Dressed to impress on one hell of a scary night

Halloween makes me grin like a jack-o-lantern. It's such a sight when the little ghosts and goblins go on their annual parade, and I long remember joining the hordes of trick-or-treaters who would march door-to-door, like Avon salespeople, questing for tooth-rotting, tastebud-tantalizing sweets.

For months before the big night, my family would build elaborate haunted walks through the forest behind our house.

Gravestones were cast in cement and we built electric chairs from scrap wood. Come showtime, we would ignite a pan of flashpowder beneath the chair, while some condemned actor would scream and writhe while chewing blood tablets and spitting out their crimson contents like a sputtering lawn sprinkler.

The kids loved it.

We even built a guillotine, with a hole at the bottom for someone to tuck their head. When the blade came whooshing down it would "chop off" a "head" created by stuffing a monster mask with newspaper. The disembodied noggin would whirl to the ground while the actor thrashed around.

When I got older I would hide behind our porch in a wolf mask and pounce out to scare the kids who came pounding on our door seeking sugary alms. I would be howling, with my fingers curled into claws.

It was so much fun.

None of this seemed too strange to me until I moved to China.

The Chinese take on Fright Night seems somewhat less grisly, with fewer guts but with all the glory. It's less Pagan and more party, and, consequently, many people here really dress to impress when they don their costumes.

However, since ready-made costumes are harder to find as the holiday is just gaining popularity, people are often more inventive with their outfits.

One girl we saw this year dressed as a giant fly. To create compound eyes, she used two mesh kitchen sieves, bending the handles to secure them to her head. She completed the outfit by connecting two large plastic wings, perhaps clipped off a children's costume, to her shirt.

I hit up a nightclub party with a panda, Supergirl, a baseball player, a witch, a Silk Market vendor and a ghost.

Since I hadn't found time to rent or make a costume, I appeared in a uniform I had gotten for a calisthenics performance. I don't think many people got it.

My wife wanted to go as a panda, but as she was unable to hunt down a black-and-white bear suit, she had to make due with smearing black eyeliner around her sockets and on the tip of her nose. Her costume washed off the next day in the shower.

Our friend, the ghost, was a huge hit and spent much of the night posing for pictures. It seems this is an ideal costume for China, as it is not only a big crowd pleaser but merely requires cutting holes in a sheet. He also wore sunglasses.

The Silk Market vendor got the idea while helping his brother cut deals at the shopping spot one day and tried on an employee's orange vest as a joke.

He was immediately rushed by a small army of real vendors who began bargaining with him to the amusement of a growing crowd. He went from bargaining in the vest to bargaining for the vest. He also wore an ID badge and carried a large calculator to complete the getup.

His China-specific Halloween attire was convincing but not as convincing as one we saw at a big bash at Beijing's 798 art district last year.

When we asked a security guard, at an unfamiliar party venue, if he knew where the bathroom was in Chinese, he replied, "I don't work here", in English spoken with a perfect North American accent.

That made it immediately apparent he was from out of town and perhaps didn't even speak a lick of Putonghua.

It was an embarrassing but honest mistake. That was a good costume.

(China Daily 11/04/2008 page20)