Santas in the city (all pics: jonahkessel.com)
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The 2010 Beijing SantaCon Diary
Featuring
Over one hundred Santas
Half-remembered Christmas carols
A scuffle in Tiananmen Square
More mulled wine than you can shake a blitzened reindeer at
Hacky sack
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A week of insomnia (not even two all-nighters could cure it), some last-minute work duties, a lack of a red suit… it seemed I would be a Beijing SantaCon wannabe this year. But I ended up tagging along for most of the tour. Some diary highlights…
Bang! Bang!
This pizza joint in the Hopson Center (known to the cool kids as the Hip Hopson) is one of two SantaCon starting points, the other being Pyro Pizza in Wudaokou. I arrive at 12:20 and see ten Santas. This number soon doubles. Then it triples. And then…
Naughty: The material in the twenty five-kuai Santa suits is not durable. The first of many crotch tears ensues.
Nice: Along with the Santas, two people dress as Christmas presents and one as an elf.
Milk and cookies: Free mulled wine from Bang! Bang! The fries (RMB25) at this place are tasty and one Santa is pretty happy with his chicken panini (RMB35).
Sleds in the age of the global economic crisis.
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Subway Line 1
Santas make the long march from Bang! Bang! to Guomao subway station so they can zip directly to Tiananmen Square. Strollers stare at the group: What? Haven’t you people seen 40 Santas walk around Beijing before?
Naughty Nutty: Three Santas cram into the back of a pedicab and drink beer.
Nice: The “blue sky” day.
Fact: As demonstrated on the subway several times, the average Santa only knows the 12 Days of Christmas up to “five golden rings” at best. The next day always becomes, “Six mmm mmm mmm-ing.”
Anyone see a reindeer in this car?
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Tiananmen Square
Naughty: A Santa outside the square plays carols on a guitar and gets a scolding for performing without a license.
(Almost naughty: People quell the desire to sing “Noel” as “Nobel”.)
Nice: The groups from Bang! Bang! and Pyro meet in the square and they now total more than one hundred Santas.
Nutty: A guard at Tiananmen tells a photojournalist to stop taking pictures of the Santas. He refuses, ends up pushing the guard, and is taken away to be put on the naughty list. (He is released a few hours later.)
Santa squared
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Drum & Bell
The Santas take buses to the Gulou area and walk to the drum and bell towers.
Nasty: One Santa worries that the “beard” fibers he accidentally swallowed might be “toxic”. At the least, he is getting a rosy glow from the itching.
Nice: Santas race rickshaws, play hacky sack with the drivers, and take photos with people at the bases of the Bell Tower and Drum Tower.
Milk and cookies: I slip into the nearby Sculpting in Time to have a coffee (RMB18) and send some emails.
There's only so much mulled wine a Santa can take...
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Tao Yao
The Santas make another long march, this time to Houhai and the two-floor Tao Yao. The bar is soon packed with Santas and the staff scrambles to keep them hydrated.
Naughty: Several Santas climb trees, put beer bottles in the branches, and get “bark burns” as they slide down.
Nice: I nominate the eleven-month-old Santa baby in the group as the best-behaved participant of the day.
Milk and cookies: Mulled wine and Harbin beer seem to be the Santa favorites.
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Salud
I skip Salud and its half-price drinks (that includes the potent infused rum shots) to grab groceries, go home, and drop off my computer. That turned into some weirdness…
Nutty: I leave my apartment complex to find fire trucks and police cars parked outside with lights flashing. The police go into my building, to an apartment two floors below mine, but I don’t have time to find out what is going on because …
Not nice: A friend calls and needs money to go to the hospital. I head off to meet him and make “the drop”. It sucks to be sick, especially when you are far from home. A sobering thought as I go to meet the Santas at…
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Fubar
Milk and cookies: This place has the usual beverage options plus two-for-one pizzas from Gung Ho!
