Coins with Legs
Our salmonella experience
There’s no way I’m the type of mum who needs to keep up with the Joneses. I march to my own accomplishment drum, that’s for sure, but when our neighbours showed us their button-like turtles recently, scrabbling around in a glass bowl like coins with legs ... well, we just had to get some.
So cute!
I have to tell you, I’m not an animal person. I really do think they’re incredible and adorable and amazing and I do like and appreciate them and stand up for their rights, but I’m probably like your average grandmother: she fawns over the grandbabies but also relishes handing them back at the end of the day. That’s me (in a four-legged critter, nongrandma sense).
So, suffice to say that despite their coin-like cuteness, little penny turtles fall into that giving-back-baby category. I had hoped it would be different. I had hoped turtles would be easy-care and not very demanding, but it’s amazing how much care two little coins and their legs need.
Firstly, I wanted their bowl to be clean. Permanently. But alas, turtles poop and whiz and spit out their food with alarming regularity. Water doesn’t stay crystal clear for long under those conditions, so I became obsessed with cleaning the bowl the moment it became cloudy. This turned out to be several times a day.
Then there’s the guilt over the bowl thing. These guys need exercise. I hate that they’re trapped in that circular prison for hours on end, so I get the kids to pop them in the bottom of the shower for a play after school each day. This, of course, needs constant supervision (it is an excitable time, after all) and there are always lengthy protests from the kids when I want to wrap it up for the evening.
Then there’s the salmonella thing. I didn’t know about it until post-purchase. I didn’t know that turtles (like all reptiles) carry salmonella at considerably higher rates than other animals. In fact, health departments don’t recommend turtles in the homes of children under five, as their immune systems are still tightening up and can be prone to more serious infection.
Although I realise these facts are probably on the border of scaremongering, it still unnerved me. Maybe I just needed an excuse not to have a pet in the house. Whatever the case, it wasn’t long into our period of turtle ownership, when the entire family came down with a bad case of the runs (a symptom of mild salmonella poisoning), that I made the executive decision to set our little coins free.
I talked to the kids. At first they protested but then I explained how the turtles needed friends and room to grow and move, and what a better life they would have if they could switch their glass bowl and shower excursions for a life of freedom in the pond at the base of our building. One look at that pond—a turtle wonderland—and the kids were convinced. Those turtles slipped into that dark green water and took off like a shot. It was a lovely sight to see, and best of all, our diarrhoea cleared up faster than you could say ‘turtle soup’.
The kids coped well. Just the mere mention of ice cream made everything all right again, and our little friends have never been mentioned since.
My Love Affair with the Wall
Jinshanling steals my heart
Sure, I’d seen it before.
Mutianyu was lovely and sent me roses; I still see it occasionally. Badaling? Myeh; was kinda glad when it didn’t call the next day. But Jinshanling Great Wall. Oh, Jinshanling. Oriental dreams are made of you. How you broke my heart.
We had taken the Jingcheng Expressway to Chengde (north of Beijing) for the weekend and on the way home, we stopped for a peek at the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall, almost as an afterthought.
It was your regular chair-lift ride with the standard bushland view and the usual landing platform on a cemented hilltop. But when my feet landed on that cement and I turned around, all typical expectations dissolved. My heart stopped. My breath caught. Tears sprang. And there it was—draped over the wandering hills like a cashmere serpent, rolling, reclining and basking in my eyes; a bewitching lothario.
I was love-struck.
The Wall had never looked like this. It went forever. It rose, it plummeted, it coiled around and flung itself wide. It peaked and troughed and meandered and teased. It trailed away skinny into far-off Simitai and scooped around powerfully under my feet to hold me close.
I gasped, clutched at my hands and rested my head against its grey stones, watching the sun cast itself bronze over the hilltops. This was a life-altering moment for me. This is how the Wall should make you feel. This is it. I never wanted to leave.
