Thanksgivings abroad have always been a bit tricky. Just ask Tim over at the China Rises blog who has been celebrating his Thanksgiving abroad since before I knew what a computer was. According to him, however, his most recent celebrations in China have been "super easy". Guess it must be nice to live in Beijing, Tim.
As always, it's a bit harder out here in Xinjiang, so I'm very proud to say that after two and a half long years of living here, we finally got a turkey - and I'm convinced it was the only one in the province! The last two Thanksgivings here have been somewhat damped by the absence of a turkey and the embarrassing fact that we actually spent time and money traveling to eat at Pizza Hut in Urumqi. It's not that I never searched for a turkey to eat on Thanksgiving, only that each of my searches ended in us settling for a not-so-Thanksgiving-like chicken.
It really is a baffling thing if you think about it: of all the interesting meats that we have eaten since being here in China (horse, dog, rabbit, donkey, turtle, and duck to name a few), why wouldn't they have turkey? Surprisingly however, very few of our Chinese friends have ever eaten turkey, much less seen one with their own eyes. Many of my elementary students were clueless even after the word for 'turkey' was translated into Chinese. "What is that?" they asked me.
This year was different though! Believe it or not, I had people searching and asking around in all different cities in Xinjiang trying to find us a turkey. I was this close to sitting on a bus for 8 hours after work on Wednesday just to pick up a turkey to have for Thanksgiving Day! Thankfully I was spared this long trip when I walked into my Wednesday morning adult class, a class largely made up of government workers in our small town. Somehow they had heard about my desperate search for a turkey and had tracked one down in a small farming community about 15km outside of our city and they wanted to give it to us as a gift! They only had one question for me: "Do you want it dead or alive?"
Well alive, of course! Turns out I not only taught my entire adult class with a big turkey hanging out in the classroom, I even brought him to the elementary school where I introduced many of my students to the first Thanksgiving turkey they had ever seen. His heroic performance on stage in front of the kids was then rewarded with an immediate trip to the butcher's after which I prepared him for Thanksgiving. He barely fit in our tiny oven.Our Thanksgiving was finally complete. Along with about 13 other people we had the best Thanksgiving celebration we've had since arriving here in China. My wife prepared - from scratch - apple pie, pumpkin pie, salad and fresh rolls. We ate turkey, played games, and I even popped in a recorded football game I had from last year.
We may not have had cranberry sauce and the whole process was far from "super easy", but we just had a turkey feast in Xinjiang and now that I do know what a computer is I get to tell you all about it.
3 Comments:
Congrats on finding a turkey. I wish I cared enough about Thanksgiving (the Canadian variety) to buy a Tom.
I'm certain red bean can be used in lieu of cranberries. They are used for everything.
I can't imagine what the kids were like when you introduced them to your turkey. I just had a Thanksgiving feast here in Beijing the other day. The turkey was a little burnt, but we did have a can of cranberry sauce to make up for it.
Congratulations for the turkey Josh! I guess I will make a load if I sell turkeys at Thanksgivings in Xinjiang. :)
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