Funny Stuff Juju Does at Preschool

Juju is the youngest in her class at preschool. The other children are at least six months older than her. However, her lack in age and stature does not prevent her from getting what she wants from other children.

When I went to pick her up last week, her teacher told me a funny story about her. During playground time that day, her classmates joined in a game and filled up all the spots before she could join.

Seeing that there was no spot for her, Juju went up to a three-year old boy named Alex and said, "Alex, it's peepee time for you!"

Alex obediently left his spot to go potty immediately, upon which Juju took up his spot, and made a face at the teacher standing by. Obviously she was fully aware of exactly what she was doing.

She's only two years old. I fear what she might be capable of conjuring up as she gets older.

Which Part of the Elephant Did You Feel?

I belong to a PAMP-like Yahoo! group (PAMP stands for Palo Alto Menlo Park Parents’ Club for those of you not from Silicon Valley) composed of 1,000 or so English speaking expatriates in Beijing. Last week, a woman put up this post:

I am looking for western maternity clothes. Are maternity clothes even sold in Beijing?

When I told my nannies about this post, all of us had a hearty laugh. Given more than roughly 200,000 babies are born in Beijing each year (to give you some contrast, about 35,000 babies are born in SV each year), that’s like asking, “can you buy sweaters” when in New Zealand, “can you get ski boots” when in Scandinavia, or “can you find pianos” when in Vienna, Austria. You get the point before I get carried away.

I wrote a reply to the list, saying that not only can you get maternity clothes in Beijing, they tend to be a lot more stylish than most of the stuff you find in the US. I especially recommended the pants, which always covered the midsection and were adjustable. I’m not a fan of the maternity pants I found in the US: they either left me baring my midriff ala Britney Spears, or became too tight during the third trimester.

From another angle, most of the designer brands sold in the world have been manufactured in China. As such, Chinese fashion tends to follow Europeans trends closely and were generally more forward than American styles. Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when another woman wrote this to the list:

Chinese maternity clothes are horrible! When you find them, they are so ugly. Best choice is to go to motherhood.com and have them ship from the US.

I was baffled and offended all at once that I felt blood rush to my face. The ridiculousness of her post floored me: sure, motherhood does offer some good stuff, but ship clothes to China all the way from the US? That’s like, lugging sand to the beach, bringing a sandwich to the buffet, shipping corn to Iowa…anyway, by now you know I have a penchant for analogies.

Later, a woman wrote me privately and said that she also found Chinese maternity ugly: all she saw were women wearing ugly overalls with teddy bears on them. At once, I finally understood why they thought what they did and it went beyond just maternity clothes.

Many of the expats in my Yahoo! group lived a secluded and privileged life in pockets of expat-heavy communities in Beijing. The Chinese they see and interact with are their nannies, people manning stores, on the street, in subways, etc, rather than people of comparable economic and educational backgrounds. As such, their impression of China is really of the poorest China has to offer. Ugly overalls with teddy bears? My Luis Vuitton toting Prada clacking Chinese friends wouldn’t be caught dead in them.

When visiting a foreign country, especially a developing country, please keep in mind that countries tend to be incredibly complex, especially a large country such as China. What you may see is not all there is. I find these narrowly sighted generalizations people make incredibly irksome and stupid. Let me give you another example.

A few years ago a Chinese friend of mine, while pursuing her Ph.D. at Stanford, made a rather thoughtless comment to me as follows, “Americans are ignorant and stupid; Stanford grads are no exception.” Given that I was culturally Asian American as well as a Stanford grad, twice, I was so offended that I briefly considered cutting her out of my life for good. Sure, I have met a good number of ignorant Americans who think that Asians are a different kind of black people (I’m not kidding here-it really has happened before), but how can one make such a blanket statement when it is America (and a few Stanford grads) who has brought the world Boeing, GE, HP, Microsoft, and Google? Talk to a few of my business school professors at Stanford, and their brilliance will blind you. How can you call those taught by the best teachers in the world stupid? I realized that her experience with Americans was simply too limited and she may have judged too quickly based on a few negative experiences.

When you come into contact with a different culture, please keep an open mind. Visiting and living in a foreign country is rather like the story of blind men feeling up the elephant: the man who grabbed onto the tail said the elephant was like a rope; the one who hugged the legs said the elephant was like a tree; the one who felt the ears said the elephant was most like a giant fan. Moral of the story: without keeping an open-mind to see the entirety of something, you are going to make an ass of yourself.

