China's Yuletide Revolution
Nation's Yuppies Embracing
Christmas as Time for Love;
Ms. Ji, Romance and KFC
Last Dec. 24, Beijing resident Jessica Ji had one Christmas wish: a date.
The 25-year-old Web-site editor was determined to avoid a repeat of Christmas 2003, when she waited for two hours in the bitter cold to have dinner with her parents at a Pizza Hut, whose ostrich pizza is a yuletide favorite in the Chinese capital.
So Ms. Ji lined up a Christmas Eve rendezvous. She and her date ended up talking for six hours over dinner at a trendy coffeehouse. Things went so well that at 11 p.m. they decided to go to the movies. Ms. Ji sent a text message to her mother's cellphone: "I am not going back home tonight. It is Christmas Eve."
For China's yuppies, the true spirit of Christmas is romance.
Despite its commercialization, Christmas in the West is still centered on the family, with obligatory festive dinners and, often, churchgoing. In mostly atheist China, the holiday is increasingly celebrated by young urban couples, and on the street rather than at the hearth or the altar. To the Chinese yuppie fascinated by exotic foreign ways, Christmas is about oneself and one's personal relationships -- two aspects of life that both traditional Chinese culture and communist ideology play down.
"Christmas, to the urban Chinese youth, is a chance to express themselves without any official restrictions," says Jiwei Ci, a professor of philosophy at the University of Hong Kong.
A young couple celebrates Christmas Eve 2002 outside a Roman Catholic cathedral in Beijing.
Chinese get their fill of family during the annual Lunar New Year celebration, an obligation so heavy that it spurs perhaps the world's largest annual migration of humans as folks head home. "It's completely a waste of time to visit a bunch of relatives and to eat that heavy food," says Hu Peifeng, a 26-year-old graduate student at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "Christmas is better since I can do whatever I want without any obligations."
The holiday offers marketers and merchandisers a shot at a group whose purchasing power is rising rapidly. Credit Suisse First Boston predicts that the number of urban Chinese households earning more than $5,000 a year will increase 24% annually over the next 10 years. The bank says that figure is a crucial threshold for the disposable income that creates "new consumers."
While it is hard to measure Christmas spending, hotels, restaurants and even big-box retailers looking for a piece of that disposable income are pitching love to young urbanites eager for a cultural opportunity to celebrate romance. The Radisson Plaza Xing Guo Hotel in Shanghai, for example, offers a romantic Christmas Eve package including a sumptuous breakfast for about $110 a couple.
Shopping is also a part of the Chinese Christmas, but it is more about browsing, hanging out with friends and sharing the holiday than scooping up gifts to exchange. "The culture and idea of giving things to people you love doesn't exist in China as part of Western festivals like Christmas," says Edward Bell, the Beijing planning director for WPP Group PLC's Ogilvy & Mather ad agency.
At a Wal-Mart Stores Inc. location in the southern city of Dongguan, customers leave handwritten love notes as ornaments on a plastic tree. "I don't have a boyfriend now, but I wish I had one for next Christmas," reads one. Nearby, a skinny Santa mannequin sits at a table for two, complete with candles and a bottle of wine. In another display, cans of spray snow are arranged in the shape of a heart.
Pizza Hut's ostrich pizza is one of many pitches aimed by businesses at Chinese consumers fascinated by the foreign holiday.
Shanghai's unofficial capital of Christmas is Ikea, where young professionals gather to listen to traditional Swedish Christmas carols and taste free ginger cookies and saffron bread.
"We want it to become a tradition," says Ulf Smedberg, China marketing manager for Inter IKEA Systems B.V. "To get in the Christmas mood, you should go to Ikea."
And they do. Last year Ikea sold out of its stock of Christmas decorations two weeks before the big day. So this year, the company quadrupled its supply and started the Christmas-decoration shopping season in October. By now, tealight lanterns and stockings have sold out.
Of course, China isn't the only place where young singles and couples use Christmas as an excuse to dress up, go out and have fun. But here, except for China's tiny Christian minority, that is all there is to the holiday, as 20-somethings with a few yuan in their pockets remake the holiday in their own image -- often drawing on foreign movies and other cultural imports that can get mangled in translation.
