Deck the halls

Christmas day is yet to come but Jingle Bells is already being sung, festive lights are brightening the night sky and Christmas gifts are on store shelves. It's time to make merry, even in China, where the holiday was almost unknown three decades ago.

Surrounded by piles of red Santa hats, green Christmas trees and white snowflakes, Zhang Hua, a businesswoman in Yiwu, said Christmas is the most important day for her.

Zhang has never read the Bible and doesn't speak a lick of English, but she's been in the Christmas business for over five years. Each winter her company sells more than 100,000 yuan worth of Christmas gifts. Zhang is one of thousands of Chinese businesspeople profiting from this western holiday.

Millions of gifts that end up under American Christmas trees are made in China, and most pass through Yiwu, in Zhejiang province, one of the world's largest manufacturing hubs of light goods. But recently, with demand from financial crisis-hit developed countries weakening, Zhang finds many of her orders come from within China.

Chinese consumers, especially the middle class, have started celebrating Christmas in earnest. Fancy Christmas trees are now a must in most shopping malls, hotels and bars in cities such as Beijing.

Yang Jie, a manager of a four-star Beijing hotel, said each year the hotel puts on a lighting-up ceremony in the lobby at the beginning of December. They also hold parties on Christmas Eve for both foreign and Chinese guests.

"It's getting more competitive each year. Other hotels keep throwing fancier and grander parties," said Yang. This year Yang and her coworkers set up a two-meter-high silver Christmas tree. "We decided not to use a traditional green Christmas tree. The competition is fierce and we need to give people something different," she said.

When Yang first joined the hotel she didn't know what Christmas was. These days it's almost as big for her as Spring Festival.

But Christmas is more about business than a traditional holiday for Yang and the hotel heavily promotes its Christmas set dinner (the price ranges from 800 yuan to 8,000 yuan). Most banquet customers are multinationals or big local companies, who use the meal as a networking opportunity or to reward their own employees.

Sales of food and beverage during Christmas and New Year amounted to 8 million yuan in 2007, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

For younger Chinese Christmas Eve means partying. Traffic jams clog the streets around bars and cinemas until 3 o'clock in the morning, said Wang Wei, a taxi driver in Beijing.

Jin Ling, a recently graduated junior associate at a law firm, remembers her classmates catching the latest movies at a cinema on Christmas Eve during college. She was surprised last year when even the middle-aged waitress at her school canteen, gave her a hearty "Merry Christmas" as she grabbed some post-study noodles.

This year she's searching for a dress to wear to her firm's Christmas party.

"Sometime I look around and don't know where I am. I'm in Beijing, but everybody is celebrating Christmas," said Jin.

Editor's note: Chinese people are well accustomed to American ideas and products, some 30 years after the two countries established diplomatic relations. They proudly own Apple iPhones, love catching the latest Hollywood blockbuster and even mark Christmas with gift-giving and decorations (though the festive season is not just a US holiday, the two are associated in the minds of many Chinese). In this cover package, China Business Weekly reporters find out how China is adopting and adapting US concepts and US brands.

(China Daily 12/15/2008 page6)