Christmas tree a symbol of love, acceptance across cultures

My old Christmas tree - the very one I bought years ago at a Hangzhou supermarket - was the last thing I expected to find in my in-laws' storage room in their rural Zhejiang home.

My husband Jun and I had just moved back to China after spending years in the United States, my home country. We had decided to stay at the family home during our transition back to life in China, which just happened to overlap with the start of the Christmas season.

While I recognized we probably couldn't "deck the halls" with the same flair as my family had done in the US, I still longed for that one holiday necessity - a Christmas tree.