Inside the Scitech Plaza department store in east Beijing, Ms Lin Ruifang is busy selling Christmas.
The 22-year-old shop assistant, with long black hair and high cheekbones, attends a counter laden with miniature trees, fairy lights and conifer wreaths tied with red ribbon.
Not so long ago, Christmas and Christmas shopping was unknown in communist China, but that has been changing with the arrival of western fashions and global retailing pressures.
"It is not foreigners who buy all this stuff," said Ms Lin, as she took 65 yuan (£5) from a man wearing a leather jacket with mink collar for an artificial tree with gold cones and a star on top.
"Young Chinese couples like to put them on their table at this time of year. They buy Christmas cards too and send them to their friends. It's become very fashionable."
December 25th is not a holiday in China - the big mid-winter break is the Spring Festival in February - but in the cities it is coinciding with something of a shopping revolution.
The manager of Scitech Plaza, who has decorated all five storeys of his designer outlets with little images of Santa Claus, and "Happy Christmas" slogans, said that last year had also been very busy as many Chinese people now exchanged gifts before December 25th.
"It started with the joint ventures when they began getting presents from westerners," he said.
The idea of showering goodies on children had yet to catch on, however. Santa Claus is "just a very nice old senior citizen", said a sales assistant, Mr Qian Jun, when I asked him what Santa was supposed to do.
Given time that too will surely change. All over Asia, whether communist or democratic, Buddhist or Christian, tastes are becoming centralised and the central planning is done in Madison Avenue. Already the invasion of goods with brand names and elegant packaging, representing quality and a foreign lifestyle, has changed consumer demand in urban China, where before people could only buy low-quality state goods.
Advertising, once unknown, is big business. Crest toothpaste and Nokia mobile phones are among the top 10 products promoted in China where expensive campaigns have also been mounted by global brands like Nestle, Duracell and Maxwell House. In just a few years, stores where presentation was never important have adopt ed modern selling techniques.
"Westerners are conditioned all their lives to consumer priorities, and instinctively know the value of display, but Chinese people did not have the same points of reference growing up as we had," said the European manager of a joint venture selling liquor and tobacco. "But that's changing now."
Other western practices are revolutionising shopping in China. The culture of Thigh master and "amazing" silver polish and "fantastic" collapsible plastic containers, aimed mainly at women consumers, has arrived with direct television sales.
Home shopping began in a small way in Guangzhou in 1992 and is now the fastest growing retail sector in a country of 1.2 billion people and 250 million TV sets. "Between 4,000 and 5,000 people in Beijing alone telephone us every day to place an order for retail goods advertised on television," Ms Zhou Aidong, marketing manager at BTV Television Commodity Sales, told me.
Their best selling lines are diet, health products, skin care, facial care and study aids. In 1998, language repeaters, which allow instant playback to improve pronunciation, and "instant translators", devices which convert Chinese into English and vice versa, were particularly popular.
"Credit cards are not yet common in China so all sales are made on a cash-on-delivery basis," said Ms Zhou, who promised "one-year maintenance and a warm-hearted service". There is a degree of resistance to home shopping nevertheless, revealed in a survey by the China Business Monitoring Centre, which found that 70 per cent of Chinese consumers are not keen on the idea, believing, with some justification, that the goods offered are inferior. During the year prices fell steadily, while the choice of products grew. Profit margins have shrunk in some cities from 4 to 1 per cent in the last decade and falling prices have deflated demand as many consumers now wait for prices to decline even further. Retailing has become a very tough business, as illustrated by the story of the wonder mop.
Shanghai TV Shopping, which reaches 40 cities, began retailing an all-purpose mop with adjustable head by direct television selling, charging the equivalent of £15. They became so popular that - inevitably - "pirate" mops appeared on the streets at a fifth of the price. People began to buy the street version instead but they were of such poor quality that the image of the super-mop suffered and business died. Whatever next? Pirate Christmas trees most likely. Or have I just bought one from Ms Lin?