Little Dragon Soap

Our ayi or housekeeper’s surname Long means dragon, and we call her Xiao Long: Little Dragon. She is one of my main sources of information about day-to-day life in Chengdu. In fact if I’m honest she is my major interface with Chinese culture, as I spend a large part of every day with her and talk to her far more than any other Chinese person. Luckily she is not bad company and she speaks good Mandarin, so I have no trouble understanding her. Conversation is challenging with people who only speak Sichuanese dialect: our neighbor’s former housekeeper used to make critical observations whenever we met in the corridor, but I couldn’t get upset because I was never really sure what she was talking about. Xiao-long on the other hand considers herself something of an expert on the weirdness of foreigners and doesn’t let our strange habits faze her at all. She worked for an American family before and several of her sisters-in-law do also, it seems to be something of a clan occupation and I know they compare notes on us all.

Anyway Xiao Long seems very happy working for us and we are happy to have her. She is a competent, cheerful person and she adores Sam. However she loves to gossip and she does have a bossy streak. She keeps me up-to-date on how much I am overpaying for everything (20 cents a pound for pears instead of 10!) and how inadequately dressed Sam is for the weather conditions. When she takes Sam out to play in the gardens she catches up on the local gossip and reports it back to me with real enthusiasm and concern for those involved. For example, a recent upheaval in the building occurred when the sixth floor neighbor’s ayi returned from a visit to her family in the countryside to find all her belongings piled up outside her employer’s front door. She had stayed away a few days longer than had been agreed and had been given the sack. Xiao Long came across her weeping in the hallway and was filled with righteous indignation on her behalf. “That’s what Chinese people are like”, she told me, “they’re tough. She has raised their son day in and day out for two years and they dump her without a second thought”. But a few days later I saw the 6th floor ayi was back again in charge of little Dou-dou. When I asked Xiao-long she reported with satisfaction that the boy had screamed for his ayi all day and all night until his mother had relented and called her to return.

Xiao Long also shares some of the ups and downs of her life with us and I have to say there are plenty of them. So far this year her husband was hospitalized with heatstroke, her mother had major surgery, a close friend had some kind of stroke or brain hemorrhage and her best friend jumped off a bridge. She survived, thank goodness, as she was pulled out of the river by an elderly watchman who happened to see her take the plunge. Xiao Long was worried for her friend but a little amused as she told me the story, “it’s terrible” she said “but it does have a funny side as well. She was saved by a little old man older than her Dad!” We already knew that the friend, Xiao Wu’s life was difficult because Xiao Long often compared it with her own, shaking her head in disapproval at Xiao Wu’s husband’s gambling and drinking habits. Although he drives a taxi on the night-shift, he contrives to bring home only 1,000 yuan per month (about $120) while his best friend, Xiao Long’s husband, brings home more than 5,000 (about $620) despite working the same hours. 1,000 is a stretch for two people to live on so Xiao Wu is under pressure to go out to work, whereas Xiao Long often tells me that she does not really need to work but she likes to get out of the house. “What am I going to do at home all day? Play Mah-jong? What a waste of time!” While I can see her point, I am still mystified that she chooses to come and wash our dishes for $100 a month.

However I am very glad that she does and maybe the fact that she is choosing to do it is what keeps her so cheerful all the time. Most of the ayis in our compound live with their employers and only go home for a few days once a month. Their husbands are often migrant laborers as well, so if they have children they are left in the care of relatives. By contrast Xiao Long and her husband are upwardly mobile. They both have residence papers for Chengdu, they have recently bought their own apartment and last year they moved their 8 year old daughter from her grandparent’s home to the city to live with them. Selfishly, I’m happy that we are not employing someone who is separated from her family and desperate for the wages, as it would make me feel guilty. Instead I am happy to sit and chat with Xiao Long and take her advice about what price to pay for fruit and how to cut up a pineapple.

The neighbourhood

Here is another back-post, this time from July 2006. So my three posts so far span about 20 months... but I hope to get into this more now that it's accessible.

The major change in our lives since last year is of course the arrival of Sam. He is now seven and a half months old, with red hair, large brown eyes, a single tooth and a very ready grin to show it off. He can sit up without falling down and, as of this week, has developed a determined style of commando-crawling directly towards any small or dangerous object in the room. He lights up whenever he sees Isaac and Isaac loves him wholeheartedly in return. If Sam is upset or I leave them together for a few moments, I will often come back to find Isaac singing a little song that goes, “you’re the best and the coolest in the world – Sam – you’re the best and the coolest – Sam.”

