Choosing your princesses wisely

This morning while getting ready for school, Ysa made a beeline for her fancy white short sleeve dress. Which would have been fine, except that we've had an unseasonable return of March in the last two days, and it's been cold, rainy, drizzly, and muddy. So no white dress.

"But Dad, I want to be like BaiXue GongZhu!"

"And who is BaiXue GongZu?"

"BaiXue GongZHU, Daddy!" (yes, my Chinese is still at the level where my four year old routinely corrects my pronunciation) "She's a princess!" The TV has been on a lot, because, um... we've been lazy parents?... >ahem< I mean, it's been helping our kids improve their Chinese tremendously. So princesses have been on her mind a great deal as of late.

As we continued getting ready, Ysa told me more about BaiXue GongZu (白雪公主), the White Snow Princess, who, as her name suggests, dresses only in white. And then something clicks - hey, she's talking about Snow White! Or at least a Chinese version thereof. Which got me thinking a little bit more about princesses, both Western and Chinese, and what both versions have in common - namely, hefty tie-ins to promotional marketing campaigns and a heavy reliance on princes.

So that was the inspiration to head off to YouTube, and follow through on my weeks-old promise to tell her all about Atalanta, the fastest and smartest princess around. The version below comes straight from my seventies childhood, via Free to Be, You and Me. (Thanks, Mom!) And it has Alan Alda doing the male voices - who knew?



After that, what more is there to say? When I picked her up from kindergarten, she told me that she wanted black hair and clothes like Atalanta's. I told her that it was a very old story, and that nobody knew exactly what color Atalanta's hair was really. And as far as clothes go, Atalanta wears whatever she wants, right? That seemed to satisfy her, so I allowed myself to savor a small moment of smug parental self-congratulation as I watched her run on ahead of me. As fast as she possibly could, with her hair streaming behind her.

Caine's Arcade

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

A video about a kid in East LA who built a cardboard arcade in the back of his dad's used auto parts store.  I'd seen this referenced around the internet a lot this week, and finally got around to watching.  It's well worth the ten minutes to see the whole movie, not just for the portrait of Caine (who is an awesome kid, by the way), but what happened when it hit the internet, and the arcade was mobbed with hundreds of visitors.  Looking at the movie's web site today, Caine has had upwards of $38,000 donated to his college fund, and climbing!  Go, internet!

I'll be showing this video to a class or two this semester - will keep you posted on the reactions in China...

Setting forth

Seen while crossing a busy street in nearby Xipu. (Don't worry - her mom was just outside the picture frame.)

La vie quotidienne

I was reminded the other evening, while talking to another teacher here, that one of the joys in China is the pleasure of sitting around and simply watching things happen.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, a couple more videos of life on the basketball court next to the primary school on a Sunday afternoon, circa late September / early October.

Part the first:  In which Z tools around randomly on his bike, Y follows two girls that come by with a kitten in a small box, a random passerby talks on her cell phone, and a clump of children then run off to points unknown...



Part the second:  In which Z and friend play a Pokemon-type game with small circular trading cards, Y experiments with a plastic fake guitar, and someone in the background says ”对“ ("dui" = right, okay) repeatedly so fast that it almost sounds like machine gun fire.


Part the third:  In which Y shreds on the toy guitar, Z loses a round of rock/paper/scissors, and a toddler and her mom take their leave. 

Hide and Seek

My Kingdom for a telephoto lens!

Had a borrowed camera last Sunday afternoon while watching the kids ride bikes in their usual kid rodeo area in front of the primary school.  Most of the time, a small portable point and shoot is more than enough, but on occasion, it would be nice to be able to zoom in a bit closer.  Still, with a little bit of cropping, I was able to get a few decent pics out of the deal, mostly of Ysa and friends because Zekey was zooming around too fast.  (You should have seen the pictures that got away...)




 
 



 

Explaining things, continued (the kid's turn)

From the Slow Boat family video archives, the Xander and Zekey Electricity Show!  (First aired sometime last spring; global syndication rights now negotiable...)

Octacular! (Octopolis? Octopular? Octopimization..?)

