We gave it the name “Operation Time Square” in an attempt to hide our true intent. It would only be later on, by chance, that we would learn that our name had been even more covert than we could have imagined because it was wrongly titled. There is no Christmas tree in Time Square! But we didn’t know that, only having been to New York in the summer time. We had carried out the mission under that misconception. By the time we found out the facts, it was too late…

I have removed the real names in this story to protect the ridiculous. Our code names were Rudolf, Blitzen, and Dasher (because Dasher had waited three minutes to make a pun about being dashing). The code names aren’t important, though, because we forgot to use them.

The mission was simple enough: acquire festive Christmas trees for the holiday season. Nothing too big. Nothing extravagant. Just something with genuine pine needles that would bring holiday cheer into our apartments.

I know what you’re thinking: a simple trip to the grocery or hardware store to buy a tree or perhaps a jaunty little trip to a tree farm. But no, not for us. There are no real Christmas trees to be had in China because China is one of the few countries that doesn’t officially celebrate Christmas (although the young and trendy have adopted Santa).

Our mission would lead us into the deep, dark woods of the agricultural university next door.

We decided to travel as any great action movie heroes would: by taxi. Of course it was a 10 minute slide to the taxi (a “slide” because the campus roads are literally a sheet of ice) and a 15 minute minute skate to the forested area of the school’s back campus. A bright moon, haloed by a ring of frost because of the cold, glowed above us as we skated along. It was cold enough that our phones began to shut down so two of us turned them off and put them in pockets close to our skin in an effort to keep them warm. A fortuitous provision.

Once in the woods, the real mission began. We crunched through the snow, walking from tree to scrubby tree looking for “the one.” Within the acres of back campus there were two places to look: either in the woods that surrounded the small corn fields or in the designated pine tree area where trees were planted in harvestable rows. Some of those trees had reached 20′ and there didn’t seem to be any signs that a plan existed to harvest them. Still, it was safer to avoid those. So we headed for the trees bordering the fields where there were poor little seedlings struggling under big deciduous trees.

We didn’t want a whole tree: too big, too wasteful, too much possibility of its being illegal. I wanted a branch. Rudolf and Dasher wanted tiny tree tops. For about twenty minutes we tromped around the dark woods, whispering about the mysterious old grave stones that were scattered through the woods in half sunken mounds until Rudolf told us to shut up because we were scaring her.

As any secret agent knows, one must be quiet. The still night and hush provided by the snow (and gravestones) gave us a sense of obligation to be quiet – a similar sense to the one a person gets in a library. And just like any group of students in a library, we also had the irrepressible urge to laugh. But who were we kidding? These conflicting urges and obligations ended in a cacophony of stifled guffaws, bursts of laugher, and eventually collapsing into the snow. “Guys, stop! I’m going to pee my pants!” Rudolf yelled as Blitzen stumbled into a snow camouflaged hole. A moment later, Blitzen popped back up, as if nothing had happened while Dasher pleaded between laughs, “Ah guys…I’m limp!” before finally succumbing to the limpness and tumbling over into the snow herself. Anyone tracking us would have thought that we’d been the ones who’d emptied the pile of 74 beer bottles that we’d passed earlier.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite these setbacks, we persevered and eventually located the targets of our mission. Rudolf immediately named her branch “Henry.” Once the packages were secured, we decided to continue our clandestine mission on foot instead of trying to fit our bushy trophies into a taxi. The prospect of squeezing into the back of a cab and sitting awkwardly while the driver peered into his mirror – three pale faces with six blue green eyes peering back through the pine needles, didn’t sound particularly appealing. Trying to explain with our broken Mandarin what we three foreigners were doing with three branches at 10:30pm was even less appealing.

So for the next hour we trudged past the frozen lake, past the dead orchard, over a fence, through a few snowy corn fields, and down the lonely road to our own school. Unfortunately, there is a fence surrounding our campus and we were freezing cold. Our apartment door also locked at 10:30pm – which is very inconvenient for secret missions.

With curfew in mind and frozen toes, we decided to see if we might not hop the fence and cut a few minutes off our trip. Unfortunately, our designated scout confirmed that the fence was hoppable by YELLING back to us…which alerted the guards to our presence. They just happened to be walking by at the exact time we approached the fence.

There was no time to run; the guards would surely see us. Running would also make us look guilty and confirm nefarious activity. Though being chased by Chinese guards through the snow at midnight – while carrying Christmas trees – would have provided it’s own entertainment.

[Headline: American English teachers caught fleeing with Christmas trees]

We couldn’t hop the fence either since it would land us right in their laps. So we did the only thing we could do: we held still behind a locked sheet medal gate as the terrible flashlight beams got closer and closer. Unfortunately, staying there assured our discovery. Perhaps we should have hid behind our branches.

Eventually, two terrible fur hats poked over the fence and aimed blinding lights in our white faces. “Ni hao!” we chimed, in friendly, casual tones as if standing by fences at midnight was a normal thing to be doing. “We’re teachers here. We live over there,” I said, trying to confirm that we weren’t completely crazy and had some right to be there. The guard just looked at us with an unflappable, unamused expression as if he were bored. He gestured to the branches, saying things I didn’t understand. “I don’t understand,” I shrugged, “My Chinese is little.” He repeated his sentence a few more times and then there was an awkward moment where we all stood staring at each other wondering what we had said and what we were supposed to be doing next – until Rudolf saved the day and burst out in caveman Chinese, “We are happy!” She followed this announcement with a short performance of waving her arms and bouncing up and down to show her happiness. The stone-cold guard cracked and actually laughed, waving a dismissive hand, “no problem.” Relived, we quickly walked away as the guards turned to continue their rounds. “I bet they think we’re drunk,” I whispered as we scurried towards the gate.

They never bothered us again even though we saw them as we walked to our apartment. But as it turned out, our very own door would provide our final obstacle: it was locked. We called the door lady, rang the bell, called my husband, called our neighbor, one phone died, used the other phone to call the door lady again (the touch screen could barely register my cold fingers), prayed, yelled…nothing. After about 20 minutes in the cold, the door lady finally came down in slippers and thermals. It turns out that they had posted the wrong number on the door. We never did find out how the lady was alerted to our presence. She didn’t even question our pine branches.

Mission Complete!

We ended Operation Time Square with three steaming mugs of hot cocoa and thoughts of a Merry Christmas.