Chinese Christmas Quiz

I’ve been creating some quiz content recently and decided to do one for Christmas. I tried to make it roughly half about basic Christmas vocabulary and half about Christmas culture in China.

One thing that became clear to me while putting together this little quiz is that this culture changes so fast.

Christmas was getting super popular at Shanghai’s kindergartens and elementary schools, with some schools even bringing in a guy dressed up as Santa. But Beijing put the kibosh on that in recent years, opposing such strong “advocacy” for foreign culture in schools. So now, even though Christmas is as popular as ever commercially (there are Christmas trees and decorations all over Shanghai’s many malls), it’s not allowed in schools.

Christmas choir concerts at Christian churches in China were once very popular, even among young people that would typically not go to a church for any kind of religious reason. But as a Christmas activity for fun, to soak in a little extra Christmas ambience, it was popular. But COVID has greatly complicated gatherings in churches, meaning that this year it’s pretty safe to say that all of those performances are canceled.

China remains as dynamic as ever. Christmas is no exception.

So how much do you know about Christmas in China, and Christmas and Chinese? Take this little AllSet Learning quiz and find out…

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

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