Halloween in Chengdu

For anyone who doesn't know, my favorite holiday out of all of the holidays (yes, including Christmas), is Halloween. I'm not totally sure what makes it my favorite; it's a combination of many different things. I love the spooky atmosphere, the unashamed delight in macabre subjects. I love scary movies and stories. I love carving jack-o-lanterns, feeling the squishy mixture of goo and seeds slip between my fingers as I scoop it out of the center. I love the crisp autumn weather and the smell of dead leaves and chimney smoke. I love the costumes, the ghouls and the ghosts, the witches and monsters. But most of all I love the childish nostalgia that Halloween brings. On All Hallow's Eve, everyone is a child again. We all feast on candy and play pranks and run underneath the pumpkin orange moon because we can, because we're alive, and tonight corpses and death are only a joke that we can laugh at and dance away.

And I was going to be damned if being in China meant missing out on Halloween, which is why, on Friday after school let out, all of us Americans banded together in our quest for Halloween festivities and made the hour long trek to Chengdu.

We spent the afternoon stopping by The Bookworm, our favorite coffee shop and bookstore, and then headed over to People's Park. It was my first time seeing the park, and it did not disappoint. Unlike western parks, it did not have many open places, but was instead a network of trails that wound around trees and streams and hills.

A monument at the edge of the park.

Vendors sold fruits and nuts along the street outside.

Sunset at Tianfu Square.

After poking around Chengdu, it was time to head back to our hostel and get ready for a night out. Brenna and I were actually the only ones that put any effort into our costumes. I went as a broken China doll, and Brenna made a lovely zombie.

Our taxi driver got quite the scare.

After hanging out at the hostel for a little while, we met up with some of our Chinese friends at a bar downtown. We spent a couple hours just hanging out an chatting.

Devin and Wayne had beautiful singing voices

Around 12, we left the bar in favor of the nearby clubbing district, and danced into the night. In the end, it turned out that Halloween wasn't a very big holiday in China, and while I saw a few other people with costumes, we were definitely not the norm, and drew even more attention to ourselves than usual. Do I regret it? Not one bit. I got tons of complete strangers telling me that they loved my costume, and even more doing horrified double-takes as I walked by, which I treasured even more than the compliments. I might live in China, but there's no way I wasn't going to celebrate my favorite American holiday.

As a reward for the crazy night, we all slept in late the next day, and treated ourselves to brunch the next morning. It'd been ages since I had a western breakfast (and breakfast is by far my favorite meal), so it felt like sunshine and rainbows on my taste buds.

See that expression on Brenna's face? Pure bliss. PURE. BLISS.