Maybe the clothing snob in me has been taken down a peg or two.
Friendly Superstitious...
Is the writing on the wall?
Oh, wailing lament! (while clutching at the five adorable stuffed toys lounging on the end of my daughter’s bed). Why did it have to be you? How will I tell my daughter the gossipy terrors that have be-stricken you all? Beijing’s Olympic mascots—the Friendly Fuwa—is it true?!
Indeed. It seems that superstitions from China’s bloggists are at an all-time high in light of recent events supposedly foreshadowed by our fuzzy and very friendly Olympic mascots. Yes, Beijing’s gorgeous Friendlies have been indicted in a bloggist smear campaign that is tugging at the heartstrings of my heart. All I can think of is how I must hide this rot from my daughter.
Never been very superstitious, me.
Of all the soft, fluffy toys my children have become enamoured with over their short 7.9 and 5.3 years (respectively), the Beijing Olympic Friendlies still rate awfully high. The 20-centimetre-high versions of Jingjing, Beibei, Nini, Huanhuan and Yingying (in order of preference—poor Yingying, always holding the wooden spoon) hold high status in the precious real estate on my daughter’s bed. Much love and affection has gone into these toys and the whole idea behind their cultural, ethical and welcoming personas, so cleverly crafted by Chinese artist Han Meilin.
Nonetheless, the warm fuzzies surrounding these adorable Fuwa seem to be turning ominous, with online suggestions the Friendlies are indeed harbingers of doom.
Since the beginning of 2008, four disasters have been superstitiously pinned on four of our favourite friendlies—Huanhuan, who represents the Olympic flame, has been indicted in the worldwide protest issues trailing the torch in its international wake.
Nini, the kite-shaped swallow, has been linked to the disastrous train-crash in Shandong, home to Weifang, China’s kite-flying capital.
Yingying, the Tibetan antelope, has been paralleled with the recent political unrest facing Tibet.
And lastly, dear Jingjing, the giant panda, has been pinned for the earth-shattering quake in Sichuan province, the home of the panda.
Ridiculous scaremongering? Or a little bit spooky?
With four out of five oddball prophecies already in the bag, this leaves only Beibei, the sturgeon fish, to fulfil its looming disaster somewhere along the Yangtze River, the only place where Chinese sturgeons reside. Adding to the hoo-ha is the fact that all of the above events began or occurred on a date that adds up to the number 8—Beijing’s Olympic year.
While I’ve never been superstitious, given the seriousness of the issues China has recently faced, I’m off to pray to the Fuwa gods on the end of my daughter’s bed.
No—really.
Yabber Yabber Yabber
How a young boy began to speak
You may remember the anguish Xiansheng and I went through over Riley when we first came to Beijing. It was because he didn’t talk much. His comprehension also seemed shady, so we hired a Western speech therapist, put him into school early and started him on a year of speech therapy despite Other People saying, ‘Don’t worry, boys learn to speak more slowly, give him time’ and despite our therapist’s books being jam-packed with a clientele that was 90 per cent ... boys.
During this year of therapy and early schooling, there were minor improvements—most of them actually occurring after a visit to Australia where Riley was surrounded by English-speaking people. We read to him until the pages bled. We flashed flashcards and spoke like Teletubbies. We did everything we could to help our son but his improvement was, nonetheless, slow.
Although we have no doubt this year of therapy had some impact, it did cross my mind more than once that our son was not really ‘linguistically compromised’. Perhaps he was just going to be slow on the uptake with speech. Or maybe oration wasn’t going to be one of his fortes, like mathematics is not mine or baking mini pavlovas is not Xiansheng’s. Riley’s physical skill set was highly developed and well above his peers—maybe, just maybe, he was not ‘delayed’ and was just taking his time with the verbal factor.
It was very much a time of Maybes.
During this horrible Maybe time, my wonderful mother-in-law would intersperse the terror with statements like, ‘Oh for goodness sake, leave him alone. He’s a boy! He’s more focused on mud and footballs. He’ll be fine. He will develop at his own pace. Don’t rush him. You wait and see—he will be a public speaker or even Prime Minister [of course] one day.’
