It seems every spot in town is putting together a Halloween party of some kind or another – with one bar being ambitious enough to force their staff to come to the foreign language area of SuDa and pimp their party to the Laowai.

I love Halloween, and I’ve more than once considered dressing up and going door to door here trick or treating for a laugh. However, fear always wins out in the end and I don’t go. Fear, not of the reactions it might invoke, but rather what sort of strange dried meat candies I might bring home.

However, on a high this week due to the visa thing, and wanting to prep Maggie for her looming submersion into Western culture, I found a “pumpkin” and we put the knife to it the other day.

It’s tiny (not much larger than a softball), it’s green, and it’s shriveling fast – but we have a Jack-o-Lantern – or 杰克哦灯笼 if you will.

Chinese Halloween Vocabulary

Wanting to brush up on some Chinese vocab to express the holiday, I searched around the net and couldn’t come up with much (Chinesepod, in rare form, let me down). So, here’s my attempt (please comment on any corrections or additions):

NOTE: Hover over the Chinese for the pīnyīn.

Now go wow the local Chinese with your 吓人的话. 万圣节快乐!