Being here with a baby has brought to light some interesting aspects of Chinese culture. For a start, people here are amazed to see me with Sam at all. “Are you looking after him yourself?” they ask in astonishment, “that’s incredible!” then they see Isaac and add, “two children! You must be exhausted!” Apart from the fact that most people still only have one child, very few of them actually raise it themselves: if they can afford to they hire a full-time nanny who lives and sleeps with the child around the clock, otherwise they enlist grandparents or other family members, often while the parents work away from home. This system functions well if it continues down the generations as people get to raise their grandchildren rather than their children. But it does lead to some disconnections. One friend told us that a colleague of his admitted she had never given her 5 year old son a bath! Another friend of ours confessed that she is not sure her 10 month old daughter actually knows who she is. But at least these are working parents - there are also those who just play mah-jong all day long while the nanny raises their child. We do have other friends who manage to work and still spend lots of time with their child, but they seem to be the exception, and even they are talking about sending the poor kid off to a weekly boarding kindergarten when he is 4 years old.

The Chinese tendency to tell other people how to do things is also exacerbated by the presence of a child, particularly on the subject of drafts and temperature in general, which is a national obsession. I have lost count of the number of times people have told me that Sam is incorrectly dressed for the weather. Sometimes within the space of 10 minutes someone will come up and remove his hat, telling me he is too hot, then someone else will tell me I should put a hat on him because of the sun. Generally they are more bothered by heat than UV. In the same breath they will admire his pale skin and berate me for putting him in a long-sleeved shirt. The sight of his little UV swimsuit appalls them, how could I possibly dress him up in form-fitting lycra on a hot day? AND a swim nappy! AND a hat! The combination amounts to child-abuse in their eyes. Babies here go in the swimming pool naked. How does this work? Good question. Our ayi (housekeeper) Xiao Long tackled me on the subject this morning, suggesting that Sam is too old for nappies and besides it is much too hot and he shouldn’t wear them, at least during the day. She said that her nephew, who is the same age as Sam, is already out of nappies and never wets himself, even at night! How do we manage that I asked her. She explained that it requires someone to be watching the child all the time, to sit them on the potty every hour or so and to keep a close eye for signs of needing to get there at other times. So now it all starts to make sense. Using this system you need to have a nanny or grandparent providing one-on-one childcare with no other commitments, because no parent in the world has time to maintain a 24 hour vigil on their child’s bottom.

Xiao Long offered to try this with Sam when we return from England so we’ll see if it works, at least during the mornings when she looks after him. I’ll let you know whether it is really possible to potty-train a 9 month-old. At the moment Xiao Long takes Sam out to play for a couple of hours every morning while I work. I am fundraising for a school in the area where Ethan works, as well as other projects. The school is the latest venture of our friend Dorje Tashi, the lama whom Ethan lived with when he was doing his fieldwork. He aims to provide a high-quality Tibetan language education to all 700 school-age children in the grassland area where he lives. If you’re interested I can send you more information. Already the Chengdu International Community Christmas Bazaar has agreed to donate all its proceeds to the school and I’m busy applying for grants and seeking other funding. I’m helping out with some other projects as well, and I’ve started an international playgroup that meets a couple of times a week and joined the committee of the Chengdu International Women’s Club and the advisory board of Isaac’s school, so it’s shaping up to be a busy year ahead.

Next year Isaac’s school is moving to a new campus a little further out of town, and he will take the bus. This means an end to our daily walks to and from the school’s current location. I will miss this in a way and was thinking how this short walk, less than half a mile, encapsulates many elements of life in Chengdu. We leave our compound out of a small side entrance that leads directly on to a major intersection crossed by a huge flyover, and turn left past the entrance of a construction site. Up until last year the compound where we lived was surprisingly peaceful, considering it lies right next to this intersection. But when I came back in February, construction had begun on the large empty lot next door and already 10 floors of a huge office block are in place, with at least 10 more to go. Construction goes on all day and most of the night, with a short lull between around 2 and 6 am. Then at first light they start again, with an ear-shattering hammering business designed to get us all up and in the mood for the noisy day ahead.