Christmas has also become a boon to China's resurgent film industry, stimulating a revival of moviegoing as an alternative to buying a bootleg DVD. Here, Christmastime, unlike summertime and Thanksgiving weekend in the U.S., is the top-grossing movie week of the year, helping blockbusters like last year's "Kung Fu Hustle" rake in millions of dollars. This year the industry is counting on a Christmas boom for the kung fu love story "The Promise," by Chinese director Chen Kaige. In Beijing alone the film had sold 15 million advance tickets by Dec. 8 for its Dec. 15 release. The movie grossed about $9.1 million in its first week in China, which is a new record, according to Chinese news reports.
Some gather at all-night Christmas Eve romantic-movie marathons, as Web-site editor Ms. Ji and her date did after their dinner. For Ms. Ji, Beijing's freezing winter weather added a certain ambiance: The theater was so poorly heated that her date gave her his jacket and sweater. When morning came, they had breakfast at a KFC.
China's Communist Party isn't a big fan of Christmas, but the few state-sanctioned Christian churches are popular during the holidays, mostly as a spectacle for people like editor Lang Song, 25, and her boyfriend.
Last Christmas Eve, they had drinks at a restaurant across the street from Beijing's Wang Fu Jing Catholic Church, hoping to catch the midnight church bell. "We thought it was romantic," Ms. Lang says. They even tried to enter the church but were blocked by hordes of other revelers, mostly couples holding candles and setting off minifireworks.
Church officials don't mind the attention. "It is certainly a new thing for the Chinese, and I don't think there is anything strange or wrong with curiosity," says a church officer who identified himself as Mr. Li.
If Christmas in China is odd, it all makes sense to the Chinese, says Wang Qun, the spokeswoman for Yum Brands Inc.'s Pizza Hut in China. Here, the ubiquitous Pizza Hut has developed a unique niche as an exotic yet affordable treat. So nobody bats an eye at coming in on Christmas Eve -- the chain's second-busiest occasion of the year, after Valentine's Day -- for a set meal of ostrich pizza, escargot and a house-shaped brownie.
"We are just having fun with the food," Ms. Wang says. "It's just that this is China, and Western tradition is not deeply rooted here. It is the same thing as if Westerners picked up a Chinese food holiday and started to serve turkey."
