Family | China Hope Live

“You’d better put socks on that baby or else…”

“…she’ll get diarrhea.”

That’s right: diarrhea. :)

(This message brought to you this evening by our friendly Tianjin neighbourhood dumpling ladies and traditional Chinese medicine.)

More about free Chinese advice and ‘compliments’:

More about having a foreign baby in China:

More about Chinese medicine:

~ Discuss (2) ~

“You’d better put socks on that baby or else…”

“…she’ll get diarrhea.”

That’s right: diarrhea. :)

(This message brought to you this evening by our friendly Tianjin neighbourhood dumpling ladies and traditional Chinese medicine.)

More about free Chinese advice and ‘compliments’:

More about having a foreign baby in China:

More about Chinese medicine:

~ Discuss (2) ~

Foreign Baby in Tianjin Pt. 2 — a rock star in the family

Have we ever seen this woman before? Nope. And did she just come up, start touching our kid’s face and try to make her smile? Of course!

This is routine whenever we take Lilia out for walks. A friendly stranger or two (or ten) will often stop to try and make her smile, and that often involves touching. Younger people like the girl in these photos tend to be gentler than middle-aged and older women, at least in our experience. We have some neighbourhood committee ladies who talk so loud when they’re trying to get a reaction out of Lilia that they make her scared; they pretty much yell in her face, but not intentionally — that’s just how they talk all day long. Those kinds of folks also tend to play a little rougher with the way the pinch legs and touch cheeks.

Obviously we don’t let the general public manhandle our daughter, but since it’s so expected that any friendly person can play with a stranger’s baby, and since “foreign dolls” (洋娃娃) are such an attraction, we try to be as accommodating as we can while still protecting Lilia. As you can see, she likes it sometimes.

I’ve only had to directly physically block someone’s hand once, when a woman who honestly looked like a KTV prostitute tried to stick her finger in Lilia’s mouth on the Beijing subway. People don’t understand when you bat their fingers away, but there’s no way I’m letting random people stick there fingers in our daughter’s mouth, regardless of whether or not they’re dressed like a xiǎojiě (小姐)! Same goes for anyone who seems like they might be too rough. I use as much finesse and tact as I can, of course (we indirectly block people all the time), but obviously we’re willing to cause offense if we have to to protect our daughter. Those kinds of situations are very rare, however, and most people are great, wanting to coo over a baby like people do anywhere… just maybe a little more so.

Other stuff about having a foreign baby in China:

~ Discuss (1) ~

Foreign Baby in Tianjin Pt. 2 — a rock star in the family

Have we ever seen this woman before? Nope. And did she just come up, start touching our kid’s face and try to make her smile? Of course!

This is routine whenever we take Lilia out for walks. A friendly stranger or two (or ten) will often stop to try and make her smile, and that often involves touching. Younger people like the girl in these photos tend to be gentler than middle-aged and older women, at least in our experience. We have some neighbourhood committee ladies who talk so loud when they’re trying to get a reaction out of Lilia that they make her scared; they pretty much yell in her face, but not intentionally — that’s just how they talk all day long. Those kinds of folks also tend to play a little rougher with the way the pinch legs and touch cheeks.

Obviously we don’t let the general public manhandle our daughter, but since it’s so expected that any friendly person can play with a stranger’s baby, and since “foreign dolls” (洋娃娃) are such an attraction, we try to be as accommodating as we can while still protecting Lilia. As you can see, she likes it sometimes.

I’ve only had to directly physically block someone’s hand once, when a woman who honestly looked like a KTV prostitute tried to stick her finger in Lilia’s mouth on the Beijing subway. People don’t understand when you bat their fingers away, but there’s no way I’m letting random people stick there fingers in our daughter’s mouth, regardless of whether or not they’re dressed like a xiǎojiě (小姐)! Same goes for anyone who seems like they might be too rough. I use as much finesse and tact as I can, of course (we indirectly block people all the time), but obviously we’re willing to cause offense if we have to to protect our daughter. Those kinds of situations are very rare, however, and most people are great, wanting to coo over a baby like people do anywhere… just maybe a little more so.

Other stuff about having a foreign baby in China:

~ Discuss (1) ~

No offensive

Lilia and I have recently started having play dates with other babies and moms. Yesterday we met up with a new Chinese friend and her 11 month old baby. This mom lives on one of the university campuses that is a short walk from our apartment… there is a lot less traffic on campus, and a lot more trees…which makes it a good place to go for a stroll. While we were waiting at the place we were supposed to meet our friend, Lilia played the role of “foreign super star baby.” People gathered around us, making clucking noises at her, touching her hands and face, and saying over and over “Bee-yoo-tee-full.” At one point we must have had about 10 people leaning over her, all trying to get her to smile (which is, fortunately, not too difficult to do).

Once our friends got there we found a little clearing where some other moms and babies had gathered. I was telling her about the scene she’d just missed, and my friend said (in Chinese): “She is beautiful. She is much, MUCH more beautiful than you.” Then in English, she said “No offensive.” :)

I thought it was funny. I wasn’t offended, as I know that Lilia is more beautiful than me (and want her to be). I just wouldn’t have ever said it that way myself. Yet another example of how the supposedly indirect Chinese are often very, very direct.

