My First Chinese Halloween

I was in Beijing the last weekend visiting a friend.  Wanting to celebrate, we found a Halloween party and dressed up in makeshift costumes comprised of sunglasses and Soviet cossack hats.  The party was fun...until one tiny incident occurred to ruin the rest of the evening.  That story is for another time, but suffice it to say that it put me in a foul mood for Monday.

Halloween in Chinese is "Wan sheng jie."  It isn't exactly a popular holiday, but it is one most of my students have heard of.  Some of them even went to the local Dinosaur-themed park to celebrate.  To celebrate the holiday in class (and get rid of my funk from Beijing) I told them a "ghost story."  This one I remembered from my childhood, and it is about a boy who loves a girl who always wears a yellow ribbon around her neck.  As the grow old together he keeps asking her about the ribbon and she never gives him a straight answer.   It isn't exactly a tale for scaring people around a campfire, but it is still creepy, and that counts.  Personally I think it is a great tale, but my students didn't seem to like the somewhat anti-climactic (but absolutely perfect) ending.  I won't tell you how it ends, but you can probably guess when you think about it (what "Halloween" image does "neck" conjure up?).  

After my tale, I had them write there own ghost stories.  Some were absolutely wonderful original (I think) works about vengeful ghosts, spiritual mediums, and creepy collegiate murder mysteries.  I gave them the option of translating a traditional Chinese tale into English (in their own words of course).  One that was particularly interesting was tale which they called "Rebirth."  It was about a mother who gave her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to her "faceless" daughter so that she could marry her true love.  The mother is then reincarnated as her granddaughter, still "faceless" and the mother then gives her sensory organs to the new daughter.  And the cycle keeps going on.  Not exactly a ghost story, but certainly creepy.

My students do know how to spin a good yarn.  Sometimes you just have to force them to do it. 

Leb Wohl.