Whether in China’s urban centres or its remote rural areas, Christmas is not typically celebrated with the fanfare seen in the West. On the mainland, December 25 is not even a public holiday, with the lion’s share of enthusiasm reserved for the traditional Lunar New Year period beginning in January or February.
Zhang Li, who lives in a pastoral section of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in the country’s north, was no exception. But this year things have changed, thanks in part to a new…