Case Study #2: Hosting Thanksgiving in China
Time is a mysterious and elusive creature. One moment you are running at a dead sprint trying desperately just to catch a glimpse at its shadow. The next thing you know you feel like you’ve been stood up at a dinner date, checking your watch continually and wondering if Time is ever going to show up.
In China, I initially felt like Time was some slow tortoise that could barely be bothered to move. Each week seemed like an eternity, and I never even took a moment to consider what I would be doing for the holidays because I honestly thought they might never get here. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that in the marathon to Thanksgiving, the tortoise was suddenly smirking at me from the finish line. With just one week to plan, my fellow American friend, Rand, and I decided to throw a Thanksgiving feast for all the people we cared about in Hefei.
Our original plan was to cook some traditional dishes and invite all our closest friends to celebrate at one of our apartments. We started brainstorming what to make and soon realized that nearly all of the recipes required the use of an oven. They don’t have ovens in China. The next best thing was the small toaster oven that Rand and his roommate, Riva, have. It could probably fit a small chicken, but would never be able to handle an entire turkey, let alone the rest of the dishes on our menu. Another issue was that most of the ingredients would be challenging to find, and thus would likely be very expensive. Because of my work schedule, I would only have the day of the dinner in order to prepare and help get things ready. With that many strikes against us, we concluded it would be wiser to host the dinner at a restaurant instead.
Hefei has a nearly non-existent ex-pat population, and the idea of a foreign tourist ever visiting this city is both laughable and unfathomable. Because of this, in a city of more than 3 million people there is only one place we knew of that would be serving a traditional Thanksgiving meal at their restaurant: The Hilton.
Rand and I consulted with the restaurant manager and reserved an area that could seat 25 people and requested that the tables be pushed together to form one long table. This request seemed simple enough to us, but the very idea of it proved to be almost too much for the manager to handle. She was convinced that it would be inconvenient and people would much rather be at smaller tables. We told her that this was the traditional way of eating a Thanksgiving meal, and she said she would try to make it happen for our feast.
It was a relief getting that out of the way, and was very comforting to know that there would be a delicious assortment of professionally cooked Thanksgiving themed dishes for our guests to enjoy. But Rand and I still wanted to bring something homemade to the dinner to add that personal touch. We considered making pie, but the restaurant manager mentioned that there would be both pumpkin and pecan pie available at the extensive dessert bar. And so we settled on cookies. What could be more American than a chocolate chip cookie? And what tastes more like the Holidays than a bite of a sugary gingerbread cookie?
On Thanksgiving morning at 9:00 we headed to the store to get our ingredients (technically stores, it took a few tries to find everything we needed). We were back to his place and busy prepping by 11:00. For the next five and a half hours Rand, Riva and I slaved away in their tiny kitchen making some of the tastiest cookies I’ve ever had. Because they don’t have chocolate chips in China, we opted to use the ridiculously expensive (and ridiculously good) Lindtt 85% special dark chocolate bars that we found in one of the stores. We broke the bars into chunks, occasionally taste testing to ensure the quality was suitable for our cookies. We used highly scientific guesswork on the measuring, kneaded the dough by hand, and incorporated Ford’s assembly line techniques for getting the cookies on the trays, in the oven, and back off the trays without breaking the fresh-baked fragile cookies. Though we were not in our home countries, and though we were baking on a much smaller scale, or at least with a smaller oven, it was still a day devoted to preparing food in anticipation of a night sharing it with the people we love.
At 6:30 my roommate, George, and I met up with Rand and Karita and walked across the street to The Hilton. As we were walking on the sidewalk a mini-midget beggar ran up to Rand and bear hugged his leg and wouldn’t let go until we gave some money. It was particularly strange that she chose to go after Rand considering he is roughly 6’5” and this person didn’t even go up to his hip. After a good laugh (it was really funny . . . . and awkward) we gave her some change and proceeded in to the restaurant. And there in the back was our single long table for 25. They had even decorated it with green apples and various nuts. It was perfect. The rest of the evening was a dizzy blur of mixed English and Chinese conversations, endless photo opps and sumptuous Thanksgiving food. Toward the end of the evening, some of the servers rolled up an entire turkey for our table. We had no idea they were going to cook a whole bird for our party, so it came as a very exciting surprise. We gave a toast, filled up on turkey and cookies, and had a truly wonderful evening.
When you spend Thanksgiving away from your home and away from your family, it’s easy to assume that it won’t be as good because it ‘just won’t be the same.’ I learned that this assumption is only partly true. The people and the place are certainly different, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be as good. When you adhere to the traditions, and share them with people you care about, it doesn’t matter where you are, the warm and soothing feeling you get is still the same. I will always be thankful that I got to learn this lesson for myself. I will always be thankful for my Chinese Thanksgiving.
Summary: If you are in a foreign country for Thanksgiving, host a turkey day feast. Understand that you will probably spend a lot of money, but know this: it will be worth it.