Last Sunday, I went with Zekey and Ysa to meet some of our friends to People's Park, one of my favorite places in Chengdu.  This time around, instead of focusing on the tea-drinking and relaxing part of the park, we did the cheap-but-cool looks-like-some-of-them-are-about-to-fall-apart kiddie rides section of the park.  The kids got to ride on dang near every ride that they wanted to, and I had fun, mingled with a slight longing for our camera, which is still in the States with Jane.

While doing some photo-weeding on the computer, I did find this previously unpublished picture from a visit last spring, so you all can imagine at least some of the clanking tentacley goodness of the place.  Kinda fits in with the day's squiggly theme, don't you think?

Extreme Schooling?

Extreme Schooling, China Style

An interesting artice from the New York Times this weekend made me realize, "Oh yeah, we are doing something out of the ordinary, aren't we?"  Titled Our Family's Experiment in Extreme Schooling, it's the story of a Clifford Levy, a Times reporter who's worked in Moscow for the last four years, and how his kids handled the culture shock of being dropped into a school where they (gasp!) only spoke Russian!  From the article's introduction:

My three children once were among the coddled offspring of Park Slope, Brooklyn. But when I became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, my wife and I decided that we wanted to immerse them in life abroad. No international schools where the instruction is in English. Ours would go to a local one, with real Russians. 

I've got to admit that one of my first reactions when reading this article (and watching the accompanying video, which you should make sure and see) was a half-suppressed disgusted snort and a sarcastic "Whoop-De-Doo!"  Russian is a hard language?  They've got an alphabet, for crying out loud!  How hard can it be??  And a slight tinge of jealousy - man, I wish I could send my kids to a $10,000 a year private alternative school in Mandarin.  And his kids get mistaken for Russians all the time!  No way no how will our kids ever fit into China that seamlessly, that's for sure...

But some of the details from the article were also gut-wrenchingly familiar - the sinking feeling in your gut as a parent during that first year of immersion, knowing that you are sending your child into an environment where he understands next to nothing and is totally miserable.  And the elation and beauty of hearing another language flow effortlessly out of your child's mouth at a school performance a year and a half later.  And the familiar push and pull, now that we've been to the States and back, of "Where, exactly, does my child belong now?"

When all is said and done, entering another culture is an incredible leap to make, no matter how you do it.  My congratulations to Clifford Levy and his wife, for deciding to guide their kids along the road less traveled instead of taking the easy way out.  And more importantly, congratulations to Danya, Arden, and Emmet, his three kids, who are now citizens of the world, and seem to be much richer for it.

Greetings from In Between!

So for all of you out there that haven't been following me on their personal GPS trackers, I'm now sortof back in China.  I say "sortof" because I've been here for only two days and the beginning of a third, and the afternoons of both of those days have been spent in a jet lag haze with me trying desperately not to fall asleep and generally failing. 

Which means that Zekey and Ysa and I have been awake for long stretches in the middle of the night at varying times, with the general rule that if a kid's awake, I'm awake.  At least there are no diapers or 102° fevers involved...

Which further means that the kids and I have been spending some quality time in the third country we inhabit, the Free and Autonomous Republic of the Internet.  Or better said, the land of the imagination...?



An example: an early film of the pianist Glenn Gould going completely hyperballistic (in a good way) on a Bach - two part invention? (help me out here, piano folks)  Zekey and Ysa were bored with this one until right in the middle, when Gould's hands simply explode on the keyboard, eliciting whoops of joy and serious giggles for the next fifteen minutes of playing and replaying the clip.  And is it my imagination, or does Glenn do some serious channeling of Harpo Marx during the piece?

The video comes courtesy of The Kid Should See This, a web site that I highly recommend, even for grownups.  As the author puts it:

"There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here."

Even if they're not jet lagged.

Okay, I've tarnished his FBI file for good, now...

Around the first of May, Xander was sworn into the Young Pioneers, which means more or less that he's in the Honor Roll, except with the added bonus that he could also be on track to join the Communist Party of China. The main thing is that he gets to wear a red scarf every day to school, and he gets a nifty plastic pin with a red star on it. Xander, externally motivated student that he is, was crushed last fall when he didn't get a red scarf like the "good kids" in the class, and thought for a while that he was a Bad Student, so now he's been officially recognized.

