Raising my Kid in China

I know, it’s the end of November and I’m finally posting about Halloween. But we’ve all been sick, the two kids with pneumonia. So here’s my catch-up post:

While we had celebrated our previous two Halloweens in China by dressing T up (first as a pumpkin and then as a ballerina), this was her first “real” Halloween, meaning that she is now old enough to understand the concept of dressing-up and trick-or-treat. The first was easy: given her latest obsession with Cinderella, it was almost a given that she would say “princess” when I asked her what she wanted to dress up as. The second however was a little harder. In China, there is no tradition of going door-to-door asking for candies, so how would T be able to experience this time-honored Western childhood tradition? Not to fear, her school was hosting a Halloween party!

China seems to have embraced Halloween as a fun holiday for children. Both parents and children were dressed up in elaborate costumes at the party. There were many witch hats, capes, several princesses (Snow White seems to be the most popular), pumpkins, Spider Man, and Shreks. The teachers dressed up as the sheep from the popular children’s TV show Mei Yang Yang, Xi Yang Yang, while the principal was the bad Queen wolf who’s always trying to capture the sheep.

The party opened with a fashion show where every parent and child walked down a jack-o-lantern-lined catwalk to display their costume. Each class then sang a Halloween song, all of which were in English presumably because there are no Chinese Halloween songs (but did you even know there are English Halloween songs??).

But the much-anticipated highlight was definitely the trick-or-treat. At the end of the party, the children were told to go to each of the four classrooms to knock on the classroom door and say “trick-or-treat.” A good idea in theory, but not when you have 100 kids, most accompanied by one if not two parents or grandparents, all from a culture where lining-up is not practiced. It was insane. I obviously was not aggressive enough. At the first classroom we went to, poor T ended up stuck in the back of the pack. I finally managed to push her to the front and she got her candies. The second classroom was a little easier because the hallway was narrow so it kind of forced people to line up. But after T got her candies at the second classroom, we got separated in the crowd. After a lot of shouting on my part, pushing and shoving, and the help of another friend, I finally managed to pull T back to my side. By then, however, she had lost her princess tiara in the all the pushing and shoving, and I was ready to call it quits. We decided to forego the third and fourth classrooms and just sick back down. Whew!

Ok, here is a photo of the princess prior to her losing her tiara:

It’s so fascinating the things T is picking up at school. Lately, her new obsession is to yell “li zheng” (which means “attention!”) and stand rigid. She makes her dolls do this too. Ah, got to love this pseudo-military education she’s getting.

There are some kids that look just like their parents. Then there are our kids. Our son slightly resembles his mother. But T, I have no idea. I always joke that she got switched at birth in the hospital.  Either way, they don’t look too much alike, especially given that they are 2.5 years apart.  But numerous times while we’re outside pushing them in the double stroller, people ask us “Are they twins?”.  The first time someone asked us that, I was just surprised at the question, I wasn’t even sure that they were asking us.  ”Uh.. no,”  I would respond.  Now that we’ve been asked that question half a dozen times, I wonder if it’s just so rare that parents have more than one child, that they assume that anyone with two kids must have had twins.  Next time someone asks, I might respond “Yes, except this small one is malnourished.”

I never thought I would see the day when my children would be singing Chinese patriotic songs, especially ones invoking the name of Chairman Mao, but that unlikely reality came to be yesterday at T’s preschool celebration in honor of the National Holiday. In many regards, I imagine it was similar to what a school assembly in America would be like if July 4th fell on a school day — the flag was raised, the national anthem sung, each class sang a song or recited poetry, teachers performed a traditional dance, and more flags were waved. In a nod to multiculturalism, the teacher told me in advance I could make a Canadian flag for T for her to wave. Apparently, as a non-Chinese citizen, she was not obligated to wave the Chinese flag.

What made the experience distinctly Chinese (other than the Chinese flags everywhere), was the grandmother who exuberantly ran to the front and volunteered to do a Cultural Revolution song and dance, the way the whole event devolved into a free-for-all karaoke session by the end, and the cute little Mao hats worn by the kids in the oldest class:

It’s also nice to see that T is making friends with other kids despite the language barrier:

And finally, the video of T and her class singing the classic Cultural Revolution-era children’s song “I Love Beijing Tiananmen” (good thing her level of Chinese keeps her from being brainwashed for the moment):

After two amazing months in Canada and the U.S., we are back.

