November, 2008
Articles from prior issues of beijingkids can be found by checking out the archive links below for the month and year you are interested in.
Beijing Mamas at Solana
Cecil Song
Where are you from?
South Korea
How long have you lived here?
One year.
Do you have kids?
I have a 1-year-old boy.
What do you do in Beijing?
I don’t work here. I used to be a fashion designer in South Korea.
Where do you like to shop?
In Solana, Pacific Century Place and shopping malls in Wangjing.
Where is your husband from?
He’s Chinese. We met in France. I don’t speak Chinese; we speak French to each other.
Why were you in France?
Learning French and studying fashion at Esmod.
In the Mind's Eye
Young painters explore at 3i Art Center
Michelangelo, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso all displayed a passion and talent for art before the age of 10 – a testament to how important the formative years are for young artists. “It’s so important for kids to have a good foundation in art and imagination – it will help them their entire life,” says Ivy Yang, founder of 3i Art Center.
The art center, which has branches in Chaoyang and Haidian, offers classes designed to foster inspiration, innovation and imagination – the three i’s behind the name – in young kids, and lessons often appeal to kids’ love of unusual, fun materials.
The Art of Mothering
Muralist Jiang Zhuqing on creating art and family
On a recent Tuesday, painter Jiang Zhuqing had yet to put the finishing touches on work that would soon be on public display. As part of Common Ground, a digital art festival that takes place at the Huan Tie Art Museum from November 9 to 19, Jiang plans to show an abstract creation that use cassette tape ribbon and black hair clips to embroider a human shape.
Titled Li Yue (礼 乐), or “Etiquette, Music,” these works are part of a series Jiang calls Tian Ren He Yi (天人合一), or “The Combining of Humans and Nature.” She says she hopes to make people think about the important relationship between human beings and the world.
In a few weeks time, more than 40 artists from around the world will present works on the theme of the environment. Jiang, an associate professor at Tsinghua University’s Academy of Art and Design, decided to take part in Common Ground after she saw how innovative the other artists’ works were.
Money Talks
Spendthrift or cheapskate?
Whether you have an addiction for designer headbands like Gossip Girl queen bee Blair Waldorf or you save your pennies for rainy days (or mutual funds), what you do with your money says a lot about you. Do teenagers save? What are they buying? And does nationality influence how you spend your cash? Grade 10 and 11 students from the Beijing World Youth Academy sat down with beijingkids to discuss that little thing called money.
What do you spend money on?
Laura: I spend money on lunch, clothes and drinks.
Frank: My parents give me a set amount of money per semester, and I don’t usually save it. Eventually all the money goes to taxi cabs when I go to the CD Center, Wangfujing, places around Wangjing, or for playing football.
Ernest: I don’t get an allowance, but if I have a reason, my parents will give me money. If there’s more left, I usually save it for taxis or buying food.
YeiYoung: I get 100 kuai per month from my parents. About 40 percent of it I give to church, and the rest goes to clothes.
Playin' Around
A guide to Chinese kids games
A long, long time ago, playing a game didn’t mean plugging in a PlayStation or turning on the computer. In fact, in Chinese society, traditional games were a great way to form intimate friendships, get some exercise and have a great time with your peers. Here’s an introduction to a few Chinese children’s games from the era before fancy video games and high-tech gadgets. If you want to play these old-school games, you’ll probably have to find a Chinese partner who was born no later than in the 1980s.
Berlin
Whimsical castles and world-class museums
The travelers: Australians Andrew and Eleanor Flowers, and kids Grace (11), Celeste (8) and Jasper (6).
The Perfect Itinerary: Berlin is a great city for families with kids of all ages, with attractions ranging from its numerous parks, playgrounds and delicious chocolatiers, to fun museums and fascinating war paraphernalia. As seasoned Berliners who spent three years in the capital, the Flowers family has many suggestions for the ideal trip to Berlin. Germany can be expensive, but with a little local know-how, you’ll save enough euros to splurge on local delicacies and treasures.
The Xu’s
Originally from Shanghai, Bing Xu, Lisa Li and kids Vivian (10) and Matthew (9) returned to China in 2005 after ten years in Detroit, Michigan. Bing works for Chrysler and Lisa is a relocation consultant for Pricoa. This Chaoyang-based family loves Beijing’s rich culture and blend of the traditional with the ultra modern.
Would you like to share your Beijing Favorites? E-mail editor@beijing-kids.com.
Beijing Snack Food
We really like jiaozi, jianbing and lüdagun, a red bean sauce rolled up in sticky rice dough. It’s cold and sweet.
Place for Weekend Fun
The kids love Chaoyang Park because it has everything they want – outdoor and indoor play, swimming in summer, ice skating in winter and great restaurants nearby for lunch. The park also holds international festivals that are great fun.
For Better & For Worse
Your dishes may break in a move. Here’s how to ensure your marriage doesn’t.
Jennifer* had just moved to a new city where she knew no one when her husband of four years sprung the news: He was leaving on a three-month assignment to another country. Furious, this Beijing resident and mother of two did the only logical thing she could think of: she locked her husband out of the bedroom.
The couple worked through their problems and stayed together – they’re even expecting their third child early next year. But, recalls Jennifer, it wasn’t easy weathering that three-month separation with neither family nor friends nearby.
Going Local
Is total immersion in Chinese schools right for your kid?
When Mareno Rathell came to Beijing from the US in 2005, he had big hopes for his kids’ education. He enrolled his youngest son, 9-year-old Zevi, into a local Chinese school in Haidian district, where Zevi was one of the few foreign students. It seemed like an ideal situation – his children had a chance to learn about Chinese culture and develop fluent Mandarin skills, while benefiting from the strong training in subjects such as math and science that Chinese schools are known for.
