"The Perfect Gift" Part 1

For the past 3 months, leading up to Christmas, Cindy and I have been planning a Christmas program for a project that is associated with our organization. The project, which is run by our organization, began several years ago and each year they have a Christmas program so that the kids can sing and perform. There are classes of kids who are autistic, those with cerebral palsy, mentally disabled adults, and the parents of children who are deaf. They prepare for this program for a long time and so do the organizers!

This year we wanted to do something special, along with the singing of the kids, so we found a Christmas program online, "The Perfect Gift," and got to work! First, we had some students at my university translate the entire program from English to Chinese, then I recruited 10 more students to do the acting for the play. We rehearsed for over a month, we had costumes sent from the U.S., found props, staged the entire play and even did a dress rehearsal with lights, music, microphones...the works. Nearly every detail was planned and prepared.

What happened next was utterly unanticipated...reality hit and I was painfully reminded of where I am living and the limitations that I have as I live here.

Friday afternoon (two days before the program) I got a phone call from Cindy saying that 7 representatives of "the powers that be" in China had shown up at our office and said that the program was canceled. There were some negotiations and finally the compromise was that the kids could still sing but the skit was out. I was crushed and proceeded to go through a range of emotions this weekend - disappointment rang most strongly, followed by regret, annoyance, anger, pity for the students who worked so hard, fear that I put the students in the line of scrutiny, sadness as I called each student and told them it was off, and the unavoidable feeling of injustice....to name a few. Of course, as I made the excruciating phone calls, they were curious as to why it was canceled. Please forgive my vagueness but I am sure you can figure out why a Christmas program in China would be highly monitored....

I really cannot see the good that came from canceling this part of the program, unless the goal of the "representatives" was to provoke irritation and paranoia into the foreigners that live here - maybe that was the goal. And maybe that goal was accomplished as I just went back through this post and deleted pictures that might be identifiable, names that might be recognizable, and specifics that might be questionable...

Merry Christmas?? Or more appropriately for this weekend...Bah Humbug!