Another Trip to the Chinese Doctor

This post also appears (or will appear) on Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

I had previously blogged about going to a state-run Chinese children’s hospital (you can read it here, but be forewarned that it’s a bit of a bitch-log). After that trip half way to hell I never wanted to take the kids to a Chinese hospital again. However, Jojo’s most recent bout of eczema was so bad that I decided to bite the bullet and take him to see a doctor once more. Unfortunately, there isn’t a very good pediatrician in any of the expat clinics. Fortunately, Beijing Children’s Hospital opened a new affiliate hospital where all the doctors are Chinese but the facilities, the standards, and especially the prices are western. When I called to make an appointment, the receptionist emphasized that not only are the prices higher, but that they are several times higher than those at the regular hospital, and that I needed to put down a $300 deposit from which fees were to be deducted. I readily agreed as I didn’t want to find myself navigating through crowds in the sweltering heat holding an infant again, like I did at the other children’s hospital.

We drove for an hour and half through the rain across the city of Beijing to get to the hospital, cutting through Tiananmen Square along the way, where celebrations were being prepared as we were exactly a year away from the opening of the 08 summer Olympics. Beijing has always been a large sprawling city, and with such impressive economic growth in recent years, the number of cars on the road seems to have exploded exponentially; you can expect traffic on every major road. For such a large city, there are very few children’s hospitals—I only know of two. Most Chinese kids don’t see a regular pediatrician; if they get truly ill, they have to be taken to one of the children’s hospitals. Depending on where they live, it could be a long and arduous trip. I don’t know what parents here do for emergencies where every second matters, but I have little doubt that many children probably die because of delays in getting to an emergency room at a reputable hospital. When you have so many people in a country, the value of life just doesn’t seem to mean as much. I daren’t think about what would happen should Juju or Jojo get injured or seriously ill. It’s no wonder that we miss nothing more than we miss Dr. V and her staff at Welch Road Pediatrics.

Upon entering the hospital, I was relieved to find it clean and free of crowds and the staff courteous and attentive. At the regular hospital one can expect to wait at least an hour or two to see an expert, and that is if one gets there early enough to be included on the list to be seen at all that day--you can't make appointments ahead of time. At the new hospital, we were immediately taken to the waiting area where a nurse registered us and asked to weigh Jojo, my almost six-month-old son. She led us to a scale, and for a moment I was confused, as the scale was obviously used to weigh adults. She ushered both of us onto the scale, took the reading, then took Jojo from me, and took my weight: the difference between the two was registered as Jojo’s weight.

To sidetrack a bit, stepping on a scale in front of a total stranger at six months post partum was not one of my prouder moments. At a little over 130 lbs, I place squarely amongst the top quartile of Chinese women who are my height and age, even though I’m of average weight in the US. When I go shopping for clothes, I always ask for sizes XXL and up, and even then I sometimes find myself bursting out of the seams, especially at the bust. When I go with my mom, she’ll often call out to the salesgirls in her distance-carrying voice, “Bring out your biggest sizes for my daughter!” When I find myself having trouble yet again stuffing my boobs into a shirt obviously made for those with a Kate Moss physique, my mom usually explains obligatorily, “She’s only fat because she’s had a baby recently and she’s still breastfeeding.” At which point the salesgirl, often with a look of relief on her face, will reassure me by saying, “Don’t worry, you won’t remain this fat after you wean.” Moral of the story: first of all, Chinese people are thin in general; second, as such, it’s really no fun to be even slightly overweight here, as people have no qualms pointing it out to you. But I digress.

The pediatric dermatological specialist, a friendly grandma type, told us that day in and day out she sees children with eczema, the majority of whom are from industrialized places such as US and Europe. One interesting point of note was that she told me to just wean cold turkey and put the baby on hypoallergenic formula, as “breastmilk is as nutritious as water after six months post-partum”. I was dubious about that statement as I’d always been told differently in the US. However, remembering how Chinese doctors disliked being questioned, I suppressed my skepticism and asked tentatively, “how come US pediatricians always tell us to breastfeed until the child reaches one or sometimes even two years of age?” She gave a dismissive wave to my question and said, “The US is a much more humane society than ours and they don’t force-wean their children, but that’s not applicable in our country, especially since you are going back to work next month.” I remained silent because, really, what can you say to that?

Before we wrapped up our visit, we went to the gift shop to buy the hypoallergenic formula the doctor recommended. At $50 for a can which was at most a four-day supply of formula, Neocate, the only hypoallergenic formula available in Beijing and probably all of China, was prohibitively expensive for even most urban Chinese families, whose average monthly income was no more than $1,000. I asked Auntie, my nanny, how an average Chinese family would manage if their child wasn’t breastfed and couldn’t tolerate cow milk protein, and Auntie said that in those cases the child had to subsist only on rice porridge, fruits and vegetables. Ironically, many of the poorest Chinese children aren’t breastfed because their mothers have to go back to work right away to make ends meet. Once again I was overcome with sadness for the children.

