A Foreigner’s Christmas in China by Maureen F. McHugh (Christmas Ghosts, 1993) has the narrator (perhaps the writer) going to a Christmas Eve party for ex-pats in China. Then, on the way home, she is accosted by a young girl who says she is the narrator’s Christmas Spirit. The narrator tries to fob her off and go home, but she blacks out, and then finds herself at an underground (and illegal in China) Catholic service.
The next (Christmas Carol-like) stop is in the living room of the cook of the special dining room the narrator uses at work. She doesn’t know the man that well (a language issue) but it soon becomes clear that he and his wife do not get on, and that he may be cheating. The Christmas Spirit tells the narrator she is here, “To show you his choice”.
The final visit is to a shared room where one of her ex-students lives, a young woman who is an untreated depressive and almost completely withdrawn. The narrator reflects that she has similar mental health issues but has always managed to avoid the abyss into which the young woman has fallen. She remembers a previous depressive episode, and how she came out of it one day when she noticed the beauty of a maple tree: she resolved to choose that viewpoint in the future.
Then (spoiler) the narrator realises that she has stopped doing so—at which point she finds herself back on the road.
The final part of the story sees the writer intrude into the story even more and talk more directly about her time in China and why she went there (although her specific reasons are never revealed). She concludes with this:
Maybe I had a sort of blackout on Red Flag Road, or maybe I met an old Chinese spirit. I am telling you now, I don’t know. But some things you must choose. Choose a bad marriage, choose a bad life, or choose to look around you and see.
Interesting final point, but I’m not entirely sure the story’s different parts sum to that observation (what was the point of the church service scene, for one thing?) I also wondered whether this is really a story, or self-therapy for the writer. Whatever of those two is true (probably both) it has an interesting Chinese setting and wise final message. If you don’t squint too hard, it sort of works.
*** (Good). 4,150 words.