As I ease my way once again into life in China and blogging, I will share an interesting article I read today: My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling.  While there are obvious differences between the education systems in Russia and in China, I do identify with a lot of what this family went through as they chose to put their children in the local school system instead of in international schools. Because T is starting at a much younger age than this family’s children, I hope the shock to her system is much less. But then again, who knows. Perhaps she simply does not have the vocabulary yet to express to me the strain of what she is undergoing. But we too wonder what we are putting our child through, and can identify with not being able to communicate with my child’s teacher or help her with her schoolwork (not that she really has any at this point).

My kid is speaking Chinese-style English. Today, T told me that at school, when her teachers want her to drink her milk, they tell her to “dring-kuh” the “meel-kuh.” She asked me what “meel-kuh” was and I wanted to say it’s how Chinese people say milk, but I didn’t want to confuse her and have her think that “meel-kuh” is the Chinese word for milk since she clearly knows that niu nai is how you say milk in Chinese. Any helpful suggestions?

So just as I thought T was done with doctors, needles and blood-drawing, we were notified one month into her start of preschool that she was up for another medical checkup. Apparently, doctors from the Haidian Women and Children’s Hospital come to her preschool once a year to give all the kids a physical. The fact that she just had a physical done by the same doctors at the same hospital 30 days ago does not exempt her from undergoing this second checkup. Really, what could have changed in 30 days? And of course, this physical also included a blood test. I think T has now had more blood drawn from her in her 2-plus years of life than I ever had before I turned 18. No amount of arguing on our part could get T an exemption and the school insisted that she had to have the test done in order to stay in school. Other foreign kids who attend this school have also undergone the annual physical, so I reluctantly agreed.

The afternoon of the test, I dropped her off at school and waited outside the gate. Sure enough, 10 minutes later, I heard a kid crying loudly and it sounded an awful lot like T. But a few minutes later, she came out with no more tears, holding a cotton ball to her finger, and with a candy in her pocket. Glad that she was fine, I picked her up and asked her what the doctors had her do. I expected answers like “look at my eyes, nose, mouth,” “listen to my chest,” etc. but instead she said that they had her eat a green thing, a small round green thing. Surprised, I could not for the life of me figure out what the small green pill could possibly be for.

As I reflected on this some more afterwards, I began to realize just how scary it is to raise a child in an environment where you don’t speak the language very well. When it was just me, I could get by and whatever risks I took, they were my risks. But now that it involves my child, I am having second thoughts. There was a sign posted on the school gate a few weeks ago explaining what the physical would include, but my limited Chinese does not include medical terms. And when I asked the school officials, their verbal explanation was still mostly over my head. I know I can’t go through life trying to keep my kids in a safe little bubble, but having my kids undergo a physical in an American school, for example, is a risk I am much more willing to take than a physical in a school in a country known for unsafe medical practices and where I don’t speak the language. Am I being overly anxious?

The main reason we started T in a Chinese preschool was for her to pick up the language and make friends in the local culture. Our thought has always been why travel half way around the world to simply have the same experience you could have had back home? Might as well have saved the money and stayed home. It’s been three weeks now and I don’t think she’s picked up much Chinese yet, but the teacher tells me T has a little Chinese friend and that she has learned to pee in a squatty. That’s pretty good progress if you ask me.

But as H and I consider the future and whether we would want our kids to continue in a local elementary school, the cons start equaling or outweighing the pros. Besides the usual arguments about the rote style of education and the shaming philosophy of punishment, we are also concerned about the general culture characterized by a lack of honesty, integrity or personal responsibility. Witness the culture of cheating and plagiarism at universities, and schools who refuse to take responsibility for the safety of their students. We recently became aware of an incident at a local elementary school with an international section where a young student was seriously injured when run over by a car in the school’s playground. The school refused to be upfront with the parents about exactly what happened, refused any kind of compensation or acknowledgment of responsibility, and in my mind the worse, would not change their practice of having cars in the school playground until forced to in a tense meeting between the PTA and the school management. Really?? For more details on the incident, read the parents’ blog here. I’m not imagining that my child will be completely harm-free at an international school or even back home — accidents happen — but at least I can safely assume that reasonable precautions have been taken and that schools, while not necessarily taking legal responsibility (I understand that the U.S. is probably the most litigious society ever), are at least taking the necessary steps to avoid future accidents once they are aware of potentially dangerous situations. Heartwrenching.