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Migas
Naughty: A few of us heed the call to go Migas but it turns out we were sent too early as the place is still full of dinner guests. “You guys aren’t supposed to be here until after 11 PM”, we are told. Santas wait for no one, so we go to…
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Bar Blu
This place is holding its reopening party and more than 30 Santas end up here.
Naughty: Santas dancing provocatively around the stripper’s pole to Lady Gaga, Shakira, et al. Stay classy, North Pole!
Nice: Santas dancing around a pole?
Milk and cookies: Bar Blu has a RMB20 drink special for its opening party. Two Santas get the honor of being among the first customers to be short-changed.
That pretty much ended the night for me. I popped into Migas once more (still no Santas) and the new Mo Lounge in Tongli Studio (three Santas on the stairs), and did a quick walk around (I spotted one Santa in 9.9: that is probably the last we’ll ever see of him), and then headed home for some real milk and cookies.
Maybe this post should have been titled: Santacon 2010–Douche Bags Take Beijing!
Whomever made the decision to go to the square was evidently not thinking clearly. I understand it had been done in the past but not in the numbers seen on Saturday. I can see no legitimate reason for including that location other than to cause a scene and get under the authorities nerves. In fact, one of the participants was quoted by the AFP as saying “I think people sort of liked getting kicked out of Tiananmen Square. I think it added a bit of edginess to what otherwise would just have been a pub crawl,”.
Why was it necessary to add “edginess” to the event? Why couldn’t it have just been a pub crawl? In my opinion the whole square incident reeks of a bunch of foreigners flaunting their foreignness. Why are we not holding ourselves accountable to higher standards here? Yeah its fine to get drunk, yeah its fine to go around the city in costumes, but why knowingly test the authorities in Tiananmen makes the group look like jerks proudly waving the “you can’t arrest a whole bunch of foreigners card.”
Yeah, I’m a Grinch. But I’m a Grinch who understands that I’m a welcomed guest in a country that already treats me way better than it does its own citizens. Why flaunt that courtesy?
To be fair, regarding your comment EGS- many of the Santacons across the world (in their home countries) assemble in some sort of public space for general holiday nuttiness and good photo ops for 100+ santas.
Of course, Washington Park Square doesn’t have the same political history as this square does.
Nice post though, wish I could have attended.
I attended Santacon this year, and I think it’s completely unfair to assume that each and every single person dressed up last weekend went to TianAnMen Square to cause a controversy. I just wanted a cool photo, and didn’t think about it too much until we were there, watching horrified as the jerk reporter tried to be deliberately antagonistic on our behalf. We were all in good spirits and just trying to do something a bit different and fun. With hindsight I can understand a little why people are being so snarly-cynical about it, but I’m certain that most of us didn’t think of any serious consequences beforehand, simply because we didn’t have any sinister intentions, period. Interesting how none of the reporting I’ve seen on this even so far focuses on the fact that we also donated money to a “Santa gives coal to children” scheme, providing money towards heating for children in poor and cold areas of China. Just saying…
As for the drunkeness; you can’t hold all 100 people accountable for the drunken antics of a few (relatively tame compared to a typical plain-clothed Saturday night in Sanlitun for some.) – I can honestly say that if it had been an overwhelming group of laowai yobs making foreigners look bad by stumbling around doing embarrassing things, I would not have wanted to be involved and would have left. Maybe some people think it’s obnoxious to walk around singing carols badly and loudly, but whilst I was actually there participating in this event, I felt nothing but good spirits and positive vibes, and at no point felt ashamed to be part of the group. People were smiling back at us, taking photos and coming over to ask us questions about Christmas and where we were from. I personally think that’s a nicer approach to life than living in an expat bubble where the only Chinese people you come into contact with are the ayis and drivers. Yes, there was a lot of alcohol. It was a pub crawl. But drinking mulled wine and beer over the course of a long day with a ton of food is hardly the epitome of debauchery and evil. The idea that we were leaving trails of beer bottles in our wake is kinda ridiculous, actually. The organizers of this event worked hard to keep it clean.
