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Published: September 23rd 2010
Greetings Fellow Blogospherians!
Baby Julia continues to do well!
Yesterday was a delightfully unprogrammed day with our only obligation being a mandatory official photograph of Baby Julia to be used by the U.S. government for visa issuance.
Otherwise we had a chance to walk to a park here on Shamian Island. This proved to be a more fascinating and insightful look into Chinese culture than I had expected. There were people of all ages in the park, many older folks and even those who’d qualify as quite elderly.
We knew to expect Tai-Chi practitioners and we indeed found them but who knew that hacky-sack is the hot game among the 50+ crowd in China?!? Seriously. The older adults avidly play an ancient form of a game that to any American looks like Hacky Sack and they’re
good at it. They were all very inviting of us to play with them. I tried my hand (foot really) at it and could only return it successfully a few times in a row before kicking it off in the wrong direction but I still got the universal thumbs up of approval.
I was so intrigued by this game that
I researched it on the internet once back at the hotel room and it turns out to be a truly ancient sport the Chinese call Jianzi. (One more reminder of how short American history is relative to the rest of the world. For so many things, somebody else was there before we were, even for hacky sack of all things!) The main difference between Jianzi and American Hacky Sack is that Jianzi is played with a springy feathered shuttlecock instead a small, round, bead-filled leather bag. The Chinese have documented the origins of this game reportedly back 2000 years to the Han Dynasty. Whatever it’s called, the game demands foot-eye coordination of a high order and the folks we saw deftly kicking this shuttlecock back and forth had clearly honed their motor, balance, coordination, and vestibular skills to an impressive level through this sport. It was inspiring to see how a little focused daily foot-game could keep someone pretty fit.
Meanwhile, the kids were having fun with their own exercise at the playground in this park and with playing soccer. Our small group had brought a couple soccer balls with us and when those hit the ground it was
clear that we had suddenly and publicly declared our fluency in speaking a universal language. Everyone seemed intrigued around us and several local kids came up to play and engage our kids. It was the rare moment that magically transcended the ever-present language barrier for us in China.
I have also included a few photographs of the green roofs here in Guangzhou as seen from the hotel room. Upon looking out our hotel window from the 12th floor, we were immediately struck by how many large buildings have “living roofs” with green grass and other plants covering them. This is a growing trend even in the U.S. and is motivated by the energy savings from the insulatory effects. Other advantages include water absorption, decreased urban warming, and even creation of wildlife habit in the urban setting.
Whatever it’s called, it makes for a much more beautiful city view than would otherwise be the case!
One last indelicate but interesting topic which demands attention. I’ve been mulling over how to address this one...
Chinese adoption agencies make sure to prepare all American families traveling China to be ready for the occasional public attack from an unlikely foe... the
traditional Chinese grandmother.
Although it sounds like the set-up to a bad joke, it’s really not. Grandmothers alive in China today have mostly grown up in a world of relatively limited options in which they were given a job to do and expected to focus pretty exclusively on the demands of this job. Their work was primarily to raise children (hopefully boys per societal standards) and serve/care for their husband and his parents in their old age. Human nature is such that generally any worker whose job is strictly and narrowly defined will tend to exert a great deal of control over what little they can control in their work universe. In the practice of Medicine, the classic example of this would stereotypically be the scrub nurse in the O.R. who is low on the chain of command but if even the surgeon reaches into her 12 by 12 inch instrument tray without asking, there will be problems.
And this brings us back to the Chinese grandmas. Their world was and still is narrowly defined but ensuring proper mothering remains at the heart of their fiercely-held maternal jurisdiction. For a demographic group that was taught at the deepest
level to be deferential in demeanor, you’d be surprised what happens when they witness a perceived parenting faux pas, even among strangers, in public.
This well described dynamic most commonly manifests through the horrified reaction of the Chinese grandma at witnessing any exposed skin on a baby in public. This reaction is not driven by concerns of immodesty but rather a deep, relatively spiritual concern about the baby getting cold, catching cold, being exposed to drafts which carry evil spirits, violating the tenets of feng shui, etc, etc, etc. The point is that any parent who would bring their baby out in public improperly dressed needs a serious talking to and has invited public ridicule upon themselves.