Our doctor’s visit took us four hours and even with a dedicated driver and a nanny to accompany me, I was exhausted. We must to trek over once again in three days for a return visit. Still, I can’t complain because we are so much more fortunate than so many people, especially those in third-world countries. Living in Silicon Valley over the years made me feel entitled to the comforts and conveniences typical of upscale US cities, and my experiences in China keep reminding me just how lucky I am.

Clarification

Perhaps I was too subtle on my last blog. This is exactly what I meant:

1. I don't appreciate my people being spoken of as if they are of a dirty or untouchable race. It's a bit like someone in the US saying, I don't want violent crimes committed against me, therefore, I better avoid them black/Latino/Asian people.

2. Sure, I recognize there are a lot of problems with how things are done in China, but let's not take cheap shots at my motherland at every opportunity. It's like, you are a teenager suffering from pimples; you are frantically slapping on all the Retin-A and Proactiv you can find and you are popping Accutane like Skittles , but these bullies keep calling you pizza face. Look, I'm just trying to find an analogy most of y'all can relate to...

3. If you say something like, this shop can't be good because it's run by Chinese people with their Chinese ways, you come off sounding stupid and disrespectful. It's not the people but which point of development the society is in. Take these same Chinese, put them on a small island nation called Singapore, and they'll be the best service people you ever find. Reverse example, take a few business people from US or Europe, pop them in China, and they are as unethical as ever (I won't bore you with examples but if you really want to know, dig deep into Danone and Walmart China).

Hopefully by this point I've made myself clear.

Ugh, Them Chinese!

I belong to a yahoo group composed of 1,000 or so members who are English-speaking expats living in Beijing. Typically postings range from questions on where to buy western goods to how to get things done in China. Recently, there have been a number of postings regarding the quality of Chinese-made goods and foods. I've found some people's comments to be irksome.

There was a discussion on a Western grocery store named Jenny Lou's. Someone found spoiled chicken meat and informed one of the employees. That employee took it off the shelf, washed it and then put it back on the shelf. The person alerted the whole list to warn people about the quality of the meat from that grocery chain. Someone one else wrote back saying she always wondered why her friends trusted these shops--sure, they cater to westerners but how can they be good if "the staff is Chinese and they do things the Chinese way!"

Then later someone else wrote on an unrelated topic, recommending a shop, but then concluded with the comment "I'm not sure it still exits. This being China, the store has probably gone out of business and probably now sell parceled realestate rights on land on Mars!" I've seen other similar comments such as this one.

Earlier last month, I posted something on the list asking parents about the tuberculosis vaccine for their children. One mom wrote me back saying that she won't vaccinate her kids and will simply "keep them away from the Chinese". Hm, I guess the Chinese must a people of plagues!

All of these comments chafe me and some even offend me, but I remained silent. I didn't write that mom back telling her that I'm one of the Chinese her children need to avoid; I didn't write the list saying that I found their comments rather racist; I didn't make a peep at all. It is not because I'm afraid I'd offend anyone, but because there is a grain or two or more of truth in their comments, however irksome.

If you've read the news recently, Mattel just recalled their Fisher-Price toys made in China because of lead paint. That's just a scratch off the surface. In our family we try to buy imported goods and foods as much as possible and never let the children eat out. We are very aware of many many more quality problems and unethical practices found in China that haven't been touched by western media. My friends, family and I are certainly guilty of bitching about how unconscientious Chinese businesses can be, but it's different when we complain about our own people. It's a bit like you complain about how cuckoo your parents are, but it's not ok for others to insult your mom.

These expats need to realize that the problem is due to the fact that China is a developing country and an economy in transition. In the turn of the century the US had some of the similar problems currently found in China, simply because there isn't a system in place to keep vigilant over businesses. The FDA, FAA, SEC, etc were all put into place because something went seriously wrong in an industry and the government realized that there needed to be a regulator.

Whenever I read a comment that vilifies the Chinese rather than point out that the real villain is the system, I become wary of these expats and wonder if they see us as a lesser people. I know only some of them are guilty of looking down on the Chinese, but it becomes hard to distinguish those who do from those who don't. I try to keep in mind not to generalize, or else I become one of those I speak against. It's sad that China, with all the richness in its culture and history, has become a country now more saliently known for its cheap exports.