And yes, teachers in China (well, at least in Xander's school) are very up front about separating the sheep from the goats in that way. Good students often get to sit up front close to the teacher, with the bad kids towards the back. For a couple of days, Xander refused to play with a friend of his because the teacher had mentioned that she hadn't done her math homework well enough. Yeah, we had to have a talk with him about that one...

Turns out that he hadn't gotten his red scarf last fall because, understandably, his teachers weren't quite sure what we as parents would think. We said fine, as long as they ignored all of the reports to the Central Committee that he was sure to make on us (joke!), and so he got his scarf in an all school awards ceremony, complete with an honor guard, a speech to the gathered parents from a vice president of the university, and, of course, synchronized dance performances.

The music that was playing while they were being led up to the stage? The theme song from the 1960 American Western The Magnificent Seven. (Which was itself a copy of Kurasawa's Seven Samurai.)

Of course.

Ysa's big number four

Also before I left: Ysa turned four years old, which shouldn't be terribly surprising, as she turned three around a year ago, I guess. But there's always that little bit of, "Wow, where did that year go off to?" She had a party at kindergarten and a party at home, and a splendid time at both, with new friends that she's getting to be old enough to appreciate and interact with in ways that she didn't when she was three.





Oh, and by the way, you'll pardon me if many of my posts while here in the States are about regular ol' family events in China, right? It's a bit strange to be in my home country, but away from my home city, and missing family that are at home on the opposite side of the world... Guess I did know the risks of such surrealism when I signed up now, didn't I?

The first and final voyage of the SS Styrofoam

One Saturday, about a month ago, Xander and Zekey decided that they wanted to go sailing. More specifically, they wanted to launch a boat that they (well, mostly Xander) had made. One of their ongoing projects this spring has been the making and testing of various kinds of Lego and styrofoam watercraft in the big red plastic washbasin in our bathroom, but it seemed like they were ready to move on to bigger and better.

So the four of us (Ysa included) trooped across campus to the "fake mountain place", as it's known in our household. One typical feature of Chinese universities that I've neglected to describe up to this point is the artificial landscaped garden, usually featuring pavilions and a pond of some sort with some craggy rocks (natural or otherwise) in the middle, surrounded by groves of bamboo.

As you can imagine, three blonde children walking across campus taking turns carrying a chunk of cardboard and styrofoam almost as big as they are isn't exactly a common sight in most Chinese universities, so by the time we got to the pond, we had a small crowd of onlookers ready to witness the launch. Xander proved to be a fine MC.



After the launch, there was the small matter of getting the boat back to shore, which was soon solved with the help of some of the aforementioned bamboo. The boys, and a young onlooker or two, started poling and prodding the boat around the vast wide ocean (or small stagnant pond, depending on your point of view). I left with Ysa to go to a nearby ATM, and when I got back, the number of boats in the lake had magically doubled!





The adventure continued through the morning, until a combination of distraction and soggy cardboard brought our small fleet into drydock. A fine seaside morning in our landlocked little campus.

Again, proof that we still exist...

Yes, it's that time of year again - when we have finished grading our finals, vegged out a bit by watching too many (bootlegged - shhh) episodes of "So You Think You Can Dance", sent the kids out to run wild in the mild evening sauna (37°C / 98°F at 7:00 last night), and realized that it's time to get down to business and please the grandparents with cute pix of the grandkids.


Ysa starts this one out by adding to the shopping list on the dining room whiteboard. Apparently, we're low on blue flowers and "Mupus Asam".


Continuing the theme of family scribe, Xander shows us his Chinese homework, and incidentally demonstrates that, yes, I, your trusted narrator, am less literate than your average Chinese first grader.


Meanwhile, Zekey, having singlehandedly saved the earth from an invasion of malicious tropical plants, pauses to take a PR shot with his trusty sidekick.


Peace, everyone! Remember to practice your writing each day, and finish all your vegetables so that you grow up to be big and strong.
(Thanks to our friend Kate for guest starring in this shot.)

