Despite the lack of carols, trees and fairy light in Beijing, James and I have spent the last fortnight preparing for Christmas. Kind of. As you might be aware I’m not usually the most festive elf on the block, but this year I’m really looking forward to it, partly because we’re popping home to see everybody and partly because I’ve not been bombarded with Christmas paraphernalia in every shop, office block and on every street corner for the past three months, so when James downloaded a CD of carols and last weekend it was actually exciting to crack open the mulled Tsing Tao and start the countdown.

Last weekend we went on a Christmas shopping mission to Panjiayuan, Beijing’s most ecletic antiques market, which houses a truly amazing array of tat ranging from the very expensive and interesting to the truly shit. Here’s a small selection of what you can find: first editions of Mao’s Little Red Book, teapots, old propaganda posters, fake Ming pottery with suspiciously neat chips and cracks, fireworks, silk prints, dragon puppets, cookery books with titles like ‘100 Ways with Dog’, Brownie cameras, gramaphones, more teapots, calligraphy sets, Chairman Mao waving arm alarm clocks, wthnic minority fancy dress outfits, Jinseng, jade jewelry and a plethora of other stuff recovered from heaven knows where – I wish I knew something about antiques. James was supposed to be doing his Christmas shopping but I somehow ended up buying four large sackfuls of crap which will undoubtedly end up on YOUR mantelpieces after Christmas, so watch out if I run at you with a teapot-shaped present, it cost 30p and will look hideous in any location except on a shelf along with 3,200 similar teapots, where it looked antiquey and cool.

James, myself and the teapots will all fly home in 10 days so I’m well and truly on the final countdown at school: I spent this morning having flashbacks to my childhood as I taught my classes how to turn a piece of white paper into an over-sized snowflake…strangely enough it’s still a highly satisfying activity…you never know quite how it’s going to look until you open the folds of the paper and find all those nice, symmetrical curves and edges. I’m also teaching them ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ but, in the interests of having an easy last two weeks in the classroom, I’ve elaborated somewhat on the ramifications of not being good – in my version Santa will still come, but he’ll attack you in your sleep. ‘Not being good’ is defined by talking in English class.

This weekend’s activities include dinner with the rugby girls followed by a pie and ale night on Saturday. The pies are cooked by an Australian chef who used to be the personal chef of thge Dutch royal family so I’ve been on a starvation diet for three days. Mmmm, pies.

Right, off to class, see you in a week or two, and start clearing that mantelpiece (I’m taslking to you Grandma, time to relegate the teletubby sculpture to the loft)…