~ Discuss (2) ~

No offensive

Lilia and I have recently started having play dates with other babies and moms. Yesterday we met up with a new Chinese friend and her 11 month old baby. This mom lives on one of the university campuses that is a short walk from our apartment… there is a lot less traffic on campus, and a lot more trees…which makes it a good place to go for a stroll. While we were waiting at the place we were supposed to meet our friend, Lilia played the role of “foreign super star baby.” People gathered around us, making clucking noises at her, touching her hands and face, and saying over and over “Bee-yoo-tee-full.” At one point we must have had about 10 people leaning over her, all trying to get her to smile (which is, fortunately, not too difficult to do).

Once our friends got there we found a little clearing where some other moms and babies had gathered. I was telling her about the scene she’d just missed, and my friend said (in Chinese): “She is beautiful. She is much, MUCH more beautiful than you.” Then in English, she said “No offensive.” :)

I thought it was funny. I wasn’t offended, as I know that Lilia is more beautiful than me (and want her to be). I just wouldn’t have ever said it that way myself. Yet another example of how the supposedly indirect Chinese are often very, very direct.

~ Discuss (2) ~

Diary of a Worm in Chinese! (an English / 汉字 / pīnyīn online read-along)

By Joel ~
| Family | Foreign baby in China | Learning Mandarin |

A friend bought our daughter 蚯蚓的日记, the Chinese translation of Diary of a Worm, as a Christmas gift. It’s actually pretty funny – I think it won some awards or something – and so as a language exercise I’ve back-translated it into English (without ever seeing the original English text).

You can read along!
After all that work, and because it’s a great book, I put my English, the 汉字 and the pīnyīn together into a PDF cheatsheet and uploaded shots of each page into a photo gallery so other language students can test their reading comprehension. On the gallery page you can click through the pages and if you get stuck, either reference the PDF cheatsheet or glance at the captions under each photo, which also contain all the text for that page in English, 汉字，and pīnyīn (the captions are ugly; go with the PDF!).

Of course, if you like it you should buy it. Checking out author Doreen Cronin’s homepage might be nice, too.

~ Discuss (11) ~

Diary of a Worm in Chinese! (an English / 汉字 / pīnyīn online read-along)

By Joel ~
| Family | Foreign baby in China | Learning Mandarin |

A friend bought our daughter 蚯蚓的日记, the Chinese translation of Diary of a Worm, as a Christmas gift. It’s actually pretty funny – I think it won some awards or something – and so as a language exercise I’ve back-translated it into English (without ever seeing the original English text).

You can read along!
After all that work, and because it’s a great book, I put my English, the 汉字 and the pīnyīn together into a PDF cheatsheet and uploaded shots of each page into a photo gallery so other language students can test their reading comprehension. On the gallery page you can click through the pages and if you get stuck, either reference the PDF cheatsheet or glance at the captions under each photo, which also contain all the text for that page in English, 汉字，and pīnyīn (the captions are ugly; go with the PDF!).

Of course, if you like it you should buy it. Checking out author Doreen Cronin’s homepage might be nice, too.

~ Discuss (11) ~

Foreign baby in China essentials: FACEBOOK SUBSTITUTE (or VPN) & SKYPE

The Problem

Problem: you have someone’s grandbaby, niece, nephew and/or great-grandbaby, and you live on the other side of the globe. Aside from mom and dad, all the people who love him or her the most are far, far away. This really, really sucks!

We were in Canada for the first four months of Lilia’s life (she spent her first month outside her mommy in the NICU). During that time our Facebook accounts were filled with baby photos and videos as well as daily comments from family and friends all around the globe. And that was when we were still living with family in our own country; we hadn’t even left yet.

In China, Facebook is was the ultimate tool for sharing baby photos and videos with far away family members (and, thanks to the privacy options, not the entire sleaze-saturated, creep-infested, pervert-enabling internet). Everyone from my grandparents to their great-grandkids are on Facebook, and it just kills to not get to share our daughter with them. We also miss the weekly and often daily FB interaction revolving around our nieces and nephews and whatever other family adventures are going on (most recently: the 2010 Olympic Games in our hometown!). Obviously it’s not as good as being within driving distance of your relatives, but FB was a big help and it’s sorely missed.

Some Options

So, 怎么办？ Here’s the three options we’ve come across for making the physical distance from family members a little less painful. If you have other ideas, please let us know in the comments!

1) Get a VPN
We haven’t bothered to used a paid service to unrestrict our internet in China. When it comes to the internet less can be more, I’m really cheap, and I assume those VPN services will be blocked eventually anyway. But for $60 bucks a year (wow, I really am cheap…) you can get great services like the one we just won for free! The good folks at ChengduLiving.com had a free giveaway and just yesterday we won six months of free VPN service! We tried it this morning and it’s working great; click here to see the details — you can get a discount code from ChengduLiving.com. (Thanks tons, guys!) Our original strategy didn’t involve VPNs, so I don’t know if we’ll keep using it or not once our free six months are up.