It’s easy to dismiss such wisdom when it comes from someone so biased and someone who so dearly wants the best for her grandson. But I didn’t dismiss it. Amid the all-encompassing fear, I did listen to her. I still did what was expected of me as a responsible mother—I did everything in my power to ensure our son had the appropriate stimulation that could help him improve (what other choice did I have?), but I also listened to my mother-in-law. I heard her. And deep, deep down, among the devastation and doubt, I began to believe her.
I consulted my friends and came up with a dozen women who shared similar speech and comprehension fears with their sons. Is it a coincidence that so many boys experience this phenomenon? Is it also a coincidence that so many children (girls included) experience speech delays when exposed to so many languages at once, as is the expat way? I know of many expat children who are consistently exposed to two, three or more languages in their everyday lives. Research tells us that multilingual children often speak later than their peers, as their little minds are so busily sorting through varying linguistic genres.
Well, what a difference three-and-a-half years makes. Our son’s speech has blossomed like a flower and although he struggles a little with grammatical structure, he has definitely joined the ‘Five Year Old Ceaseless Verbal Diarrhoea Club’ that his sister joined at age two. He is also (and I write this with tears of pride), the top reader in his grade. Who’d have thought...
Thank you, Granny.
Acts of Kindness
High-speed rescue on the Second Ring Road
Picture this.
You have just spent a few thousand kuai at Hongqiao toy store with two hot, sticky kids aged five and seven, and you are already panicking about the argument you’re going to have with your husband over this. It’s a 100 degrees outside and you’re loaded with four bursting bags, craning your neck (which is plastered with sweat) for a cab, simultaneously trying to grip two very slippery little hands on the ends of two very diva-like bodies.
‘It’s too hot, Mum!’ these bodies wail as you struggle to keep a raging heat headache from rupturing the confines of your skull. Oh, and you also forgot to eat breakfast so your stomach feels like the black pit of despair.
In the misty heat, cab after cab sails by, windows tightly encasing cool, calm, collected air and happily smiling passengers (you’re sure you hallucinated several of them popping bottles of champagne). Your heart is sinking lower than Beijing street grime.
Then suddenly, a parking attendant materialises and he smiles a lopsided grin and he gets busy with it on that jam-packed road and from the fluxing waves of heat rising off hot metal cars, a cab slides towards you out of magical nowhere and slips to a stop and the attendant is opening the door and inside there is nothing but cool. You slide those kids into that cool, gasping so hard you might have just run a 10-kilometre marathon.
‘Qu nar?’ Where are you going? he asks and it’s the sweetest thing you’ve heard all day (other than the price of the Nintendo DS you just bought for a song). ‘To my freezer in the sky,’ you say with a relieved smile.
‘Hao le!’ Great! ... and you are zooming off home.
Things go well until you hit the traffic-packed Second Ring Road. Ugh. But you’re cool, the kids have their toys, you’re just happy the rugrats are occupied, and anyway, you have Mickey Mouse lollipops in case of emergency. Clever you.
Nonetheless, after twenty minutes in almost standstill traffic, you feel a surge of relief when things start to flow again,
only to be rapidly crushed when out of nowhere the taxi’s power suddenly falters. It’s not the imminent breakdown that initially worries you. It’s the toxic plumes of white smoke billowing from the air-conditioning vents and into the cabin that really send you into a frenzy.
‘Stop the car!’ you scream, and seconds later, you’re hauling two kids and four massive bags out onto the Second Ring Road in the burning heat with cars zooming past at 100 kilometres per hour, and you are in the centre lane.
‘Oh dear Lord send a miracle fast,’ you whimper as you scream at your seven-year-old to plaster herself against the other side of the cab while you grip at your five-year-old in terror and the horrified cab driver runs around flapping his arms like a crane, unsure what to do. Thankfully, he pulls himself together quickly and thinks to himself ‘stuff the car’ and proceeds to protect your kids from the traffic.
