Easter 2011

Easter is an interesting holiday to celebrate in China.  And ironically enough it's not because of the spiritual aspect of the holiday.  Don't get me wrong, it's also interesting from that aspect.  But I think even more intriguing to the Chinese is the fact that a bunch of 老外 [foreigners] go around placing perfectly good eggs, albeit strangely colored, in trees and shrubbery.

I still remember our first attempt at an Easter Egg hunt.  As soon as I hid an egg it was discovered.  But not by my children, nor the Chinese children;  no, not in China.  On this occasion we had sixty year old women climbing trees and hurdling fences to find out what these strangely colored eggs were all about.  Apparently they thought we didn't' want them anymore, or at least I hope that was their speculation, for after finding them they quietly tucked them away into purses or bags and headed home.  Needless to say our Children weren't very happy about all of their eggs being "stolen".  Even to this day Noah is a little reluctant to let us hide eggs for fear that we'll never see them again.

The next year we were smarter; we headed to Chaoyang park in hopes to find some privacy.  But apparently we weren't smart enough.  For as soon as those strangely colored eggs appeared it became more crowded than a Sunday afternoon at Carrefour.  Luckily my Chinese had improved enough to inform them that we were playing a game and they were NOT a part of it.  Although this kept them from taking our eggs, it didn't keep them from gawking at us or telling our children where the eggs were.

So, four years later and a little more in touch with Chinese culture I thought I had the perfect solution.  In front of our house there's a nice little garden area.  It's never used, except by dog owners.  So I thought to myself "this would be a perfect place to go Easter Egg Hunting".  Boy was I wrong!  At first everything went great.  We hid the eggs, all fifty of them, and still not a soul in sight.  So far, so good.  And then it happened.  One man.  That's all, just one person decided to come to the "dog park", as I so affectionately call it.  And apparently he didn't like what we were doing.  In the past it's always curiosity that killed the cat game.  But this man wasn't curious.  He was angry.  Apparently we had disturbed his little respite, even though we were the first one's there.  And so he proceeded to tell us that we shouldn't be doing that over here.  So let me get this straight, dogs and children can pee and poop over here, but if you try to hide some eggs...well, I mean we have to draw lines somewhere right? 

Long story short, another year of Easter Egg Hunting Frustration.  But I'm reminded that an interrupted Egg Hunt is "light and momentary" compared with an interrupted Church service.  Sometimes it's important to step back and look at things in perspective.  At the end of the day our boys still had fun, we were able to worship freely at BICF and were even able to share this special event with some of our Chinese friends.  I can't wait to see what next year holds for us.

兔子不吃窝边草，


托马斯