It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Spring Festival

It's still 2007 technically here in China and will be until February 7, Chinese New Year's Day, when we'll all ring in the year of the rat. The rat is everywhere. Sometimes cute and sometimes rat-like. Spring Festival is definitely bigger than Christmas and everywhere you go, red lanterns hang and red paper-cuts of rats decorate the windows.

But for some reason, Santa is still up. The Christmas decorations in China were totally bizarre with Santa reigning king. No manger scenes or reindeer, just Santa in some totally bizarre incarnations...for instance, drinking martinis and playing the saxophone. Dig it.

And apparently you never have to take down your Santas because they're in every shop window still, now next to the rats. Maybe after Chinese New Year, they'll come down and who knows what will replace them. For now, Santa and the rat are hand in hand and the lucky color is red. Everything is red and Wal-Mart has these great displays of red underwear, in which I guess the whole country will be trying to score a baby rat this year. Dig it.