2) Get/Make a Facebook substitute
I’m really cheap, Facebook was already sucking up too much of my time, and I wanted a baby-photo-sharing backup that would work even if/when China blocked every proxy and VPN in the world. So we set up a private, password-protected, family-only WordPress blog. Since we already pay for our own domain name and hosting, this didn’t cost us anything extra. It’s not as slick as Facebook, of course, but we can still share photo galleries and upload video clips that our family can download, and everyone can leave comments and share their own stories and photos. It’s also nice to have some family-members-only space on the internet. Our families can see photos and video the same day we take them.

There’s no guarantee that our domain name/hosting server won’t go the way of Facebook, YouTube, and a growing list of proxies and VPNs; personal sites get blocked, too. But we try to play nice by staying away from topics and words that the gov. deems sensitive. Plus sites like ours aren’t as high priority for censors or as high profile as proxies anyway.

3) Use Skype
You don’t need a top-of-the-line computer or video camera (we have older stuff) to pull off great Skype video calls. And it’s free! And if your grandparents are too computer-illiterate to handle Skype, you can just Skype their phones for pennies a minute at the most ($0.02/minute to Canada and the USA). When international video calls or phone calls are this easy, it’d be tragic not to take advantage of the opportunity.

Any other ideas? How do you stay connected with family and friends back home?

Other foreign baby in China essentials:

Foreign baby in China essentials: IMPORTED BABY FORMULA
Foreign baby in China essentials: FRIENDLY STRANGER FINGER SHIELD
Foreign baby in China essentials: AIR PURIFIER

~ Discuss (8) ~

Foreign baby in China essentials: FACEBOOK SUBSTITUTE (or VPN) & SKYPE

The Problem

Problem: you have someone’s grandbaby, niece, nephew and/or great-grandbaby, and you live on the other side of the globe. Aside from mom and dad, all the people who love him or her the most are far, far away. This really, really sucks!

We were in Canada for the first four months of Lilia’s life (she spent her first month outside her mommy in the NICU). During that time our Facebook accounts were filled with baby photos and videos as well as daily comments from family and friends all around the globe. And that was when we were still living with family in our own country; we hadn’t even left yet.

In China, Facebook is was the ultimate tool for sharing baby photos and videos with far away family members (and, thanks to the privacy options, not the entire sleaze-saturated, creep-infested, pervert-enabling internet). Everyone from my grandparents to their great-grandkids are on Facebook, and it just kills to not get to share our daughter with them. We also miss the weekly and often daily FB interaction revolving around our nieces and nephews and whatever other family adventures are going on (most recently: the 2010 Olympic Games in our hometown!). Obviously it’s not as good as being within driving distance of your relatives, but FB was a big help and it’s sorely missed.

Some Options

So, 怎么办？ Here’s the three options we’ve come across for making the physical distance from family members a little less painful. If you have other ideas, please let us know in the comments!

1) Get a VPN
We haven’t bothered to used a paid service to unrestrict our internet in China. When it comes to the internet less can be more, I’m really cheap, and I assume those VPN services will be blocked eventually anyway. But for $60 bucks a year (wow, I really am cheap…) you can get great services like the one we just won for free! The good folks at ChengduLiving.com had a free giveaway and just yesterday we won six months of free VPN service! We tried it this morning and it’s working great; click here to see the details — you can get a discount code from ChengduLiving.com. (Thanks tons, guys!) Our original strategy didn’t involve VPNs, so I don’t know if we’ll keep using it or not once our free six months are up.

2) Get/Make a Facebook substitute
I’m really cheap, Facebook was already sucking up too much of my time, and I wanted a baby-photo-sharing backup that would work even if/when China blocked every proxy and VPN in the world. So we set up a private, password-protected, family-only WordPress blog. Since we already pay for our own domain name and hosting, this didn’t cost us anything extra. It’s not as slick as Facebook, of course, but we can still share photo galleries and upload video clips that our family can download, and everyone can leave comments and share their own stories and photos. It’s also nice to have some family-members-only space on the internet. Our families can see photos and video the same day we take them.

There’s no guarantee that our domain name/hosting server won’t go the way of Facebook, YouTube, and a growing list of proxies and VPNs; personal sites get blocked, too. But we try to play nice by staying away from topics and words that the gov. deems sensitive. Plus sites like ours aren’t as high priority for censors or as high profile as proxies anyway.

3) Use Skype
You don’t need a top-of-the-line computer or video camera (we have older stuff) to pull off great Skype video calls. And it’s free! And if your grandparents are too computer-illiterate to handle Skype, you can just Skype their phones for pennies a minute at the most ($0.02/minute to Canada and the USA). When international video calls or phone calls are this easy, it’d be tragic not to take advantage of the opportunity.

Any other ideas? How do you stay connected with family and friends back home?

Other foreign baby in China essentials: