If you have followed my blog since last November, you’d know that Halloween is now “a thing” in China. I missed the party my office held in Beijing last year because I was travelling around China with Nancy and Sophie. We were in Chengdu last Halloween staying at the Ritz which “tricked” out its top floor bar for the occasion (see photos here.)

This year I attended the Halloween party for students and teachers of our two adult teaching centers in Xi’an, held in a local bar/restaurant called 1950 because of the 1950’s American theme replete with jukeboxes and a life size Elvis on the restaurant’s stage.

From the title of this blog post, you can probably guess where I’m going with this.

You are correct! I went as The Thief of Baghdad, The Music Man, Caligula, Torquemada, II Duce, Josif Dzhugashvili, Harvey Weinstein,Trump.

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump masks are difficult to come by in Xi’an or for that matter, anywhere in China. Still, the opportunity to mock His Nothingness was simply too tempting. All I needed, really, was a mask. So I found a Trump-mask cutout on line that was good enough for my purposes and with the help of Velcro and lots of shirts to create the bloated girth of the usurping, tumescent gas-bag occupying the Oval Office, I was good to go.

I stayed in character the entire evening, speaking in the manner that Colbert mocks him, by applying “dot..dot…dot”….”dot…dot….dot” at random times, when saying anything. In other words, I was speaking “Twitterese” (is that a word?) Best of all,I could speak complete gibberish and non-sequiturs, peppered liberally with saying “fake news” and “hashtag…” Of course, none of the Chinese students are familiar with Twitter (it’s not permitted here.) so they had no idea why everything I said was punctuated with “dot…dot…dot.” Some even thought that what I was doing was because I liked our Grifter-in-Thief.

In other news…there isn’t any. I haven’t posted anything since my return from the States because there isn’t anything particularly newsworthy. I’m just doing my thing, rubbing along with everyone else here. I have a vague idea of somehow getting my hands on a turkey (the food kind) and actually having a Thanksgiving dinner which would mark my first serious dinner party, which I have entertained notions of, since buying a table that seats six, expressly for the purposes of having dinner parties. With my other table, I could comfortably entertain ten people. The turkey is the most difficult part of the equation. Last year, I celebrated Thanksgiving in a restaurant in Wudaokou that advertised they were serving a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner which was a reasonable approximation of the real thing. There were also food outlets in Beijing that imported frozen turkeys although they were very expensive and at the same time, unappealing. There is only one market here (see photos) that would stock them and if that doesn’t pan out I can see if the top hotels are providing any type of catered dinners. I’m not too hopeful. So unless that happens, I probably won’t be posting until X-mas which should at least provide some interesting photos, like last year.

Of course, news about “the most dangerous person in the world” might cause me to post one of my periodic rants. As I like to quote Rachel Maddow: “watch this space.”

SAGA shopping mall is the largest mall in Xi’an and is attached to the office building where I work.

This is “Metro Market.” The only store in Xi’an that is devoted to imported goods on a large scale. If I’m going to get a turkey for Thanksgiving, this would be the place.

Notice the long tie. One button read: “I have a very good brane” which he actually said and the other was the flag of Monrovia with one star and stripes. That allowed me to use the gag: “Haven’t you ever heard of the star and stripes?” I’m the star, believe me.”

Zoe and Patrick, the two Center Education Managers.

I supervised a candy competition whereby students formed into teams and competed to see who could move the most candy from one bowl to another using a spoon in their mouth.