Lights on for Santa
To the editor:
The holiday season has come to the campus. As the semester winds down there are signs that Christmas is catching on in this region of the world. Various stores are putting out seasonal merchandise and characters of the moment. Sometimes this raises a few interesting mixes.
Make-up stores are a common sight. Women are beginning to adopt cosmetics as part of their bag of tools for attracting the eyes and hopefully future spouses. One of the stores put on an elaborate Christmas display complete with pudgy penguins, a sax tooting Santa, and reindeer with Christmas bough collars. In other stores you will find displays of plastic trees, metal trees, and glass globes on the tree. What you will not find are big displays of lights. One small string of lights hangs in the window of a dining room and that is it. This does not mean that the city of Guangzhou is devoid of lights.
There are lots of interesting night light shows in the city. It is a contest of sorts between the various buildings around the city to create light scenes on the sides of their buildings. These are usually strings of lights along the corners and roof lines of the sky scrapers. These are timed to change colors and so you will see the various parts of the skyline change from red to blue and then to green.
The Canton Tower, one of the tallest structures in Southeast Asia is visible from one of my windows. Each night, looking at the tower you can see its hour glass shape outlined by a continuous change of light. Red, to blue, to white and green. At this distance it is like a giant candle on the horizon — its television tower at the top a brilliant red beacon attracting the eye in a field of black. When the fog begins to roll in it often is alone in the evening sky as all the other buildings are hidden away.
If you go into the wealthier neighborhoods strings of green, red, and blue lights can be found. Night lights are part of the horizon. In a way it’s a bit like home. No, you will not see the joyful glow of lights across the vast distances of open space that mark The County at this time of the year. But you will find a lot of light and who knows, maybe they will attract Santa and the reindeer.
Orpheus Allison
Guangzhou, China
orpheusallison@mac.com