So everyone knows about the hukou situation in China and how it’s flawed, etc. etc. We won’t get into that here. However, as foreigners, we obviously do not have a Beijing hukou, and that has impacted us in several ways — one of which is our inability to enter the car-purchasing lottery, but that would not be appropriate subject matter for a blog on parenting — and another is our having to pay a zanzhu fei in order for T to start preschool, which is appropriate subject for said blog.

The quick summary: because we are not local Beijingers, we have to pay a special one-time registration fee which locals do not have to pay. I was told initially that the amount at this particular school (they vary by school) is 5000 RMB/year and I would have to pay three years worth upfront, that is, 15000 RMB. Knowing that everything in China is negotiable, I plead my case arguing that as foreigners with only a 1-year visa, we had no guarantee we would be here for a full three years, the matter depended entirely upon my husband’s work. I asked if I could pay one year’s fee at a time. The school principal said she would get back to me. The next day, she called and said that I could pay one year’s fee, but T’s spot would be guaranteed only for 1 year, she would not be allowed to enroll for a subsequent year. In my mind, that was a lose-lose for them — why would they not want me to enroll my child for a subsequent year? They would gain another year’s worth of business, aka money, from us. Unless there was someone else willing to pay more for the spot. So I argued some more and finally the principal said “Why don’t you just pay 1 year’s fee for now and then next year, zai shuo ba?” As in, let’s wait and see. That was good enough for me.

So the next day, H went to the designated bank office where the zanzhu fei is paid. Attempting to make small talk with the teller as he processed our paperwork, H asked what was the going rate on these registration fees. The teller hummed and hawed and wouldn’t give H a straight answer. When H kept pressing (he was really curious, not trying to make trouble), another teller nearby interrupted to say “You’ve got it all wrong. It’s not a required registration fee so there’s no standard. It’s a voluntary donation that you are making to the school.” Right … I had forgotten that was the official line. It’s against the law to charge non-Beijingers a special fee since that would be discrimination, so schools instead require a “donation.” Sure enough, the receipt we received stated at the very top: Receipt for Donations.

Partly because we want T to start picking up Chinese, and partly because I need her out of the house so I can catch up on some much needed sleep in the mornings when Tr is still snoozing, we enrolled T in our local preschool at the beginning of this month. As part of the enrollment process, surprise, we had to take her to the Haidian Women and Children Hospital for a physical. Health physicals seem to be the standard requirement for anything you do in China: Want a visa? Get a physical. Get your driver’s license? Get a physical. Want to start preschool? Get a physical. And as in each of the cases mentioned, there is a specific hospital where this particular test is conducted, and a specific form that must be obtained from the hospital and presented to the school before any 2-year old can start learning her bopomofo’s.

So H set off with T early in the morning since she couldn’t have any breakfast — the required fast before the blood test. I get the first text message from him a half hour later saying “This is my worst nightmare.” Apparently, the scene was one of mad chaos, people everywhere, lines that went who-knows-where, and of course, unhelpful hospital staff. After going to the wrong floor and lining up in three different lines, H and T finally got to the right place. Thankfully the needles and such looked clean and sterile, but there was no privacy, kids were crying everywhere, and after T had her blood drawn, she was only given a Q-tip to staunch the wound. How does one even firmly press down with a Q-tip? When the Q-tip was soaked in blood and no longer useful, H couldn’t find a trash can anywhere to throw it out, and apparently, neither could anyone else, because there was a mound of bloody Q-tips in the potted plant in the hallway. H added his to the pile.

But after three days, the results were ready and T was declared to have 20 teeth and be clear of HIV/AIDS, TB, Hep B and whatever else they were testing for, and is now happily playing with all the other healthy little kids at preschool every morning. What happens to the kids with only 19 teeth?