Having A China Day

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Around here when things aren’t going your way and it all gets to be too much, we say we are “Having a China Day”.  In casual conversation with a neighbor or expat friend if I say I am “having a China day” they know immediately what I am talking about.  Maybe there was a problem with your refrigerator and you couldn’t manage to get someone to fix it.  Maybe you spent all day trying to grocery shop and ended up with nothing to show for it.  Maybe you just couldn’t get over your irritation with, well, everything.  That is a China day.

I am having one today.  There is no real reason.  Just generally being annoyed with all the extra effort things take and my lack of progress in getting things done.  It is like swimming in molasses to accomplish small tasks and small tasks are all that get accomplished around here.  Yes, I went to the grocery store and the gym.  But we have nothing for dinner because I only went to one store.  And, frankly, going to the gym and the grocery store should not be major life milestones now.  I tried to get some dissertation work done, but was stymied by the ayi’s need to vacuum and then mop directly underneath my feet while slamming into the furniture.  Yes, she was cleaning the house while I sat there, but this only added to my frustration.  How ridiculous is it to be angry at someone as they do your work for you?  It is pretty ridiculous.  You don’t need to tell me.  Still, having someone in the house all the time adds fuel to a China day.  Basically I am never alone, which for me makes for a high level of frustration.  Shanghai is crowded—not exactly the easiest place to find a quiet spot—and I sometimes would like to have my house be a place of solitude and silence.  This is hard to accomplish with three children and a Chinese lady hanging around all the time.  Add a friend or two and I can be positively crazy acting.

But luckily, these days always pass.  Things don’t suddenly get rosy, but they usually look better after I sleep on it.  Or have a stiff drink.  Or both.  Check back tomorrow and the story might be different.

Back in the Swim

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The kids are finally back in school and we are settling back in to life in Shanghai.  Ava is adjusting well to her new school- riding the bus with her big brother and making new friends.  Both big kids tried out for the school swim team which turned out to be a somewhat stressful endeavor.  At the end of last year, the kids decided it might be fun to be on the team, so I popped by the pool office to meet the coach and get more information.  I spoke with some of the other swim moms first to see how they felt about the time commitment and to see how their kids were enjoying the team experience.  I got only positive feedback so I happily made my way to the pool and introduced myself.  The coach seemed nice enough, but it took me only a few seconds to realize that his idea of swim team and my idea of swim team were two very different things.

In the United States, my kids swam for the neighborhood pool.  We had maybe four meets and the coaches were all teenagers.  Ok, some of them were “swimmers”.  Maybe they swam for their high school teams or they might even be swimming in college, but it wasn’t ever serious business.  I don’t think the season even lasted a month and a half.  For the very little ones who weren’t yet strong swimmers the coaches would even jump in with them and propel them forward like tiny little missiles, keeping one hand under to help them stay afloat.  But our neighborhood pool is only open in the summer and the hours aren’t great so there is a more serious pool where Mark swims.  Oh, and Michael Phelps swims there, too.  Maybe you’ve heard of him?  The greatest Olympic swimmer of all time?  Yeah, that guy.  My kids have taken swim lessons there and participated in stroke clinic on the weekend, but they don’t swim competitively there.  I have spent plenty of time hanging around watching the kids swim.  This is why I can tell you firsthand how Michael Phelps actually looks in his bathing suit.  It is the kind of sacrifice that mothers sometimes have to make.  Mark had been pushing for the kids to start year round competitive swimming or at least for us to change summer pool memberships so that his future Olympians could be on the Meadowbrook summer swim team.  He isn’t really one for sports, but when it comes to swimming he is worse than any peewee football dad could ever be.  I mean, are we aiming for the Olympics or not?! Can we all just get serious here!?

I had always put my foot down about year round competitive swimming.  After all, I was going to be the one running kids to and from practice.  And they seemed so little.  How could they know that swimming was really their thing?  It was a big time commitment for small people.  Mark argued that earlier was better and that if they hated it they could decide it wasn’t for them.  I was skeptical that he could let it go that easily.  He swam year round as a kid, even when he hated it, and I was sure he would expect the same from them.

But the school team seemed like a good idea.  It is after school so it requires very little running around.  There is even a bus that will bring them home after practice.  What could be simpler?  Two practices a week, a commitment for all Shanghai meets, and one meet outside of Shanghai each year.  So manageable.  But the school coach was clearly more in line with Mark’s way of thinking.  He needed to know specifics.  Where were we from?  Baltimore got him interested.  Had the kids competed before?  I played it cool.  I didn’t volunteer the light Roland Park Pool swim schedule.  Did they swim year round?  Um, sort of?  I mentioned Meadowbrook and that they swam there.  His face registered instant recognition.  Oh, he knew that pool.  Michael Phelps’ pool!  This was technically true, but I was immediately aware that he now thought the kids were competitive year round swimmers working under the supervision of the coaches and staff that had produced multiple Olympians.  Basically we were superstars!  We were nearly fish!