So I walk past the site with some feelings of resentment, despite the billboards announcing it to be an “International, Leading Architectural Synthesis” and supporting this with huge photos of 7 grey-haired white men drinking tea around a boardroom table.
This is typical of the slightly surreal edge things have here, at least the things like this kind of advertising that have been copied directly from the west. They are almost right, but something is a little off-kilter.

I mean, aren’t any Chinese people going to work in this building, let alone any women? But whatever I feel about it, construction sites are ubiquitous in Chengdu, and they all have eccentric English advertising. I saw one yesterday that claimed the housing compound inside will be 70% “more bushy” than other compounds.

Past the construction site we have to cross the road under the flyover. This is by no means as grim as it sounds. In fact believe it or not, underneath this flyover is quite a pleasant place to hang out. There are strips of landscaped park, a playground, a teahouse, an antiques market, calligraphy walls, bronze statues and friezes of traditional arts and crafts and children’s games, and even a small stage with a 3-d grey stone backdrop of old houses along a river. Here we pause every day to watch the middle-aged ladies of Chengdu take their morning exercise. One day it’s the fan dancers, the next its ballroom, after that the drum troupe and so on. Meanwhile people are strolling in the park or sitting in the teahouse and it really is possible to ignore the traffic thundering overhead and circling around. One elderly man is there every day practicing the French Horn and he couldn’t find a better location. I’m sure his wife thinks so anyway.

The resurgence of traditional Chinese culture represented in different forms under the flyover is one of the most pleasant changes to have taken place in China over the last 20 years. When I was here in the 1980s it felt as though China had left all its traditional culture firmly behind in the past, and that the grim, drab socialist-realist present was here to stay. But economic liberalization has wrought many changes and one of them is the gradual sloughing-off of the vehement hatred of “old” culture that is now clearly seen as an excess of the cultural revolution period. Like everywhere else in the world, China is now engaged in trying to create a distinct modernity that incorporates and keeps alive its traditional culture. People’s pride in their cultural heritage and fascination with tradition is apparent everywhere, from the myriad period dramas on tv, to the paintings of Tang dynasty poets and dancers in hotel lobbies and the fan dancers under the flyover. It’s alive in every kind of design from architecture to old ladies’ cardigans, and the results are often very attractive. Creating a culture park under a flyover may be a strange idea but it is a living space, widely used, and I’ve grown rather fond of it.

Also gathered here every morning is a gang of day-labourers, men and women in dusty clothes, leaning on their bicycles, a straw basket hanging on their backs, hoping to be hired for a day’s work hauling rocks on yet another construction site and keeping a sharp eye out for the police. For a long time Ethan and I felt very sorry for these people, thinking it must be such a desperate and precarious existence not knowing whether you will earn a day’s wage or not. However, a local friend explained to us that these people could easily get full-time work if they wanted to, but they take their chances with day-labour instead because this cuts out the construction company and the rate of pay is better. He also said that they work in gangs from particular rural areas and won’t let any outsiders join them. So now we view them slightly differently, noticing that they do all have bicycles and many of them new city clothes, and more often that not they do seem to get hired. It’s just another example of how little we really know about how life works here.

Next Isaac and I take our lives into our hands and wait for a gap to dodge through the traffic. This is the slow stream of local traffic as most of it is thundering above us on the flyover, but still there is plenty of it, from Mercedes and 4 wheel drive BMWS to tinny little local cars; motorbikes and deadly electric bicycles that zip up silently, often in the wrong direction and hordes of ordinary bicycles, some laden with produce or furniture or even livestock.

Once across the road we pass the Kempinski Hotel’s German beer garden, with its own micro-brewery and excellent apple strudel and set off down a side street to school. Just one month ago this street was lined with small shops and businesses, single concrete rooms where people worked and lived with their whole family. We would thread our way between clusters of bicycles, children playing and people brushing their teeth over the drain. There was a motorbike repair shop, a little mahjong parlour, a floury place selling fat steamed buns and a barbers shop with cages of songbirds outside the door, including a mynah bird that chirped “ni hao” (hello) to passersby. Supporting all of this was a rundown but highly respectable residential compound for retired army cadres. But a few months ago we realized that the writing was on the wall, literally, as the character meaning “condemned” appeared on all the buildings. In the space of a few weeks the compound and all the shops were knocked down with sledgehammers, probably by a gang of day-labourers, and a large white wall has gone up instead, within which a new construction site will soon appear.

