Christmas in China

When I was in China, at the Jupiter factory in Tianjin, we had lunch with the
factory supervisors in their lunchroom at the factory.  They feed everybody
everyday.

Anyway, in this lunchroom, which was fairly institutional-looking, sort of like
a school cafeteria, there were all these Christmas decorations.  Hanging from
the lights and walls, Merry Christmas and Happy Santa faces everywhere.

At first I foolishly thought, aw, they still have their Christmas decorations
up.  Then the realization slowly dawned on me, no, these are new decorations,
and the Chinese don't celebrate Christmas.  The decorations were not faded
or dusty.  No, no, they put these up just for us.  And no wonder.  They have
been manufacturing this stuff for the last 50 years, shipping it off to America
because Americans like these decorations.  And they thought we would like them,
not realizing that May/June is a far cry from the Christmas season for us.

They put these pretty gold and red decorations up, because, of course, the
Chinese love gold and red, and it  probably seemed natural to them for us to be
impressed by this stuff.

I was very saddened by the realization that the Americans in the group were
laughing at this effort to make them feel welcome.  And the whole mess was our
fault.  We have been buying this crap from them for decades, so they knew we
liked it.  And the Americans didn't even appreciate why it wasn't funny,
but so sad.