The Joy of the Season

1963, the televisions and concert halls of the UK and the US, four young musicians from Liverpool. The hysteria was known as Beatlemania. 2008, the week before Christmas, the girls dormitories at Jiangsu Teacher's University of Technology in Changzhou, China. The hysteria has no name, but rivaled the popularity of the four English lads. Well, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but not by much. You may be wondering, what was the cause for Beatlemania II? Well, nothing more than 5 slightly inebriated foreign teachers singing Christmas carols on a Friday night.

A while back, Dave and I were talking and we came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sing some carols around campus to spread the Christmas cheer. So we told some of the other teachers; I bought some Santa hats and Dave printed off some lyrics. The president of the school held a special Christmas banquet for all the foreign teachers. This of course meant plenty of toasts, and the wine and beer flowed freely. So after dinner we decided to make it happen. With a few beers, and a bottle of Coke and baijiu, we headed to the girls' dormitory on the main street. We finagled our way past the security women, essentially on the pretext that as "foreign experts" we can get by with anything. What ensued was well, well beyond any of our expectations. Clark, David, Bryan, Danthemanstan, and I were received with the same roaring voices of ecstatic girls as were John, Paul, Ringo, and George 45 years ago. It was crazy. At the first dorm, and the other four we sang to that night, it was mayhem. All of the girls came to their windows or balconies and screamed. Many brought out cell phones or flashlights and waved them in the night. At the two dorms where we were able to walk around the halls (not all the dorm managers were excited that we were disrupting the 'harmonious society') we were followed by mobs of girls. They took countless pictures, and a few of them even tugged at us as we left their floor. Now, Chinese people love to take pictures on their cell phones, but at times the flashbulbs were popping like the it was a rock concert or the 100 meter dash at the Olympics.

As I said, the reaction was well beyond our expectation. But that's not to say that it isn't understandable. As I have mentioned before, life on a college campus in China (and I have been told that our university is fairly normal) isn't quite the four year cruise it is in the States. The students have between 22 and 36 hours of class every week, and certain majors have required reading every morning at seven. Dormitory rooms must be cleaned every day and are subject to an unannounced inspection once a week. Curfew is at 11:00 every night. Electricity is also turned off every night at 11:00, except on the weekends when the luxury of 24 hour electricity is permitted. There is no hot water in the morning, and trust me, with no heating, these students aren't taking cold showers. Oh, and forget about romance, no boys in the girls' dorms and no girls in the boys'. So, given the very studious atmosphere and tight controls on any 'fun', something like our caroling is a big hit. The fact that we were 5 of the 12 people on a campus of 15,000 who aren't the Han Chinese ethnicity also helped (more than a little). In case you want to catch some of the action, there is a video on Danthemanstan's blog, linked to the left.