It used to be an interesting walk, especially in the mornings when a little mobile market would gather at the compound gate so the retired cadres could buy their vegetables and choose a chunk of pork from a pig carcass strung up on the back of a tricycle. But it’s not surprising that this had to go. This is an up and coming part of town and there’s no room for retired cadres and steamed bun shops. Already the other end of the road is lined with up-market businesses: the Courage Man’s Beauty and Spa Salon, a boutique called “Fashion Walk” with price tags of several hundred pounds per item and a golf shop selling Big Bertha Titanium drivers. And in case you still have any doubts about the driving force of new China, they will evaporate around the corner, in front of a small gift shop called “Material”. This has a sign hanging outside it saying, “One may indulge in material things while keeping his ambition”.

The expensive boutiques and beauty salons continue along the street where Isaac’s school is located. In fact this street and another one are currently being renovated and turned into a “European style” shopping district, so no doubt there will be more material things appearing. But I hope that a few of the smaller businesses can hang on, particularly the dumpling restaurant run by a friendly couple from Harbin, where we often stop after school for pork and mushroom dumplings or a bowl of noodles. One hopeful sign is that the barber with the songbirds has moved into a corner of a larger establishment down the road, with his bird cages piled up outside and the same Mynah bird shouting “ni hao” as we walk past.

Before we forget where we are in all this material spendour, however, or who is really in charge, we also pass the local residents committee and police station with its long strings of slogans extending out along the nearby walls. They remind us that everyone is responsible for creating a civilized city and extort us to “Construct a safe and unified district, bring about comprehensive management measures”. Whatever that means, it sounds firmly in control of the situation.

We pass the One Stop Shop that sells Lucazade (joy!) and lollipops as big as Isaac’s head. Some days he manages to persuade Xiao Long to buy him one on the way home, contrary to my repeated instructions, and he arrives at the door sticky and triumphant, buzzing with sugar for the rest of the day. Finally, just before we reach school we pass a line of young men and women in matching suits performing a dance routine on the pavement. They are the sales force of the Maian Real Estate Company and every morning on the dot of 8:30 they gather to go through their motivational warm-up, though most of them look as though they wish they were still in bed.

Leaving the dancing realtors behind we are finally at school and Isaac rushes off to build lego airplanes, which is a competitive sport in his classroom. He is in the last few days of a summer school programme with lots of swimming – he has really taken off in the water in the last few months and we spend hours at one or other of the local pools. At the moment the weather is so hot that in the pool or at home in the air-conditioning are the only sensible places to be. It’s 31 degrees inside the house at 7:00 in the morning and outside in the sunshine it’s closer to 40 as the day warms up. But it’s the humidity that really turns up the heat. Our walk to school has been a sweaty business recently. But for once all of you in the UK are feeling it too!

This is Ethan’s busiest time of year, he is traveling a lot and will be at his project site most of the summer. Next week I take the boys home to England for a month, more time apart unfortunately, but we have booked a family holiday in Malaysia for October and are also making plans for Christmas and for Chinese New Year in Australia. As always we welcome visitors and would love to share construction sites, flyovers and dumpling restaurants with any of you who are interested.

Looking back to November 04

16 months after I started this blog I am finally posting again. The delay is mostly down to the fact that it has not been possible to access my blog from China. But now it is. Who knows why or for how long. So I am backdating a little bit and adding some posts from newsletters I have written to friends and family.

Here is a very early one from October 2004:

We have been living in the city of Chengdu in south-west China for three weeks, and in that time Isaac has eaten nothing but strawberry jam sandwiches. OK, the occasional bowl of plain pasta and once or twice a pork dumpling have sneaked into his mouth, but nothing else. This is one of several forms of mute protest about his situation. Perhaps ‘mute’ gives a misleading impression of quiet: we don’t get much of that in our household at the best of times and in a crowded city of 8 million people and several hundred construction sites it is an even rarer commodity.