“I believe that Chinese kids receive an excellent grade and middle school education,” says Rathell, “and my kid could only benefit from studying with them.”
But the reality was far from ideal. In a completely unfamiliar cultural environment, Zevi encountered far greater difficulties than Rathell had expected.
Mum's Identity Crisis
Elsa goes to kindergarten
One of my earliest childhood memories is of my mother carting me around to various playschools in the neighbourhood, trying to find one I’d stay at without bawling. So it was disconcerting to find myself introducing Elsa to her local kindergarten last week. My daughter is now doing things I can recall experiencing myself. So if she’s taken on my old role, I must be … the mum.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that I’d have noticed this earlier. Childbirth is not exactly something you forget. But until my faded memories collided with Elsa’s current reality, I had somehow remained in denial. Mothers are responsible. They know how to fix things. They are old. I’m definitely having a delayed identity crisis.
Are We There Yet, Dad?
How expat life made our kids great travelers
My kids trudged through the passport control line sleepily but without whining or stumbling, and I realized I was giving myself way too much credit.
I sat in the dark room, rubbed my eyes and tried to psyche myself up for the monumental task in front of me. It was 12.30 at night and I was in New Dehli, propped up in the guest bed of dear friends who had recently relocated from Beijing.
My kids were sleeping all around me but in 15 minutes I would be rousing them and carrying them to a waiting car to drive to the airport and board a plane with the ridiculous departure time of 3.15am. And I would be doing it on my own, as my wife was staying in India for a few more days.
Giving Thanks
A new kind of Thanksgiving, far from home
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. What’s not to like? There’s no need to spend weeks in overcrowded malls buying presents for uncles and siblings and kids. Instead of exchanging gifts, we gather around a table piled high with turkey and trimmings. We surround ourselves with loved ones and, after we’ve finished bickering about who forgot to bring the wine last year, after we’ve remembered that it’s never safe to talk politics with relatives, after we’ve told the kids for the thousandth time that no, they may not use the turkey drumsticks as light sabers, we take a moment to give thanks for all that we have.
We’re thankful for our health, of course. We’re thankful for our families. We’re thankful that it’s someone else’s tablecloth about to get covered in gravy.
Party Time
Soiree for sleeping beauties & games for rambunctious boys
Sleeping Beauties
What better fun than a sleepover? All girls love a good giggle and a round of Truth or Dare. Combine luxurious facials and glam nails, and you’ll have the slumber party of little girls’ dreams.
The Invitations
Moms and dads, don’t stress out over an entire classroom of invitees. Keep your numbers low enough to fit your daughter’s friends on a cake (confused? see “The Cake”below). For the invitation, trace a sleeping mask onto cardboard and cut out with decorative scissors. Next, cut a smaller mask shape from pretty paper and glue on top. Cut two 10cm pieces of ribbon and glue to the edges of your cardboard mask. On the blank side of the invitation, handwrite or glue on your party details.
Dancing on Ice
Figure skating for beginners
It’s Tuesday afternoon and a dozen kids are zipping around the Le Cool ice skating rink at Guomao shopping mall. One of them is 10-year-old Wang Zichen, who is practicing a one-and-and-half revolution jump-spin that she just learned a few weeks ago. Her tall, slim body moves to music in a graceful curve – arms spread like wings, feet gliding in rhythm, her purple skirt fluttering in the breeze.
Instructor Hu Xiao’ou is sternly correcting Zichen’s poses, but he can hardly conceal his pride in her. “Zichen was a shy kid when she first came here to learn skating six years ago,” says Hu with a smile, “but now she is an excellent public performer and expresses herself freely through music and movement.”
Season of Play
Now that winter’s approaching, the kids have fewer afternoons to frolic outdoors. But cold weather doesn’t mean the end of play. In fact, some of the best fun I ever had as a child took place inside our house and even – at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon – without proper toys.
Small Birds, Big Thanksgiving
Look Ma, no ovens
Thanksgiving. An unabashed celebration of gluttony and consumption. A holiday after my own heart. It’s a time when quantity and quality merge and fuse into a lustrous, roasted fowl the size of a small mountain – a gift that keeps giving days afterward in the form of sandwiches and pot pies.
For Americans, Thanksgiving is a holiday that, more than the treasures of friends and family, celebrates the obsession that bigger is undeniably better. SUVs may have hooked us onto foreign oil and big Macs may have grotesquely inflated our waistlines, but help me God if I ever meet my match in a turkey and admit defeat: “Could we really eat all that?”
This holiday is not about thinking logically, progressively, or healthily. For most of my life, and for most Americans, the holiday comes down to two things: you and that bird. Brine it. Clean it. Stuff it. Roast it. Carve it. And most important, eat it. And eat it. And eat it.
Top Ten Things to Do in November
1 See Bond. James Bond.
Quantum of Solace, the sequel to Casino Royale, hits theaters later this month. In this latest installment, which opens Nov 5 and is as action-packed as ever, Bond (the sleek Daniel Craig) battles a terrorist who intends to take over Bolivia’s water supply. Watch as Bond journeys through Haiti, Austria and South America decked out in high-tech gadgets and with a Russian-Bolivian agent (Olga Kurylenko) by his side. In interviews, Craig says he’s brushed up on his speed boating and stunt driving skills. And what has Bond girl Kurylenko been working on? Indoor skydiving, also known as body flying. Head to theaters around town such as the Megabox Cinema in the basement of the Sanlitun Village or the Wanda International Cinema in Guomao.
2 Fun Run for a Cause
