Search for a silent night in the bustling city

As the holiday season wraps up and Beijing's winter chill sets in deeper, I will never forget the calmness I found within the craziness, on a not-so-silent night in the city.

On Christmas Eve, my dad sent me a YouTube video of a famous German vocalist singing everyone's favorite Christmas carol, Silent Night. Even though they were sung in German, the words reminded me how much I missed Christmas in the cacophony of Beijing.

Christmas has not necessarily been the quietest time of my life. My father is a pastor, so spending hours at church on Christmas Eve was always the norm. With an afternoon and a midnight service to attend on top of my mom's traditional meatball dinner, it was always one of the busiest nights of the year.

There was certainly no lack of hustle or bustle on the streets of Beijing on December 24 - ever eager for an excuse to party, people were out and about in the buzzing bars and restaurants, and the traffic snarl proved it.

But the Christmas chaos is only half of the holiday for me. The flip side is a time for solemn reflection, a chance to dwell on the moments of peace and profound silence that can be so powerful but are often forgotten in our frenzied world.

My visions of the season include snow softly falling on the rosy cheeks of carolers, whose songs break through the winter chill and mix with the smoke billowing from rooftop chimneys, illuminated by flickering Christmas lights.

Without these peaceful interludes, Christmas really does turn into a headache intensified by shopping for gifts, planning dinners and whatever other obligations people grudgingly fulfill in the name of "celebration". In a busy city like Beijing, you have to really search to find anything resembling peace or silence.

My search led me to a church in western Beijing. Though I'm not really a religious person, I thought a Christmas Eve service would give me a taste of that tradition I had been missing, a tradition not of literal silence but of soft reflection that is so beautifully conveyed in the sweet songs of the season.

Sure, Christmas songs had been audible in shopping centers and supermarkets for weeks.

Call me Scrooge, but beeping recordings blaring from the maw of a kitchy Santa Claus don't really move my spirit. I was looking for a silent night.

When we got to Xishiku Church, Beijing's biggest Catholic church, it was as crowded as a cooking-oil sale at Carrefour. The sanctuary overflowed with people. We had to elbow our way through just to get out of the drafty doorway. There were more cameras in the crowd than crosses, as people sported everything from Mickey Mouse balloons to glowing devil horns.

I didn't understand a word the Chinese priest said, and while the music was vaguely recognizable, it included none of the classic carols I had come to hear.

Still, standing in that congregation made up almost entirely of Chinese, some of them believers, some just curious onlookers, there was a strange familiarity - a calmness to the priest's unfamiliar words, a softness in the music - that left me feeling fulfilled.

(China Daily 01/03/2008 page20)