中国白领的圣诞节
去年的12月24日，北京女孩Jessica Ji的圣诞心愿是：和男友一起过一个浪漫的圣诞之夜。
这位25岁的网站编辑决定避免重演2003年圣诞节的一幕，当时她和父母冒著瑟瑟寒风在必胜客(Pizza Hut)门前等了两个小时，就是想要品尝必胜客在北京推出的圣诞特色食品──无比大鸟圣诞比萨。
这次，Jessica精心选择了平安夜的约会地点。她和男友在一家新潮的咖啡屋边吃边聊度过了6个小时。一切进展顺利，11点时，他们决定去看电影。Jessica用手机给她的妈妈发了条短信：“我晚上不回家了。今天是平安夜。”
对中国的白领来说，圣诞节的精髓就是浪漫。
尽管受到商业化浪潮的冲击，但在西方，圣诞节仍是以家庭为中心度过的，家庭晚宴是必不可少的节目，通常全家人还会一道去教堂祈祷。在大多数人都信奉无神论的中国，也有越来越多的城市年轻男女庆祝圣诞，不过圣诞夜他们大多会在外面而不是在家中或教堂度过。对于迷恋异国情调的中国白领来说，圣诞节是很私人的节日，也是一个增进人际关系的机会──而这两方面正是中国传统文化和共产主义意识形态所不屑一顾的。
香港大学(University of Hong Kong)哲学系教授慈继伟说，对大陆城市里的年轻人而言，圣诞节是他们表达自我且不会受到正式礼节约束的一个机会。
中国人会在一年一度的春节期间阖家团聚，大家对这个节日都非常重视，以至于每年年初都会出现或许是世界上最大的返乡人流。清华大学26岁的研究生胡佩峰（音）说：“集中走访众多亲友、大吃大喝纯粹是浪费时间。圣诞节更好一些，我可以做我想做的事情，没有任何必须履行的义务。”
圣诞节也给商家带来了机会，使他们得以发掘一个购买力迅速增长的新客户群。据瑞士信贷第一波士顿(Credit Suisse First Boston)预计，今后10年，年收入超过5,000美元的中国城市家庭的数量每年将增长24%。该机构认为，5,000美元的可支配收入是创造“新消费群”的一个重要门槛。
AC尼尔森(AC Nielsen Corp.)本月在北京、上海和广州对15至54岁年龄段的人口进行了一项调查发现，过圣诞节的人节日期间的平均预算为47美元，而其中月收入超过617美元的人平均预算为147美元。酒店、饭店甚至大卖场都在竭尽全力吸引希望体味浪漫生活的城市年轻人。比如，上海兴国宾馆(Radisson Plaza Xing Guo Hotel)就安排了浪漫的平安夜活动，其中包括每对110美元左右豪华早餐。
购物也是中国圣诞节的内容之一，但更多的是闲逛，同朋友一起打发时间，共享节日，购买礼品相互交换倒在其次。AC尼尔森的调查发现，在表示喜欢过圣诞节的城市人口中，有53%的人称，他们最喜欢这种“情调”；只有8%的人称，他们希望交换礼物。WPP Group PLC旗下奥美公司(Ogilvy & Mather)的北京的策划主管贝尔(Edward Bell)说，中国人在过圣诞节这样一个西方节日时，向所爱的人赠送礼物的做法并不是主要内容。
在广东东莞的沃尔玛(Wal-Mart Stores Inc.)连锁店里，有些顾客离开时会在一颗塑料圣诞树上的卡片上写下爱的祝愿。其中有一条写道：“我现在没有男朋友，但我希望明年圣诞节时能有一位。”旁边的桌上有一个圣诞老人玩具，还有蜡烛和葡萄酒。店里的另一处是摆放成“心”形的圣诞喷雪瓶。
上海的圣诞节中心是宜家(Ikea)，年轻人可以在这里一起倾听瑞典传统的圣诞节颂歌，并免费品尝姜味曲奇和番红花面包。
宜家的中国营销经理斯梅德博格(Ulf Smedberg)说：“我们希望这种安排能成为一种传统：要体验圣诞节的气氛，就应该来宜家。”
他们做到了这点。去年，宜家准备的圣诞节装饰品在节日到来前两周就销售一空。因此，该公司今年将进货量增加了三倍，并从10月份就开始销售圣诞节装饰品。现在，茶蜡提灯和长袜已经全部销售完。
当然，中国并不是年轻单身男女或情侣借圣诞节的机会外出交际和娱乐的唯一国家。但在中国，除了少数的基督教徒外，口袋里没有多少钱的20来岁的年轻人却是以他们自己的印象──大多来自外国电影和其它翻译拙劣的进口文化产品──重新定义了这个节日。
圣诞节还推动了中国电影业的复兴，人们在节日期间会将盗版DVD放在一边，走入电影院。圣诞节期间是中国一年中票房收入最高的一周，如去年的《功夫》就进帐数百万美元。而美国的票房旺季是夏季和感恩节的周末。今年，中国导演陈凯歌的功夫/爱情片《无极》在圣诞节期间上映。在北京，12月15日首映日的门票在12月8日前就基本销售一空。据中国媒体报道，这部电影在中国上映的第一周创出了约910万美元的票房收入纪录。
一些人会在平安夜通宵观看浪漫电影，就像Jessica和她的男友那样。对她来说，这是一个给北京寒冷的冬季增加温馨气氛的机会：电影院的暖气不太好，男友就把夹克和羊毛衫都给她穿上。清晨来临时，他们在肯德基(KFC)共进早餐。
中国官方并不提倡圣诞节，不过仅有的几个国家批准的基督教堂在节日期间还是会吸引很多人，其中大多是象25岁的编辑郎颂（音）和她男友这样的访客。
去年平安夜，他们在王府井天主教堂对面的一家餐馆吃饭，希望能听到午夜的钟声。郎颂说：“我们觉得这很浪漫。”他们还想进到教堂里，但被拥挤的人群挡在了外面。
教堂对此并不在意。一位李姓教堂人员说：“这对中国人来说是一件新鲜事，我认为他们感到好奇并不奇怪，也没有什么不好。”
必胜客驻中国发言人王群说，尽管中国的圣诞节与西方有所不同，但对中国人也很有意义。在中国，无处不在的必胜客将这种独特的习俗发展成为新奇且人们也能负担得起的就餐机会。在必胜客，圣诞节已成为仅次于情人节的第二个最繁忙的时期。无比大鸟圣诞比萨、法式蜗牛以及圣诞小屋形状的布朗宁蛋糕会让所有人对即将到来的平安夜充满期待。