No matter that it’s currently 90 degrees in 99% humidity, no matter that the baby, the parent, and the Chinese grandma are all having this tense interaction while wiping the flop sweat from their brow, no matter that we don’t understand the words of the excitedly admonishing diatribe which is directed like a firehose of castigation at our worth as parents. No matter.
This tongue-lashing usually lasts for a minute or two and then concludes with the grandma stomping off,
muttering additional pejoratives in Mandarin, and disgustedly shaking her head. Variations include the multi-grandma offensive (a little more intimidating people tell me) and the Chinese-Nationalist version of the grandma attack. The latter maneuver can be summed as the “You-are-a-worthless-parent-because-your-baby-is-improperly-dressed-and-oh-by-the-way-I-hate-you-for-taking-this-baby-out-of-China” technique. This one especially tends to be a little disheartening for the mothers in our group who have been subjected to it. One minute you’re quietly enjoying the beauty of the 1500 year old Pagoda Forest and the next you’re withstanding an unprovoked withering assault in frantic Mandarin.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, this has not colored the experience of anyone in the travel group to a gloomy hue. And furthermore, I have personally not been subjected to any of this criticism. Lastly, our Chinese guides have done a stand up job at immediately descending on any of these situations and nimbly diving headlong into animated verbal counter-offensives in Mandarin, none of which we really understand. From what we are told in the aftermath debriefing, these conversations get quite nasty. The Pagoda Forest incident ended with our guide telling the grandma “if you are so worried about the millions of Chinese orphans, then go to an orphanage and
get your own” to which the grandma said (to our childless female guide) simply “Where is
your baby?? Huh?!?”
Low blow.
As with any highly passionate dynamic, there are deep emotions and heartfelt concerns which undergird the grandmother’s reaction in this situation. The fact that only mothers in our group have been approached and that none of the fathers have been admonished would presumably confirm that the expectation for deference to males is still at work in these situations. And furthermore, this scenario philosophically cuts right to the deeper issue inherent to all international adoption of what is in the best interest of orphans.
Those familiar with the current worldwide state of international adoption can attest to the raging debates between local adoption agencies which are desperate to place impoverished foreign orphans into eagerly welcoming American homes and the anti-international-adoption sentiments of groups like UNICEF. UNICEF feels that every orphan should be raised in some semblance of birth family or, failing that, they should be raised domestically in their country of origin. In their defense, UNICEF points out the corruption and child abduction which can arise in any financially lucrative international adoption program. However, most folks within the
adoption universe see UNICEF’s position as hopelessly idealistic and tragically counterproductive when the foreign orphan and the eager American adoptive family seem to be a perfect match in a very imperfect world.
With regard to our occasional Feisty Chinese Grandma phenomenon, we should consider that from their viewpoint, there are serious problems with Americans taking babies away from China, especially Americans who don't even dress the babies properly. In the experience of our own travel group, we witnessed not only the adoptive mothers being targeted over the adoptive fathers, but beyond that, the most passionate outcries have been against the mothers of adopted boys (rather than the mothers of the adopted girls). The most notable incident targeted a mother of a beautiful baby boy who had undergone a complicated but visually unapparent surgery for a congenital abdominal defect. This boy, like every child in our travel group, is not only an orphan but an orphan with a significant medical condition. In hindsight though, I realize that to a traditional Chinese grandmother, Americans taking away unwanted girl babies is one thing, but when we're seen as making off with the apparently healthy and highly prized boys, this is a miscarriage
of justice which demands a public outcry. It's about much more than the clothes.
There are many estimates of the current total orphan load in China. The larger figures speculate the number to be in the 1-2 million range. Only a tiny fraction of these babies will be adopted either domestically or internationally. Most will grow up in the reality of limited resources inherent to life in a country of 1.3 billion people, most of whom live in some degree of mild to severe impoverishment.
I need to stress too that the issues with critical Chinese grandmas have been pleasantly rare. In fact, the vast majority of the grandmas we have approached have been quite warm and smiley to us. I have included a photo of 2 such grandmas in the park on this trip!
Our trip here overall goes blessedly well and we have so much for which to be grateful!
JC
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Koniecznys
non-member comment
Beautiful Julia!
Campbells, We have been reading along to with this beautifully written commentary on your journey and feel so lucky to be able to share in the experience. Jim, you ought to turn this into a book. You have made us all cry and laugh many times while reading this. Julia is lovely and we are so excited to welcome her to Colorado. Thank you for sharing!