Truly, these dire moments seem to take forever. It’s probably less than a minute that this drama takes to unfurl on the stinking hot freeway, but it seems like hours of drastic mental anguish—‘How are we going to get out of this?!’—and eyeballing for a vacant taxi (there aren’t any, and there won’t be any).
Then suddenly, an answer materialises before you: a black four-wheel drive and two smiling Chinese faces in the windscreen. It is the fellows who were travelling behind you and got hemmed in by the zooming lanes either side.
The driver winds down the window. ‘Get in!’ he calls. ‘We’ll take you home!’ Tears spring to your eyes and you bustle the kids into the back seat. The fellows are kind. They flip on the air-conditioner and direct the vents towards you. Then they chit-chat to make you feel comfortable, then they drop you at your building and they drive off into the pollution-clogged distance and you realise you have just been the recipient of a really lovely act of kindness.
The Chinese will happily let a door slam in your face than hold it open for you, but then will go out of their way to rescue you on a freeway, charm your kids and drop you home.
Thanks, fellas.
Beijing’s Monopoly
Those clever marketing minds...
Isn’t it funny what a little bit of sentimentality can do to the opening mechanism of your wallet? ‘Exclusive’ and ‘limited edition’ always sell, and when you’re an expat with little time left in town, taking the right souvenirs home is tantamount to taking a little bit of Beijing with you.
Despite the new Beijing edition of Monopoly costing almost twice the original version, it has to come home with us, along with a multitude of other inanimate objects that will hopefully enhance and lengthen the most precious souvenirs possible—our memories.
We also have to take Panjiayuan finds like my red and white ‘antique’ teapot and the stone carvings of Chinese goddesses, not to mention the myriad carved jade-stone from pendants to the entire Chinese zodiac. Then there’s the solid marble lion statues (around 150 kilograms each) we sourced near the outer’burbs of Shunyi, the Mao clocks, the little painting of Chinese farm children from Mutianyu Great Wall, our very kitsch gold Lucky cat and its perpetually waving paw, the tiny bronze statue of the three monkeys—say no evil, hear no evil, see no evil—the exquisite carved wood panel of a deer I found for 50 kuai on Liulichang antiques street.
I’ve even got my sights set on importing a stash of our favourite foods, like Orion pies—chocolate-coated marshmallow sponge-like cookies—and, of course, Hershey’s green tea chocolate, haw chips (sweet, dried discs of haw fruit), and the never-ending selection of green tea.
In the meantime, Beijing Monopoly is still in its shrinkwrap—I have forbidden anyone from opening this until we get home and away from Beijing’s dust. And anyway, it will be all the more special when we get home and open it for the first time. It will be so lovely to coo over Sanlitun Lu and Wangfujing Street once again ... and plonk houses and hotels thereupon.
A bit like what’s happening in real life, actually.
Over It
Enough is enough
I think I officially want to get out of here.
After we’d been living in Beijing for about a year, when our family was still in the honeymoon phase and still quite starry-eyed, I met a couple who were on their way home after four years in the capital. Boy, were they ready to go. In fact, they were simply gagging to get on that aeroplane and leave Beijing in its dust, and I remember not really understanding how they could feel this way. Until now.
Sure, Beijing is amazing, astounding, fabulous and stupendous. But it’s also irritating, difficult, frustrating and infuriating. After a particularly bad stretch of infuriating, I’m kinda getting over it.
I want to be able to just say it like it is without mortally wounding or confounding someone. I want to hear things that don’t consistently confound me. I want to be able to receive a short answer. I want things to be quick and simple, not convoluted and laborious. I want clear understanding, not muffled maybes. I want quality and commitment, not tawdriness and consistent bullshit. I want no more white lies, meandering truths and sheer and shameless time-wasting. I never again want to meet another person who has Blame on speed-dial or a dictionary of bewildering excuses in a holster on the hip.
I want to strap my kids into their seatbelts and know I can drive from A to B without the constant fear of a bingle or untimely demise. I want good customer service—oh, hang it, I want great customer service. I want to know I can ask for something and it will invariably be available to me or someone will make an effort to get it for me. ‘Wo bang ni wen yi xia.’ How I ache to hear that consummately elusive phrase—essentially: ‘I’ll help you by actually opening my bloody mouth and asking someone if it might be possible.’