Our previous day in Chengde had also been spent on a high. We had explored the summer retreat of Empress Dowager Cixi on glorified golf buggies and wandered the Eight Outer Temples in awe. All are UNESCO World Heritage sites and their charm and spirit are a wonder to behold, especially the Qing Dynasty resort where we found it hard to believe we were walking where emperors and empresses once strolled, their yellow robes resplendent in the sunlight. Luscious and massive, its temples, pavilions, lakes, weeping willows, peacocks and horse-riding plain are hemmed in by 10 kilometres of scaled-down Wall. You could have called it the Medium-Sized Wall.
Xiansheng and I loved it, and what surprised me a lot about this trip was how much the kids enjoyed it, too. This ain’t no Club Med resort with a pale blue swimming pool, that’s for sure, so it was interesting to see the kids run and climb and spin prayer wheels and explore more than happily. It was also wonderful to see them drenched in the history and culture of China.
We actually left Chengde quite reluctantly, but little did we know we had the Jinshanling Great Wall power moment to look forward to. The beauty of the Wall, however, wasn’t the only thing that would remain forever ingrained in my head. Or on my head.
At the base of the Jinshanling hillside is a car park and shop and toilet block. Prepping for our long drive home, we all popped in to the ‘toilet’ for a wee before hitting the road. Ella, at only just six years of age, is not world-weary enough to enter a Chinese public toilet without batting an eyelid. She still finds them ‘icky’ and a bad squat toilet is enough to render her bladder inoperative. Nonetheless, I took her in and calmly talked her through it.
Because half the contents of this toilet were actually sprayed all over the floor and around the sides of the sunken toilet bowl, I lifted Ella and held her above the bowl so that her feet wouldn’t need to touch the floor. I had my back to the toilet door, leaning far enough over to ensure anything she managed to release would hit the target (unlike certain other patrons before us).
This leaning forward, with back strained, holding onto a six-year-old with a mental bladder-lock is a precarious position to be in. Especially when the floor is covered in whiz and other unpleasant waste.
I remember the moment my feet began to slip.
It was imperceptible at first, just sort of an unbalanced feeling. Then Ella sensed the shift in gravity and grabbed my beanie, pulling it down over my eyes. That’s when I became really discombobulated and started yelling for her to wee—fast. She couldn’t. She clutched. I yelled some more. She panicked and clutched harder, pulling my centre of gravity even further forward and thus causing my sneakers to go into a serious backward slide.
In the moments before the top of my head crashed into the cement wall behind the toilet, I knew I had two choices: put my hands up to stop myself falling and thus drop my pink, spotless daughter into the cesspit below, or hold on tight and take the full force of a crushing fall on the crown.
Well, I mean, which would you choose? The pain was so fierce, I’m sure I blacked out for a split second. The impact reverberated in a contracting wave from my skull, down my neck and back to my putrid sneakers. There were tidal waves in the fluid of my eyeballs, I swear to God. Then those cartoon stars appeared, dancing around my head.
I couldn’t open my eyes at first. Ella clutched at me like a baby sloth to the underbelly of its mum, and I begged her not to move while I passed through the pain and pondered how to extricate myself. Basically, I
was in the downward-dog yoga position—legs splayed out straight, bum in the air, head down and implanted into the wall—only I had a six-year-old sloth clutching my belly.
I couldn’t even call out for Xiansheng; my lungs had all but collapsed. Ella remained stock-still but somehow we extricated ourselves and Ella ran out calling for Dad as a stumbling, pain-intoxicated mother trailed behind, muttering to the pink elephants dancing around her head.
Amazingly, I didn’t cry; it must have been the concussion. I got in the car and we began our long drive home. But wait, there’s more.
Ella (with bladder full) began whining that the sun was in her eyes, so I grabbed a towel, undid my seatbelt and stretched into the back seat to reach the power button on her window, lowering it a crack. I then stuffed the end of the towel part way through the window crack and instructed Ella to push the button upward on the count of three, to wedge the towel in place.
‘Okay, when I say go...’ I said, and Ella promptly pushed the button. It was the middle finger of my right hand that suffered the excruciating power of that window. When I screamed for her to push the button to release my finger, she pushed it the wrong way and my finger was all but crushed.