Mmm, Mock Indonesian!

Okay, are you a vegetarian sitting around your house in China over the weekend and not really inspired to have the same old same old rice with some kind of vegetable for lunch or dinner? Is your 10 pound bag of pasta that you bought at Metro five months ago starting to run low? Don't want to stick around for the couple of hours that it takes those pinto beans that you found one time at the local market and bought, like, a wheelbarrow full, to boil?

Well, my friends, have I got the answer for you. Mock Indonesian, a cuisine whose moment is about to arrive. Detractors might say, "Hey, wait a minute! This is just leftover Chinese food presented in a different shape with a bit of peanut butter thrown in as it's reheated." To which I say, Hey. This is China. There are no detractors here.



Here's how you do it:

1. Make some rice. If you're doing white rice, add a little more water than usual to make it stickier. Fried rice is cool, too, of course. Add in all them other leftovers that were starting to migrate to the back of the fridge, while you're at it.
2. Make some veggies. Leafy greens are the best. A peanut sauce is even better than the best.
3. Pack the rice into a small bowl, then invert the bowl onto a plate. You should have a perfect mound of rice right in the middle. Did it fall all over the place? Oh-oh, that one's for you. Repeat until you get three perfect servings for the kids.
4. Arrange the veggies artfully on the side. Top with a bit of peanut sauce and roasted peanuts, if they're handy.
5. Serve to great fanfare, and watch your kids gobble it down repeatedly, weekend after weekend.
6. Of course, you're welcome.
   

The Original Slow Boat

Presenting a floating contraption of some kind that Xander made last month or so. I think the chopstick cannons make a nice touch...

Out to the farm

Another "current event" report that's not quite current, but I'm posting anyway because the photos turned out nicely - we went with our friend Jessie out to our friends the Gao family's organic farm last month when they had their twice yearly open house for their customers.


The kids usually get the media attention in our household, so leading off is a photo of Jane and me and Jessie.



...which doesn't mean that the kids weren't entertaining ...





Here are Xander and friends doing dishes. "Rinsing" the dishes in a basket of old rice husks first gets rid of the grease and eliminates the need for extra hot water - important when everything is cooked over wood or charcoal.





At the time (early April) the 油菜 (youcai - rapeseed or canola) were in bloom, so we were surrounded by a sea of yellow blossoms.



Jane got a lot of good pictures of all things blooming - here are a few:





Spring has since started to head full blast into summer around these parts, but I figure that in a lot of places where people are reading this, it's still going on or just getting started. Happy May, everyone!

Art in da house

Ysa has been drawing like crazy in the past couple of months! Not only drawing, but cutting and pasting as well. Her favorite subject matter so far is girls, boys*, suns and houses. Medium: colored pencil on recycled homework from our students; marker, cut coloring books, glue. As much as I'm temped to take credit, this burst is all from her - no parental prodding on our part required. (We just need to watch what books we leave lying around, as they're liable to become part of her portfolio if we're not careful)







(*Ysa's boys, btw, are usually distinguishable from girls by a small line drawn downward from between the legs)

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming, already in progress....

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know not to expect very much in the way of actual day to day narrative (or very much of a coherent narrative at all, for that matter). Still, from time to time, I do feel that it's my duty to say that, yes, life is fairly ordinary and settled here, yes, I'm actually working and teaching, and yes, mom, your grandkids still do exist...


For those of you that have been following the regular cast of characters, Zekey, for starters is now at the half dozen mark:



(and no, he's not in pain - just being goofy for the camera)



Jane and Zekey made an airplane cake for the party. (Note the carefully crafted Air China logo made of carefully sliced imported red licorice by yours truly, though Zekey swears that it looks more like China Southern...)



Xander and Zekey are often way too cool for their own good, often spouting off in Sichuan Chinese, starting their very own motorcycle gang and generally off on their own getting in trouble...



Just because Ysa has figured out this cute little smile, she thinks she can get away with anything:



Oh wait. She DOES get away with anything.

Jane has many involvements, including this stint as a professional custard taster...



And me? The duties of parenting weigh heavily on me - sometimes it's almost too much to bear the overwhelming weight of it all.