Today is Halloween and probably for the first time in 10 years in China I am celebrating it. Most Chinese have no idea what Halloween is, but in an expat compound like the one that we are now living in it is a big thing. On Friday Scott’s kindergarten already did a Trick or Treat (Scott could not join, because he was still sick), and tonight was the big Halloween night.

This afternoon my wife and I went Halloween shopping: we bought a Halloween costume for Scott and masks for ourselves, plus a lot of decoration materials for the house. We also bought candy bars and chocolate for about 50 kids. We were just in time because many parents were in the City Supermarket as well hunting for treats and a lot of candy had sold out already.

We received a notice from the compound that the Trick or Treat would start at 6:30 PM, but already before 6 PM the first kids rang our door bell. And from that moment until 8 PM the bell kept on ringing! Around 7 PM we had run out of candy already, and had to check our storage for other things to give away. Around 7:30 we even went out to buy additional treats for the children. We were amazed by the number of kids in our compound, until we found out that there were at least two school buses that had unloaded their students in our compound to give them a special Halloween experience! No big deal, we probably gave at least 100 kids a candy bar and all were very happy. Some were so happy that they came back a few times to get more chocolate bars (3 girls came back 3 times until we figured out that they had been here twice already!).

Scott is still not completely well, but he was feeling good enough to dress up as a pirate and join his father and mother for a round of Trick or Treat. He liked it a lot, getting something at every door where we rang the bell, even though he did not want to eat any of it (he still hardly eats after being sick for a week). We walked from house to house with some of his kindergarten classmates, most of them are a bit older and some were truly scared of the dressed up people. But Scott seemed to totally ignore it, he did not even mind me wearing a scary mask! I guess he is still too young to understand that you have to be afraid when people put on a horror mask? It was a fun evening, and next year should be even better when Scott and Elaine will be a little older.