Volunteers from Volkswagen kept the currywurst platters coming at the German embassy's holiday bazaar last weekend. Photos by Mike Peters / China Daily

Cups of warm guhlwein keep shoppers warm while beautiful centerpieces that combined German candles with dried Chinese lotus pods promise to give local homes a warm glow in the coming holidays.

Yuletide cheer was everywhere as the German embassy hosted the capital's most talked-about holiday bazaar. Mike Peters chases the stollen and the guhlwein.

Saturday dawns bright and very cold in Beijing last weekend, but the chilly wind does not daunt the crowd that gathered early in front of the German Embassy. By 10 am the orderly line snakes around the corner and down the street for at least another block. Welcome to the annual German Christmas bazaar where, for six hours, about 4,000 people streamed through electronic security to feast on currywurst, streusel, gingerbread cookies, draft beer and gluhwein, the warm mulled wine served up in bright red cups by volunteers from Siemens corporation.

"Twelve years ago, we started very small," says Birgit Baur-Gallizioli, a longtime volunteer coordinator of the festival. "Some ladies who don't work did handicrafts and baked goods for the embassy staff and the German community. But it grew quickly, and we saw this as a very good way to raise some money for the Chinese charities which we support."

For the past two years, "some money" has added up to about 400,000 yuan, a combination of sales at the bazaar and donations from many German corporations. "We like to support grassroots organizations that don't have a lot of other support - and that are transparent about where the money goes," Baur-Gallizioli says.

Most of the seven charities help children and elderly with special needs, both in China's cities and in rural villages. The recipients include Beijing Sun Village, Love & Hope, Hope Foster Home, Stars and Rain, Golden Key, Beijing Huiling and Beijing Hongdandan.

"It's always exciting when we present the money at the embassy to the representatives of the charities," Baur-Gallizioli says. "They come and tell us what they have been doing for the past year and what they hope to do next year. It's a very emotional day."

Most of the charities have been sponsored by the embassy for some years, she says, and the relationship goes beyond the bazaar.

"In May we organized a barbecue for the children at Sun Village," she says of the charity designed to provide homes, a safe environment and education for children of convicted parents. "They like to eat the meat on the sticks, and they enjoy having a picnic day with German children and families."

Children from several charities were at the embassy to enjoy the festivities. They joined in decorating heart-shaped cookies and enjoyed Christmas music and all kinds of German foods.

Grown-ups, meanwhile, made for the bier and guhlwein, the latter especially welcome on a chilly morning.

Bernd Eitel, spokesperson for Siemens, says serving up steaming cups of guhlwein is a long tradition for his company at Christmastime in Beijing.

"And this is not guhlwein that we buy at Jenny Lou's for heating up," he says. "We bring the spices over from Germany, and we make it fresh from a special recipe." About 60 volunteers work to convert 1,000 bottles of red wine into some 3,500 cups of holiday joy.

The German Chamber of Commerce here also swings into action, Baur-Ballizioli says. "For the past few years, volunteers there have been making wonderful gingerbread houses that we sell at the bazaar. This year there was even a gingerbread in the shape of the CCTV tower."

With trade and industry relations growing, she says, Germans comprise one of the largest and most active expatriate communities in China - about 4,000 strong in Beijing alone.

"We have very big companies here, and many small ones, too," she says, proudly noting that there are 120 new students at Beijing's German school this year.

With that many German passport holders in the area - not to mention the like-minded Swiss and Austrian expats who know where the party is - the organizers don't really have to advertise the event any more.

"Because it's on the embassy compound, the security concerns require us to limit the number of people on the grounds at one time to 1,500," she says. "So more people get in as others leave."

"That sometimes makes for long lines," says four-time attender Andrea Schmidt, as she scooped up four platters of currywurst.

"I skipped last year's bazaar after waiting a really long time the year before," she says. "But this might be our last Christmas in Beijing, so I just had to be here."

She only had to wait 25 minutes to get in this time, she says. "It's kind of a Christmas miracle, but everybody always seems to get in eventually."