However, this article was way more accurate than the Global Times one, nice to see that someone was actually paying attention instead of being clouded by cynicism and the bias of angles probably pre-conceived before Santacon even happened. People are too quick to want to see the bad in things. I don’t think anyone who joined in this year’s Santacon had bad intentions. I know they intend to be more considerate next year, and I hope it happens again. I’ll be there for sure.
@ EGS,
It is one thing to question the wisdom of a stop at Tiananmen Square and another to stereotype the more than one hundred people who took part in SantaCon as “douche bags” and to cite a single anonymous quote as part of your supporting evidence.
Maybe some people did get rowdy at Tiananmen and appreciated the “edginess” of the situation. If so, I didn’t see them. I came with a group from Shuangjing that was well-behaved and, for the most part, sober. I didn’t witness anyone trying to get on the “nerves” of the authorities or “flaunting” in the way you suggest.
Cheers, Boyce
@ balaz2ta,
Overall, I had a good time and liked how the organizers paced the stops and managed to visit so many areas of town.
Cheers, Boyce
@ Yaya,
Well put.
From what I saw, the average SantaCon attendee simply wanted to do something special for the holidays and that turned out to be dressing up, taking photos and talking with people on the street, having a few drinks and some pizza, and chilling out. As you write, it was relatively tame.
Cheers, Boyce
Yaya:
In regards to your comment:
“I attended Santacon this year, and I think it’s completely unfair to assume that each and every single person dressed up last weekend went to TianAnMen Square to cause a controversy.”
I’d love to agree with you but I have to agree with EGS above, though “douchebag” is the wrong term.
Find me any foreigner in Beijing that is not aware of the sensitivity of Tiananmen and I’ll show you not a “douchebag” but rather “someone that is hopelessly out of touch with the reality of present-day China.”
@ m-dawg,
So, the more than one hundred people there were, “hopelessly out of touch with the reality of present-day China.” Isn’t it possible to simultaneously be aware of present-day China and decide that since SantaCon successfully visited Tiananmen in the past it is likely to be reasonably safe to do so again?
Cheers, Boyce
I guess my point is: whether it’s the fault of uppity foreign photogs, hyper-sensitive security personnel or overly joyous foreign santas, potential conflict has to be at least in the back of the mind of any person going to participate in any sort of crowd action on the square. Unless they are really out of touch with reality.
My friend and I actually came a bit late and walked through Tiananmen Square without the group. Everyone was really excited to see us and take our picture.
Potential conflict is going to exist anywhere people want it to exist in Beijing. Possibly Tiananmen a little more. However, for the most part there was no issue. It was a situation that, from my understanding, was quickly diffused and did not affect the rest of the day.
- a douche or someone who is hopelessly out of touch with the reality of present-day China, apparently to some, and a naughty girl to others.
It was a case of bad timing really. Had it not been for a certain politically sensitive event that weekend, it would never have been an issue. Last year we had security taking pictures with us and having a good laugh about a bunch of silly foreigners in Santa outfits.
The younger and typically ‘edgier’ foreigners usually come out of the Haidian meeting place, and they were much tamer this year than they were last. I can see how, from the outside looking in, it seems obnoxious to dress up and run around singing Western songs dressed as a Western folk icon, but the spirit is really about having fun and being silly, not being edgy or insensitive. In fact, its in the Santa Con rules: basically, don’t mess with anyone and don’t mess things up.
Plus, and I’ll mention it again.. we raised a good amount of money for charity, which should never be a bad thing.
EGS wrote “I can see no legitimate reason for including that location other than to cause a scene and get under the authorities nerves”
This is exactly the reason to do such things…..beijing irreverent to any authority (and being able to get away with it) is exactly how you show an authority (even just a little bit) that you cannot be controlled by them. If this was Washington, or London, or Paris, it would be the same thing. But it is more poinient here in China because it is China which has a record of brutal opression and an inability for anyone to “challenge” the almight power of the party.
So maybe, just maybe, a little irreverence while having a bit of fun, is a good thing.