What I mean is that he is not actively vocalizing his disapproval about being here.
In fact most of the time he seems quite happy to hang out at the playground with the Chinese pre-schoolers or go apartment-hunting with Ethan and I. We have tried to keep his routine as similar to home as possible, despite the 3 am starts and unexpected naps brought on by jetlag. It helps that we are staying with our wonderful friends Lin and Huang Mei in their large, comfortable apartment, rather than in a hotel. Isaac loves playing with their 18-month old son Yang-yang and his large collection of plastic semi-automatic weapons. Access to toy weapons is one aspect of life in China that has Isaac positively excited. Spitting is another, I’m sad to say. It’s hard to convince a four-year old boy that spitting on the street is not acceptable behavior when he sees it all around him all the time. This morning he announced, “I like copying Chinese people I don’t know and spitting on the ground”, then proceeded to give a convincing demonstration, sound effects and all.

But despite these excitements, the protests persist. In addition to the eating protest, there is the walking protest. Since we arrived he has refused to walk more than 10 yards at a stretch. He either parks his bottom firmly in the stroller or stretches his arms up to be carried, with a plaintive plea that takes me straight back to toddler days. It’s endearing to be reminded of that stage and to have those little arms wrapped around my neck again. Well, it is for about the first 5 yards, until my own lumbar protest starts up. So I have taken to bringing the stroller with us everywhere we go, much to the amazement of local people. Strollers are starting to gain popularity here, (along with many other previously unobtainable western trappings of parenthood, like diapers), but pretty much only for babies. Isaac is the only kid in town who can lob a spit-ball and handle a plastic shot-gun, but expects to be wheeled home afterwards.

Finally we have the speaking protest. This is not so much about speaking as being spoken to. He is not so bad with people we know, especially if they speak English, but he really does not like strangers addressing him in Chinese. I do understand this, he is still mastering English after all, and suddenly he is surrounded by people talking to him in another incomprehensible tongue. He calls English ‘Ditchling language’ after the small village in England where we lived last year and which he still considers home, despite vague memories of his ‘black and white house’ in New Jersey where he spent the first two and a half years of his life. So he will say, “I like Lin Shu-shu (Uncle Lin) because he talks to me in Ditchling language” or “that girl said hello to me in Ditchling language!”

The Chinese dote on children and pay them a lot of attention anyway, but a small blond one stands out a mile. Nearly everyone we pass smiles at Isaac and many of them stop to say how cute he is (they use the word ‘guai’, which means endearing and obedient, the two concepts being interconnected in their minds - at least until they encounter Isaac). The problem is that many also reach out to stroke his head or pat his cheek. He hates this, as indeed would I, and he responds with a loud and furious scream or by poking or pushing or spitting at them. They then change their opinion and back off with an embarrassed laugh or a comment about the rowdy behavior of western kids. “Why don’t they speak DITCHLING LANGUAGE?”, Isaac asked me in tears yesterday, and I explained again that we are in China now and people speak a different language, that they are only being friendly when they talk to him or touch him, that he will soon learn to speak Chinese himself. We talk about it a lot and will carry on doing so, whilst also trying to pre-empt the head-patting as much as possible.

I’m not too worried about the protests though, they are all reasonable enough reactions to an overwhelming deluge of change and I am sure they will pass. But we do agonize over whether living here will have any longer-term impact on Isaac’s social and emotional development. As our plane touched down on the runway three weeks ago, I made a fervent wish that we should all leave in two years time in good physical and mental health; that Isaac would not suffer from the culture shock he was about to be plunged into or, worse, fall prey to one of the myriad hazards that haunt me – the potholed street, the lurching truck, the random avian-flu carrying crow. Some variation of this is every parent’s daily prayer, I know, but it comes with a little added fervor in a country where, at any intersection, a top-heavy motorcycle may bear down on you loaded with lead-piping, or sofas, or pigs.

Being here does add unwelcome layers of risk: I am scared that one element or more could go alarmingly, unpredictably wrong and bring the whole house of cards down around our ears. But the potential gains are great as well, from the work and from everyday life. Isaac, and maybe even Ethan and I, may become a little wiser and more compassionate as a result of the experiences that lie ahead of us.