You could hear my screams in Hong Kong.
It’s moments like these that remind us how precarious life can be—how utterly divine one minute, and then skirting the bowels of toilet bowls the next. Many a time, my life flashed before my eyes on this road trip—mainly thanks to the Chinese drivers overtaking cars on hairpin bends, narrowly missing a head-on with us by a cat’s whisker. God knows how we survived, quite literally.
Nonetheless, the experience was worth it. Chengde was a very special place—and Jinshanling ... well, if you want your heart batted around like a kitten with a ball of yarn, don’t miss your chance to be seduced by Jinshanling. Your love affair may be fleeting but the memory will be cast in stone.
Or a cement wall.
Gong Fu Baby
Charles the Genius
Because we’re so often trapped indoors, Xiansheng and I are ever on the lookout for ways to keep our three-year-old son physically active. When our neighbour suggested starting a gong fu (kung fu) group for littlies, we were very, verrry interested.
Within hours, we gathered together a small group of three-to five-year-olds in the gym downstairs but alas, as suspected, the teacher found it near impossible to hold the boys’ attention. Not surprisingly, little kids actually struggle to stand in gong fu poses and deliver a well-timed series of punches to the solar plexus of their opponent. This teacher just didn’t get the fact that his charges were small, uncoordinated and far more interested in running around clocking each other over the head with gong fu sticks than they were in bowing to laoshi (teacher).
The session lasted ten minutes and we disbanded, all but giving up on the idea. Until Charles came along, that is.
A friend of a Western neighbour, Charles is a martial arts expert who has many feathers in his gong fu cap. He also teaches yoga, meditation and creative crafts from his workshop in Shunyi (the outer’burbs of The Jing). He speaks enough English to engage the children, but what he also has is that super magic touch—a complete understanding of what little kids are made of.
In fact, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. The kids were totally entranced. They flung sticks. They leapt about. They rolled, tumbled and were jammed into little boy sandwiches and thrown over shoulders. They stood on their heads, raced around chairs like crabs and became rabbits, tigers and cranes. They were exhilarated, exercised and totally enraptured in every minute of the hour-long session. Genius, genius, genius. Let’s bottle Charles and sell him at Ya Show market and call it Gong Fu Genius.
Yes, there were gong fu-esque movements and traditions slipped in, but Charles’s programme was purely built on fun. He even had the foresight to know that any good gong fu session should be wrapped-up with a rowdy game of Duck Duck Ghost (as opposed to Duck Duck Goose—I didn’t have the heart to correct his English).
No matter. It’s a great hour out, and Riley is now becoming our little gong fu master. Who’d have thought it?
Chinese Santa Claus
There’s something not quite right about it
It’s hard to believe our second Christmas in Beijing is fast approaching. What’s also hard to believe is how rapidly the Festive Season is spreading across the capital and into the hearts of everyone, even those Christmas-non-believers—much more so than last year. Everything seems so rapid in this town, even the adoption of Christian festivals.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if the Chinese do anything well, it’s celebration. They sure know how to put on a spectacle and each year it seems the sparkle of Christmas is more blinding than the last. In fact, I feel like I’m standing on Regent Street in London on 24 December. Well, maybe not quite Regent Street. But I did feel like I was in New York yesterday, because Santas are starting to pop up on street corners like it’s the Big Apple or more aptly, the Big Crab Apple. And when Santas start popping up on the streets of Beijing, that’s when you truly know you’re in the midst of a world-class city, fully embracing the long-ignored traditions of the Rest of the World.
I’ll never forget seeing my first Chinese Santa. Dark-eyed, swarthy and in desperate need of a feed, his waist was more waspish than Audrey Hepburn. Nonetheless, his smile and warmth was Santa all over and we loved how he managed to capture this vital Christmas spirit. Didn’t stop the kids from laying on a series of heavy Santa questions, though.
