All Hallows Eve in Shanghai

Halloween is not traditionally celebrated in China. That must answer your first question. However, (1) I live with a large group of people from the western world who love to dress up foolishly, and (2) I teach 1st graders who love any day that lets them pretend to be anything that they are not. However, again, as Halloween is not actually celebrated here by the general public, our school moved Halloween to Nov. 1 so we got to look even more silly dressing up in a town of non-halloweeners by dressing up a day late. Ah China. Since we dressed up at school prior for dressing up for our adult Halloween festivities, I will cover that first. Tiny girls love to be princesses. Tiny boys love to be superheros. I had 2 Spidermans, 2 Zoros, a Batman, a pirate with a cape, and several other half-and-half costumes from the boys in my class. I had 3 Snow Whites, 2 Sleeping Beauties, 2 miscelaneous pink/purple princesses, a blue princess, a bat (in a purple tutu outfit), and my favorite....... a seahorse.

Who couldn't love the seahorse in the sea of princesses and superheors. Her costume topped all other costumes at school. This day was particularly nonproductive at school, as you can imagine. I was missing about 2/3 of the homework and couldn't get them to pay attention for more than 2 minutes in English or ESL. My co-teacher said the same things about her math Chinese classes. The kids got to Trick-or-Treat out on the track and all of the administrative people handed out candy while we led them in a giant circle. Then they had a class. Then they got to Trick-or-Treat again going to the other teachers on the hallway their classrooms are on. For some reason that class in the middle of Trick-or-Treat sessions was extra nonproductive. I wonder why. It is kind of an unwritten rule that homeroom teachers have to dress up for Elementary school, so we had a good set of costumes by the foreign and Chinese teachers.

I went as Miss Frizzle (from Magic School Bus), there was a pirate, a Phantom of the Opera, Picasso and a witch on my floor. The floor above me housed an Egyptian Pharoh(ess), a grandma (Kyle), a Geisha, a Tooth Fairy, and a Skeleton. The floor below me had a cartoon woman, a bumble bee, a zombie zebra, a jester, and another witch. This was a crazy day at school, and we accomplished nothing as teachers, but it was worth it to see a giant amount of tiny people dressed up as miniature versions of their favorite things. The campus I live on has about 120 foreign teachers living in various bulidings. One of the buildings has a vacant half room that the teachers have turned into a bar area. So for Halloween each of the 6 floors in the building had a different activity or game and drink. It started at 6:30pm. I don't know what person was that enthused about dressing up but the party remained pretty low-key around 8:30 when most people, including myself, made an apperance. This was an awesome crowd to get dressed up with. Everyone was dressed up. Even if they didnt have a full blown costume on, they did some pretty good zombie makeup. Out in Shanghai you can prety much expect to see all of the expats dressed up and all of the Chinese, well, not. That didn't make any difference to us though. Miss Frizzle had an excellent time.