beijingkids Magazine - Most popular recent articles

25 Ways to Make Beijing Your Home for the Holidays

beijingkids — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:00:00 +0800

Winter fun, good deeds, and warm holiday treats

1. Touch-of-Scrooge Movie Marathon
Traditionalists will gravitate toward classics like Miracle on 34th Street, but if the family’s in the mood for something different, here’s a list of flicks with minimal sap. Michelle Tsai

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989): The ultimate dysfunctional family holiday.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993): Tim Burton’s twisted vision of the holiday is candy for anyone drawn to the subversive.
Scrooged (1988): Dicken’s A Christmas Carol is reset and amped up in the decade of excess. Bill Murray plays a heartless TV executive in this dark comedy.
Bad Santa (2003): An alcoholic thief and a dwarf with a potty mouth play Santa and elf at the mall. You’ll bust a gut laughing if you’re not too offended.
Love Actually (2003): This romantic comedy set in a Yuletide London is surprisingly disarming, thanks to a star cast and a peppy soundtrack.

Expat Economies

beijingkids — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:00:00 +0800

Make your money work for you in times of financial turmoil

I’ve been hiding the bank statements from my husband. Watching the balance drop is stressful enough without getting into arguments over what we should be doing with the money that’s left. Should we keep investing steadily in mutual funds? Move our funds to our savings account? Or find some middle ground? We don’t have any easy answers right now. No one does.

Though the financial crisis unfolding right now in the United States might seem far away, the credit crunch has affected expats of all nationalities here in Beijing. Thanks to the recent troubles of the US banking system, your retirement accounts and college funds have probably taken a hit, and the money that you squirreled away for a rainy day has probably dwindled. By a lot.

The Young Spirit of A Christmas Carol

beijingkids — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0800

Junior thespians take the stage

Comedian W.C. Fields once said, “Never work with animals or children.” That sentiment is often heard on the set of Beijing Playhouse’s A Christmas Carol, a production that opens this month. That’s a good thing – at least for the kids. “When child actors are good, they’re just adorable, and they steal the scene,” says Chris Verrill, the theater's founder.

Marking Time

beijingkids — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0800

A family’s life in Christmas ornaments

Everywhere the Gorman family goes, we take our Christmas trees with us. The first is an eight-foot-tall, bendable plastic spruce, bought on sale one hot Washington summer right before we moved to our first overseas post ten years ago. The second, purchased a few years later, is smaller, sized to fit in a tight corner somewhere.

They might sound tacky, these plastic trees of ours, but they are really quite beautiful. They go everywhere we go because we haven’t always lived in countries where it’s possible to buy Christmas trees. And we are a family that needs a tree.

Baby, You're a Homeowner

beijingkids — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:00:00 +0800

Living way north of Line 5

I seem to remember being told at school that it might be handy to have a thing called a “life plan.” I must remember to mention that to my son Daniel one day. Helpfully for clueless parents, there is a ready-made one-size-fits-all pattern that is especially popular in China: Get a proper job, get married, buy a place and then have kids. In that order.

It makes sense if you think about it, but it’s boring, isn’t it? Being contrary sorts, my wife Su and I haven’t quite done things according to the book. After falling in love as students in Japan, we got hitched – in Tokyo’s famous red light district, Kabukicho, as it happens. (It’s where the town hall is, honest.) I left a steady job and then we ran off to China, where I eventually started to freelance. (It’s okay, don’t worry: My missus has a salaried position.) A few years later, quite intentionally, we had a baby. And as every new parent could imagine, the script – if ever we had one, which we didn’t – was left in tatters in a forgotten corner, presumed unread.

The Adoption Question

beijingkids — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0800

Does Elsa want a sibling?

For a couple of years now I’ve been toying with the idea of adopting. I would love Elsa to have a brother or a sister. I have one of each, and have developed a theory that as adults we naturally seek to replicate the family size we grew up with. This theory has as its scientific basis my mother’s habit of setting six places at dinner. She grew up as one of four siblings, and obviously felt that in producing a mere three children, she and my father were left one short of a full set.

As a single parent, my options are somewhat limited. I have friends who have gone the sperm donation route, but although I’d love more of my own children, having Elsa has satisfied at least 90 percent of the biological urge. Adoption seems therefore the best solution, but I’ve been finding it hard to decide whether to go ahead. At the moment, it’s relatively easy to balance work with time for Elsa. When I’m not working, I can focus on her in a way that would be impossible with a second child claiming my attention. And we’re actually very happy as things are, so do I really want to tempt fate? As it is, I don’t always feel I deserve such happiness, knowing that Elsa will probably suffer later as she comes to grips with not having a father. Part of me worries that I’m overreaching, risking what we have by seeking more.

Beijing's Smallest December 2008

beijingkids — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:00:00 +0800

Wang Zidan
Chinese. Born to Jin Hui and Wang Ruikai on May 19 at Beijing Hospital.

Distance Learning

beijingkids — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:30:00 +0800

The lazy student’s guide to running a marathon (well, a half-marathon, but what’s 13 miles or so between friends?)

In a moment of mid-semester madness at Durham University in the UK, I signed up for the Great North Run, a 21km (13.1 mile) road race on behalf of Cancer Research UK. It was a decision based on a mess of naïvete and not very good logic. I was, after all, unfit, lazy and had never run farther than the pub in my life.

Shortly after signing up I realized that I would first need to see how far I could comfortably run. Knowing that the GNR should take approximately two hours of solid running, I aimed to get as close to that as possible in a test run.

The results? Nowhere near. Plus it hurt. When I staggered back onto college grounds 30 minutes after setting off, I was hit with two epiphanies. First, running was harder than it looked. And second, I was going to have to put a lot of effort in if I actually wanted to finish the race. All this was interspersed by rather rude words that I won’t write down.

In the Kitchen With Dad

beijingkids — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0800

From NY to BJ, Chef Billy’s culinary adventure continues

It’s after lunchtime on a chilly autumn day and William Bolton is enjoying a warm cup of green tea in his restaurant, Chef Too, located near Chaoyang Park. Afternoons are the only quiet times of the day for Bolton, who’s known to many as Chef Billy. By evening, the restaurant will be filled with customers and Bolton will be back in the kitchen, making some of the finest steaks found in Beijing.

“For me, the one thing I always used to miss in Beijing was a really good steak. That’s what I built this restaurant around,” says Bolton, a New York native. “I wanted to make one of those New York-style neighborhood restaurants: simple, consistent and serves a great steak.”

Primate Personalities

beijingkids — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0800

Jane Goodall on chimpanzee families

In her decades spent studying chimpanzees, primatologist Jane Goodall has witnessed chimps behaving in ways that many of us might describe as almost human – expressing distinct personalities, waging war on one another, even “adopting” orphans into families. She recently spoke with beijingkids about what human children have in common with young chimpanzees and what bad mothering looks like in the animal world.

Goodall, who founded the Roots and Shoots program in Beijing for kids with an interest in the environment, will attend the Conservation Dinner at the Traders Upper East Hotel on December 5 and deliver a public lecture, “Hope for Nature,” at Peking University Hall on December 6.