I want to be able to talk on the phone and understand what is being said to me. I want to receive phone calls without hearing ‘Wei? wei?’ repeated, ad nauseum, from the other end. I want to be able to rub an apple against my jeans before giving it to the kids, rather than having to steam and sterilise it. I want to drink water from any tap in the house and I want to be able to go outside and take a deep gasp of fresh air and not have to worry about whether or not I’m ingesting MSG, a litre of oil, a cellar of salt or plastic bags when I eat restaurant food.
I guess I want to be Australian again.
I know, I know—we’ll return home and I’ll encounter other kinds of frustrations and I’ll pine for Beijing within minutes of hitting Aussie turf, but right now I don’t care about the mundanity of familiarity. I know I’ll miss the challenges and dynamics of Beijing eventually, but right now, I just want the hell out of here.
I want the knots in my shoulders to unhitch without having to be forced by a Chinese masseuse. I want the pink in my kids’ lungs to be pinker. I want to hug our extended family and drink margaritas in the sunshine with our friends.
I want to go home.
Hurry Up and Grow Up!
Kids seem to be little for sooo long...
My son Riley is five-and-a-half years old but he still wakes before 6a.m. I can hear the groans of empathy as I type—thank you, mums.
Sometimes, just sometimes, he makes it to 7a.m., and I think maybe once or twice in all his years he’s made it past 8a.m. Those were the times I had to go in and poke him to make sure he was still breathing.
I think the wake-early problem is because he’s a light sleeper. Every night before I collapse in an exhausted heap on my pillow, I creep into my kids’ rooms, fuss with their blankets, smooth the hair away from their foreheads and give them sleepy sandman kisses on the tips of their noses. Ella sometimes has trouble falling asleep, but once she’s under, she lays there like a fallen log, her limbs seemingly filled with sand, sometimes lightly snoring. Xiansheng, indeed, calls her the Log. You could probably hold a clacking mahjong game with some local Chinese grannies on her bedroom floor and she still wouldn’t flutter an REM eyelid.
Riley, on the other hand, sits up the moment I soundlessly sneak open his door. He’s not quite awake when he does it but he sits up nonetheless, with his
head rolling around on top of his shoulders. I gently lay him down again and he fusses a little when I try to land kisses on his face, then I creep out again.
Why am I telling you all this? It’s because I like my sleep. I mean, really like it. And after around eight years of not getting a solid eight hours, I’m getting kinda tired of it (’scuse the pun). So, when Riley trittrotted into our bedroom this morning after my particularly late night, all I could think was, ‘Bring on the days when you are sixteen and I have to bang on pots and pans to get you out of bed.’ In fact, I think this same thought most mornings. Yes, yes, I actually squeeze my eyes shut and wish my beautiful little boy’s life away.
The trouble with wishing is that you might just get what you want. My mother-in-law always tells me not to rush through my children’s childhood: ‘...these are the best years of your life’ she oft reminds me. I know, I know—I can hear the laughter from here as you read this, mum of small kids.
Sure, it can be tough, especially when kids are really young or you have three of them under the age of five or have no ayi or something mad crazy like that. But isn’t it always the way that you can’t see the forest for the trees? That it’s not until you can look back in cool, calm hindsight that you realise how good you had it? Even now, can’t you look back and appreciate the surreal joy of having a newborn baby? (Don’t answer this if you have children under two.)
I recently waded through some home videos and sat entranced and weepy at the sight of my daughter watering plants in pink gumboots and a spotted pair of knickers, in the garden of our house in Australia. She was only eighteen months old, chattering away like a ten-year-old. At the time, she was a handful and early motherhood was somewhat chaotic, but looking back with the combined numbing effect of time and sheer affection, MIL was right—it was bliss, and I would trade ten lifetimes to have a single minute with her back then. Where did the time go?
Beijing Tai Tai Page 19