Re-reading these I realise that I did not jump into this experience in an entirely positive frame of mind! Here is another, somewhat more upbeat one, from November 2004:

It is a beautiful sunny day in Chengdu, one of only a handful we have seen since we arrived. Blue sky does lift the spirits but, as a friend commented this morning, it won’t do to make plans on days like these. You have to remember the dreary, overcast, polluted reality of most days and plan accordingly - e.g. for a long holiday somewhere else. Perhaps I am not getting started on the most positive note, but I might as well tell it like it is. The climate and the air quality are two of the least attractive things about life in Chengdu. I’ll get on to some of the others later.

Exactly ten weeks ago I submitted my MA thesis and the next day we heard that Winrock International had got the grant they had applied for from USAID, Ethan was appointed Chief of Party and we would be moving to China where he would run development projects with Tibetan communities in Western Sichuan. Since then we have packed up our lives in England, raced back to the US, cleaned and painted our house, moved all our belongings into storage and turned our lives around to come here, all while Ethan was starting work on his new job. All of this only made possible by the logistical and moral support of family and friends – thank-you all! The good news is that we have survived, though we’ve had a bumpy old time of it now and then. But we are here, in our own place and slowly starting to feel more settled. We have rented an apartment and made it more or less functional, Ethan has worked all the hours God sends, Isaac has started to attend the local Chinese kindergarten and learned how to say ‘silly potato’ in Chinese.

We are living on the 6th floor in a modern apartment complex in the south of the city, close to the area where most foreigners live, but not too close. Jinguan New City consists of 12 high-rise blocks and a bunch of villas set in landscaped gardens. It’s a great location, within walking distance of all essential amenities such as Peter’s Tex-Mex Cafe and the Carrefour supermarket, as well as a vegetable market, post office etc. I also just discovered this week that there is an Austrian bakery, indoor heated swimming pool, sauna and gym in the clubhouse so I am definitely feeling that we made the right choice about where to live. The apartment itself is large and light and airy, a rarity in this gloomy city, and that was its major selling point. It also boasts a huge, mauve-flowered sofa, stripy tinsel curtains and an odd, moulded-plastic bathtub with jet sprays that squirt you in the neck as you squirm to fit your body into the odd contours, whilst not sitting on the pop-up bathplug that is absurdly situated right under your bottom. But once our shipment arrives and we make a few décor adjustments it should start to feel like home. Already, even with those curtains, it is a peaceful haven from the hubbub outside

It is a very impressive hubbub, I have to say. The first few days we were here I couldn’t stop thinking about the first time I came to China in autumn 1985 and comparing everything. It is fascinating to come back and live here again, very different from coming on work trips, and a great chance to experience China again at this later stage of our lives. In very many ways it is a different country from the place where Ethan and I were students in the 1980s. When Ethan was studying in Shanghai he once went to a Chinese family’s home for dinner, but they disguised him as he came and went in case any of the neighbours spotted him and got them into trouble. This time we stayed in the home of Chinese friends for three weeks and no-one batted an eyelid. And the home we stayed in was a large duplex apartment with 4 bathrooms and a roof garden. In the 1980s even a penniless foreign student was wealthy compared to all but the most privileged Chinese people. Now only the wealthiest ex-pats can keep up with middle-class Chinese spending habits. People have got rich and, as Deng Xiao-ping promised them, it is glorious. When I was a student in Bejing the only shop that stocked imported goods or anything that you really wanted to buy was the Friendship Store. Chinese people weren’t even allowed in the door. Now the streets of Chengdu are lined with international brand names: Nike, Prada, Ermenegildno Zegna. Imported goods aren’t really necessary, however, because everything is made in China anyway. Thinking about the economic and lifestyle changes in the last 20 years and imagining a similar rate of change continuing for the next 20 years, I have to agree with those who say that this will be China’s century. Or rather, by the end of the century this will be China’s world.

But for now there are many remnants of the old socialist China around, quite apart from the communist party itself. The quarantine hospital where Ethan had the health tests for his residence permit may use disposable needles, but not disposable gloves to wield them. Hey, they don’t even use disposable tongue depressors. Waitresses still occasionally tell you that an item isn’t available because they can’t be bothered to go and check. Young men still cycle past you on the street calling out ‘helloooooooo’ in high-pitched voices. Buildings still pretty much fall down or at least look horribly tacky within a few years of construction. There are still a gazillion peasants out there in the countryside. For all the money being thrown around, most people are still horribly poor. The road leading to Isaac’s kindergarten passes by a piece of wasteland piled with construction rubble and trash. Around the 20th time I walked past I realized that the wasteland contains rows of tumble-down shacks where the construction crew actually live. They may be busy building ‘French-style’ town-homes but they live in a garbage heap.

