Expats cook up scary treats for Halloween

3-year-old Liam McManus samples one of the scary treats his mother has prepared. Photo: Li Hao/GT

The McManus family at their home. Photo: Li Hao/GT

In the week leading up Halloween, 33-year-old Pamela McManus and her husband are busy making preparations for the party they will host at their home.

Artificial cobwebs are dangled from ceilings, plastic spiders are scattered throughout the house, and cardboard skeletons are hung from lighting fixtures. Pumpkins carved into jack-o'-lanterns will greet visitors at the front door on the night of the party.

It is the third year that the McManus family is hosting a party for Halloween, and they are expecting about 30 guests both young and old.

"It is nice to come together and celebrate, to kind of feel at home for a couple of minutes, like we are back in the States celebrating," said McManus, who is originally from New Jersey. Both she and her husband currently teach at international schools in Beijing's Shunyi district.

As part of the evening's revels, McManus is preparing a Halloween-themed banquet, inspired by the "graveyard dirt" her mother used to make - pudding with "crushed Oreo cookies, gummy worms and 'headstone' cookies."

She will draw jack-o'-lantern faces onto oranges, make cheese look like ghosts, and prepare hot dogs in the semblance of distended fingers.

"You have to make it look either scary or gross or cute," said McManus. "I think that makes it different from other meals like Thanksgiving. Halloween has to be very creative, because it is more fun for kids."

McManus said back in the US, there would usually also be pumpkin soup and bread, but in Beijing, they would only be serving creepy-looking finger food.

"It's just fun. It's fun to make silly treats, especially for the kids," she said.

Scary feasts

Kyle Henderson, 33, will also be hosting a party for Halloween along with his wife. Originally from Vancouver, Henderson echoed McManus' thoughts that Halloween meals were an opportunity to get creative.

Henderson will be serving "blood" wine and pizza with "blood" sauce to his 30-odd guests, two-thirds of whom will be Chinese.

"You can shape the meat like a leg, or something weird," said Henderson. "People like these sorts of things. They think it's something fun."

Zhao Xinyu, a 32-year-old foodie who attended one such Halloween party last year, said that it was a novel experience for Chinese people to partake in "spooky" food that often resembled severed human parts.

"Some of it was very bloody-looking, like bloody fingers or eyeballs," said Zhao. "I don't mind it. Scary-looking food makes the festival feel more spooky."

McManus admitted that some guests in previous years, both Chinese and foreigners, found the gruesome looking food difficult to stomach.

"If it looks very bloody, some people will just be grossed at it even though they know it isn't real," said McManus. "Sometimes, your mind cannot accept what it looks like. Even if you know it is a hot dog, it looks like a finger, so you can't eat it."

Feast without the trick-or-treat

While some expats are making macabre looking dishes to celebrate Halloween, the food most frequently associated with Halloween is candy.

Overseas, one of the customary rituals of Halloween is trick-or-treating, whereby children, dressed in costumes, go house to house asking for candy or money.

While those living in expat-heavy areas like Shunyi district are able to carry on this tradition, many families have been forced to abandon it, given that Halloween has not traditionally been celebrated by Chinese people.