Tripping Out

Visiting the folks back home can be a disorienting experience

A seasoned expat friend warned me recently that after spending a certain amount of time overseas, confusion sets in as to what to call home. Having returned with Elsa from a three-week visit to my parents in the UK, I now fully understand what she means.

We’ve made fairly frequent trips back to our motherland, but this one came after our longest spell away. I felt indefinably different tackling the subterranean maze that masquerades as London’s public transport system, an outsider in my own country who no longer knew the rules. Struggling to remember how to put credit on my UK mobile, I turned the wrong way down previously familiar passages, hastily stifling duibuqi’s as Elsa’s pushchair bit into the ankles of dawdling commuters.

Elsa, I could tell, was similarly perplexed by her strange surroundings. Once successfully aboard our train, she looked round assessingly for long moments. “Big taxi?” she questioned uncertainly, her usual uber-confidence in her own opinions having clearly taken a battering. (I was quite impressed with her lateral thinking, though a bit shamefaced about what it said about our transportation habits.)

Things settled down somewhat once we were safely in the bosom of our family, deep in the West Country in rural Exmoor. Every now and then, however, little oddities would surface, jolting reminders of our other life. After my mother got hold of my washing, for instance, I was disturbed (though rather pleased) to find my Yashow jeans several degrees of blue brighter. Apparently, the brown tinge they had formerly sported was not an intrinsic part of the design after all.

While I was getting cleaned up, Elsa was rapidly degenerating. Fascinated by the sight of my parents’ two golden retrievers performing their ablutions on the lawn, she would whip off her nappy and rush outside, desperate to follow suit. This canine identification soon extended beyond matters of the toilet, with Elsa insisting on sharing their breakfast. Fortunately the dogs are treated as surrogate grandchildren, so replicating their bowls of milk and cereal was not the trauma it could have been.

But by far the most difficult adjustment was to Elsa’s new bedtime regime. To my horror, she had obviously decided that her English bedroom was not up to Chinese standards. With a speed that would have made Houdini jealous, she quickly perfected her exiting-the-sleeping-bag wriggle, topping this with a heart-stopping launch over the side of the travel cot and a mad dash out the door. In despair, my mother and I turned to Google for advice, and 1.7 million entries for “2-year-old won’t stay in cot” revealed the scale of our problem. Following the general consensus, we made up a proper bed for her and endeavoured to make this an attractive option, but drawing attention to the mattress’ superior suspension was perhaps not the smartest strategy. Although this succeeded in eliciting a touching affection for her new bed, Elsa was noticeably more enamoured of its trampoline-like properties than its sleep-inducing merits.

Notwithstanding these puzzlements and frustrations, we had a wonderful time “back home” and it was with mixed feelings that I got on the plane at the end of the visit. Now that we’re back in Beijing, I fear we may be in for a similar process in reverse. I had hoped the reassuring familiarity of her permanent cot would persuade her to stay put a few more months, but it seems Elsa has brought her English tricks home with her, and the hastily purchased Ikea child bed is not proving much of a remedy, despite its alluring cat and dog headboard. Thus, I’ve been greeted most nights this week by a midnight visitor determined to upgrade to Mum’s bed.

As I suffer the nocturnal consequences of our holiday experiences, Ayi has been bearing the brunt during the day. Elsa now completely refuses to speak Mandarin, and - beyond “kiss kiss” and “bye bye” - Ayi has no English. But, at least with the dogs mercifully absent, she no longer demands that her breakfast be served in a bowl on the floor.