By MARTYN FISHER

　　Christmas arrived in the form of two boxes one afternoon in December. In a parody of the excitement of the Christmases past, we picked them up, shook them, and sarcastically (though not without pleasure or gratitude) speculated upon provenace and origin. A teutonic voice weighed in with assistance: the Bavarian had returned from a busy afternoon swearing (in English) in the market-place, and demanding coffee in restaurants. Uninvited, he snatched one, inspected the stamps and return address, and informed us of the sober facts:

　　"They are from your families in Great Britain, not so Great now, ha, ha, ha."

　　And, so it was, though United Kingdom was the term used on the parcels. He turned and marched on towards the stairs, then stopped and turned round. "My girlfriend will be here at Christmas," he said.

　　Thus was the prospect of my Yule-tide diminished. My box had been something of a disappointment. It contained a card, a hat, a scarf, and a pair of gloves (which were half-burned, box fires being apparently endemic to all postal services, unlike redress for the damage they cause), all of which had been made in China and were available at next to nothing a mere stone's throw away from the hotel. By contrast my friend's box seemed a gargantuan hamper stuffed with the goodies of mythical Christmases past: stilton, port, plum pudding, cakes, chocolates and biscuits, and a vast number of individually wrapped parcels. We would share, of course, and there were things for me, too, but in large measure it seemed that Christmas would be rather thin. The announcement of the arrival of the Bavarian girlfriend seemed herald the departure of the old Christian Christmas Spirit. She would deprive us of the opportunity to exercise that spirit which enjoins us to bestow beneficent charity upon a true unfortunate. Peace and Goodwill to All Men there would be, to be sure. But it would be shared among the friendly and at peace. A lonely, yet utterly tedious oaf, would have tested its power and given it some kind of meaning.

　　I stood at the window and gazed across the city. Nothing could have been more than Christmas like. An alien, Modor-grey (a colour rendered, perversely, somewhat Christmassy now by the timing of the releases of the Lord of the Rings, but which were at that time a mere wicked rumour on the wilder shores of the internet) landscape stretched out even unto the Great Tower of TV. The sun fled westward, towards the fair lands of Christmasdom. The eastern sky brooded black and grey. And Lo! did not a tiny red-coated robin appear on my window-sill with a little spring of red-berried holly in his mouth?

　　No, he did not. Just as he hasn't in just about any Christmas I care to recall. But didn't that failure, make me feel that little bit more at home? No, it didn't. Back in England, I suppose I knew that the robin was out there somewhere, but here I could not be so sure. If the robin is not endemic to China, that would explain why I did not seem him. All the same, he could be a native bird: I've seen many animals in China, but few that were neither domestic nor pestilential. Of mammals - with the exception of pets- none were not waiting tethered within earshot of the pregnant, doom-laden scrape of the butcher's knife; of the reptiles (save some silhouetted lizards on an illuminated hotel signboard), amphibians, fish, crustaceans and molluscs, none was more than a day or two away from the customer's finger of judgement and the swish of the vendor's net which initiated the execution of sentence. But no wild animals, even in the countryside. So perhaps it is no surprise that the robin escaped my notice.

　　Such were the thoughts that occupied me as I drifted almost unconsciously down towards the market. I passed along an alley-way and past the rotting heap of egg-shells and vegetation where oft the rats did caper. A little further along was the spot where I recalled seeing a man dismember with a view to consumption what appeared to be a sparrow. An omnivorous lot, the Chinese, I thought at the time. With this thought in mind I considered what we should eat for Christmas dinner, and the robin once more popped into my thoughts, as I penetrated the thronging markets. Birds are not at all scarce in China. They exist in numbers and densities without parallel in the rest of the world. The development of fowl-husbandry must rank alongside rocketry and paper as one of the great Chinese contributions to the civilization of the world. And yet despite that, and despite the fact that there is scarcely any representative of any kingdom. Order, or genus of organic being that is not exploited for the purposes of human consumption, the turkey was yet another absent festive avian: not so much as a dicky-bird, as we say, was present in all the batteries and batteries of bird-cages. My heart sank a little lower still.

　　It was this absence which, perversely, stung most of all. I do not like turkey. If the Chinese disdain this bird with good reason: it is bland and dry.( A Chinese friend once told me that one of the great differences between Chinese and "Western" tastes was that the Chinese like something to chew, and that a small bird was tastier and chewier than a large one. It would certainly explain the apparent absence of the other festive avian I have spoken of: if the other is neither chewy nor tasty, then perhaps the other is too tasty and chewy by half. Could it be that the robin was hunted to extinction years ago? Who knows. The sole virtue of the turkey is bulk. We must have something to roast at Christmas, and the turkey will feed a multitude. But we didn't need one; not even the Bavarian would be around. We were free to eat whatever we liked. And that was sad because it meant that we were alone. Christmas was somewhere else.

　　As I made my way home I toyed with various alternatives. Goose is in fact the true Christmas-bird, and there are geese-aplenty in China. But it wouldn't do. All we had to cook with was a microwave-oven with a grill. Maybe we could go to a restaurant. Peking duck, perhaps? No. Delicious, but far too foreign: festiveness is homeliness.

　　I gave up on Christmas and went to bed with a heavy heart. The Ghost of the imminent Christmas future would not come to me that night, but confused Ghosts of Christmas past assailed my dreams: children capered around the tree and broke their toys; deceased grandparents lay surfeited with Christmas robin with skewed paper crowns. At last a vast turkey came to coo and gobble at me on the window-sill.

　　It was Christmas Eve and I was awake. I got up and went to the window and opened the curtains. The sky was clear and all was white. My spirits rose for the first time: though it could not offer me friends, family, robins or turkeys, for the first time I had snow. I woke my friend and we both admired the winter wonderland that lay before us. At last I went out into the street, and like the converted Scrooge before me found the shops open.

　　Over that day I found that it was possible to have a fine Christmas in China. In fact I think it is the best I ever had. There is, in fact, a good deal of the East in or Christmas traditions if you care to think of it. All those oranges, nuts and spices which are so closely associated with Christmas in England, of course, originate in the Far East and must once have been very special things indeed. And is it too fanciful to imagine that the Magi themselves were Chinese? I know it is generally accepted that they were Persian, but then I fancifully imagined them bringing tribute from the great emperor himself.

　　And so I found myself buying fine cloves, cardamom pods, and cinnamon barks. The satsumas and walnuts that seem such an essential part of the English Christmas were wonderfully abundant. Then off to the supermarket. I do not have a high opinion of Chinese wine, but it was certainly good enough for mulling. Chinese beer is fine, but somehow the yellow German-style lagers do not seem appropriate. I chanced upon a couple of bottles of Qingdao black beer, and found it to be as fine as any of the dark beers of home. Some people say that pork predated goose as the festive meat, and though I could hardly roast any, some chops glazed and studded with cloves might serve.

　　Thus the foundation of Christmas Day was laid. What about gifts? Well, surely there is no better place on Earth to buy the small, inconsequential presents we call stocking-fillers that are of little worth but so much fun to open than China? For larger presents the department stores were open. I popped into one and looked around. A large model of a U-boat caught my eye and I thought of the Bavarian.

　　As it happened the Bavarian did not forget us, even though he, of course, chose not to spend the day with us. Some strange call drew him and the girlfriend to a sushi bar. But not before he had given me a fine Bavarian beer-mug. And so we sat together that day. The beer tasted fine from the mug. After dinner, I had another mug. And then another. Afterall it was Christmas.