here and we do realize that we have chosen a different path for which to pursue our dreams. Furthermore, we are living in a fascinating culture and undoubtedly a country that is still lunging forward while our own countries have been economically debilitated by this global financial crisis.
Yet, Christmas becomes a time when we sometimes question why we left our families behind to relocate across the world and encompass ourselves with a constantly changing group of friends as well as unpredictable surroundings.
The reality is that for many expats, it's been months, if not a year or more since we have seen our families. Our parents and siblings were most likely confused by our initiatives to move to China in the first place, and it now saddens them around the holidays to plan the festivities without us.
It's not uncommon to feel unequivocally guilty when neither time nor finance permits for a plane ticket home for the holidays. Confessing to Mom that coming home for Christmas isn't possible is a somber experience and at Christmas dinners in China, there always seems to be an internally confined and subtle regret lurking beneath the surfaces of the smiles at the party.
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