‘Why is he so skinny, Mama? Why does he have black fluffy bits sticking out of his hat? Why is his suit hot pink?’ After a long bout of Christmas shopping, I was too tired to field these questions and handballed them to Xiansheng, who groaned in agony before spinning some convoluted Santa-ry tale.
The kids looked subsequently dumbfounded.
We’ve since spotted Santa at school fairs, in department stores, at bazaars, parties and expat resident get-togethers. Each time he looked a little or a whole lot different than the last one and it was so distracting and confusing for the kids that I finally decided to come clean and reveal all.
Yes, that’s right. Don’t be horrified, but I did it.
I told them Santa actually can’t be everywhere at once and does indeed hire out lackeys to field demand while he busies himself in his workshop at the North Pole. At least the questions abated and the questions over the hot pink suit were easily palmed off as a dodgy Ya Show find.
Like many things in China, I’m sure things will change rapidly. I’m sure by next year that hot pink Chinese Santa will become a long-lost moment in history, and the Santas of Beijing will become as fat and jolly as the St Nick we all know and love.
Odd that I feel sad about that.
The Baby With Only One Arm
How did we walk away?
Yesterday I experienced one of the most poignant times of my life. I don’t even know how I can express it to you here, but I will try.
Let me start by saying that a month ago I was talking with a neighbour about doing something positive for the Festive Season, to raise some money for those less fortunate, or something along those lines. My neighbour said she knew of an orphanage in desperate need of funding. In a country where even the poverty-stricken are poverty-stricken, my friend and I felt compelled to put together a plan.
A short time later, four eager tai tai sat in the office of the head nun of an orphanage two hours from Beijing. A warm, intelligent woman with excellent English, the nun clasped our hands in hers and welcomed us to her foster home. Soon after, she ushered us into a room to meet her kids.
When the door to the room opened, the first thing I noticed was the railings. Then the purpose-built tables with the therapeutic toys, welded tight to the surface so flailing hands couldn’t knock them crashing to the floor. The third thing I noticed was the people. There were lots of people. Carers. Young carers, like uni students or something. And so many of them—one to every five or
so kids. It was really quite amazing, and although the rooms certainly weren’t hyperequipped, they were clean and very well laid out. The bedrooms were tidy and spotless and homey. The kitchens were impeccable, and above all, the atmosphere was Love.
When we entered the room, things were quiet. We were asked to remove our shoes and wash our hands, then we were ushered down the purpose-built ramps to meet the kids. And that’s when I saw them. The kids.
The kids.
I don’t know how naive I will sound by saying this, but I had no idea these kids would be disabled. And I mean, all of them. All of them had cerebral palsy, from mild afflictions to extreme. Here were a bunch of kids, from babies to early teens, encased in bodies that spasmed into twisted coils while their minds beamed freshly from perfectly normal brains. Here they were, in wheelchairs, in rocking chairs, sprawled on the floor, strapped to tables, swiping at bolted down objects, loping across the room with limbs splayed, laughing, smiling, grimacing, with all eyes on us, the foreign tai tai.
My breath was stolen from my chest and we four tai tai clutched at each other for support. Then, after some moments, we broke free of each other and began wandering gently among those children and we knelt and we touched and we talked and looked deep into those eyes, trapped in those skulls.
I went straight to the boy strapped into the wheelchair by the window. I’ve worked with cerebral-palsy kids before, so I understood his physical actions and reactions, yet they nonetheless managed to undo me.
When I first spoke to the boy, in Mandarin, he looked up at me and he wailed an awful, blood-curdling cry. Stricken with quadriplegia cerebral palsy (in spasm from the eyes down), it was his way of speaking, yet even though I knew that, it still unnerved and upset me enormously. I remained calm and spoke as much Mandarin as I knew, but after a few moments, I started to feel distressed. Instead of disbanding him and running like a coward, I instead reached out and took his taught, spasmed hand and I told him he was beautiful. I said it so many times, I felt like an utter fool. Then I walked away and found somewhere private where I could cry.
Beijing Tai Tai Page 13