That brings me on to the kindergarten, a major feature of Isaac’s and my life. We decided to send him to a local kindergarten so that he can be in a Chinese language environment and hopefully will learn to speak fairly quickly. It is certainly an impressive-looking place, a purpose-built three storey building with large playground and great facilities. It is one of an exclusive chain, the ‘Golden Apple All-The-Way’ Kindergartens (don’t ask), and the teachers do seem smart and very nice. But it is a big challenge of adjustment for Isaac, as he has to adapt to a lot more than just the language. The attitude to education and to young children is so different here - they are on the one hand more cosseted and on the other hand more restricted than in the west. One of my theories is that in the west we control the environment around children: childproofing our homes and play areas and then letting them run around as they will. Here the environment is beyond people’s control, full of unexpected hazards, and so people control their children much more closely. Kids here learn early on to stick close to their parents and do as they are told. Probably Isaac could do with a little more of that spirit, I hear you say. I certainly felt that way on the day he disappeared down the up escalator into a crowd of people. But most of the time his curious, adventurous nature is a joy to be around and we don’t want to curb that. The emphasis at his kindergarten is on group activities, rote learning and following social convention. A lot of time is spent on group dance routines, all the kids standing on their designated spots, waving their arms and hands in time to the music, or pretending to be little flowers or whatever. Isaac just isn’t getting it and I can hardly blame him. But this stuff is so deeply ingrained in most Chinese people that some adults, when they see Isaac or another kindergartner, experience a sort of Pavlovian return to their early childhood, their eyes glazing over as they start a rhymic hand-clapping, head-bobbing kind of dance.

Isaac continutes to resent the attention he receives. Everyone who sees him says he is ‘guai’, a Chinese word meaning sweet, endearing AND obedient. Then they try to stroke his head or pat his cheek, he responds by poking or pushing or spitting at them, and they change their opinion. He takes refuge against the unfamiliar in stories and is always asking Ethan when he is around, or me when he is not, to tell him the rest of the story. So we have various adventure sagas on the go, mostly featuring Isaac as a warrior or sailor or explorer or some other intrepid figure, doing good deeds and battling the forces of darkness.

We worry about the transition of course, and what impact it will have on him, but on the whole he seems to be handling it quite well. We spend a lot of time at home with familiar toys and games or outside running around, and the kindergarten is getting easier, I think. Although he clings to me every morning, he seems very cheerful when I go to pick him up and the teachers say he is getting along well with the other kids and hitting fewer people every day! So we will see. If it doesn’t work out, the alternative is a small international school where Isaac already goes to Wushu classes. We have met some Western kids there and one, a 5 year-old German girl, lives in our complex and plays with Isaac at the weekends. He is totally in love with her and wants her to come and live with us so they can play his charming game called ‘shooting other people’ all the time.

I realize I haven’t said much about what we are actually doing here. For my part that is because, as an ex-pat housewife, my main concern is how well the Amah has dusted behind the sofa. I have joined the Chengdu International Women’s Club so I can really get to grips with this issue. I also spend a fair amount of time gazing at pig carcasses, wondering which part translates into a pork chop, then giving up and buying bean curd instead. My other misadventures have included having my wallet stolen, and getting locked out on our balcony and having to be rescued by a security guard shinning up the drainpipe from the floor below. Apart from that most of my attention is focused on Isaac, as you can tell from the contents of this letter. I do occasionally remember that just a few weeks ago I was busy writing essays with titles like, ‘Constructing Community in Place, Process and Population’, but for now that is mostly eclipsed by all the hours spent playing ‘Buzz Lightyear blasts the space robots to smithereens’. Nevertheless, around all that excitement I am starting to make time to pursue some projects of my own.

Anyhow here we are and will be for the next two years. We have a guest room and are hoping for lots of visitors, so if I haven’t put you off completely, plan ahead and book yourselves in now for your China vacation. There are lots of great things to see in Sichuan and we are only a few hours away from the spectacular mountains and grasslands of the Tibetan plateau. And we promise not to make you eat Sichuan hot pot more than once.