The coach demanded to know more.  What were their times?  Um, their times?  I had no idea.  No worries, he assured me.  Over the summer when they competed I would be able to compare their times with the ones on their website, right?  Sure I could!  Well, I could if they were going to be swimming on a team, which, they weren’t.  He found this troubling, but helpfully suggested that I could time them when I had them in the pool.  Yes, yes.  During one of our many training sessions I would whip out the old stopwatch!  Maybe I would just ask Michael Phelps to do that for me.

The coach could make no promises, because the team was competitive, but he liked that Ava had a late birthday.  And Lucas was swimming in PE so he could check out his skills the very next week.  They didn’t have spaces for everyone and some kids were going to be disappointed.  You see, not everyone makes the team.  Yes, this is elementary school.  Oh, and they needed to be proficient in all four strokes.  They were, right?   How was I supposed to answer that?  Could he be more specific about “proficient”?  I was suddenly concerned that we were biting of more than we could chew.

Over summer vacation we worked very little on swimming so that when we arrived in Shanghai the kids’ preparation was not unlike cramming for college finals twenty minutes before the start of the exam.  Mark had them in the pool on the weekends to fast track their flip turns and attempt to give them some more help with swimming butterfly.  It was going to be close, but it would have to be good enough.

The first day of tryouts arrived.  Lucas was decidedly positive but Ava was terrified.  She has had some confidence issues these past few months.  Issues that warrant their own post, but suffice it to say, not making the swim team might have been a giant blow to her already weakened self-esteem.  She considered not trying out at all.  Lucas tried to encourage her by telling her that she needed to believe in herself, but this didn’t calm her nerves and she left for school on tryout day in tears.

But she came home all smiles.  She powered through and was so proud of herself for finishing the tryouts without falling apart that she said it didn’t matter if she made the team or not.  Of course, I knew it probably did matter just a little bit, but she was so genuinely happy—so visibly excited to have had that little bit of success– that I really believed her.  It had been scary but she had done it and she had done her best.  Lucas was more concerned, however.  The other kids had been better than he had expected.  Some kids were trying out for the second time after being rejected last year and he wasn’t so sure his name was going to be there when they posted the team list.

We waited.  Ava claimed to have seen a list of 3rd grade swimmers with her name on it posted by the pool.  Lucas had no idea what she was talking about.  Surely they would make certain the parents knew, right?  When would they find out?  Lucas thought Wednesday, but he wasn’t sure.  We were on pins and needles.  Finally, we got emails on Monday.

They both made the team!  Michael Phelps is lucky he retired because I think there are a few new kids that just might blow him out of the water.  I mean, once they get those flip turns down.

 

 

 

Back In China

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I like being back in China.  But when I got home I felt like I wanted to go back on vacation.  Then I could play video games.  The boat was my favorite part of vacation because we could play video games all day.  I like being on the boat just because it is fun and we swim, go to the beach, and go snorkeling.  I saw a sunken ship.  I saw fish and two barracudas.

Dictated to Gwen by Henry 

How Not to Buy a Blender

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The blender in question

Oh, more tales of woe from the Shanghai kitchen!  I mentioned in my post about the crockpot that I was having difficulty finding small kitchen appliances here in China.  Either things are cheaply made, or crazy expensive, or just not available.  And yes, it is not lost on me that all of the things at my old local Target were actually made in China.  My recent trip home reinforced the irony of living in the country of origin for so many cheap products but being unable to find them here in Shanghai.  Hilarious, I know.  I am trying to be judicious in my selections when it come to the kitchen.  There isn’t much room in the tiny Shanghai kitchen and I don’t have much storage space in the form of closets here either.  The things I buy need to be worth the space they take up on the kitchen counter.

I had been burned before, so when I decided to purchase a blender, I was determined not to make the same mistake.  I would buy the name brand thing this time—no crazy Chinese company for me!—and I would be sure I was buying something that would get the job done.  This time I was even contemplating making a move to the expensive store with the imported appliances.  One of the other students in my Chinese cooking class had told me about a store that was a short cab ride away where they had insanely overpriced name brand small appliances.  He had suffered with a shoddy food processor, and had decided it wasn’t worth the hassle to spend the time and energy staking out all the local Chinese stores for miracles.  He confessed to having been knowingly robbed by the shopkeeper, but claimed the prices were worth it to eliminate the aggravation factor alone.  I was set on going that route myself when fate intervened.

Poor Ava decided she could no longer live without breakfast smoothies and she was begging for a blender to help remedy the situation.  Mark needed to go to the hardware store so Ava and I tagged along.  This hardware store isn’t like most of the places in Shanghai where Mark prefers to shop. He was planning on going to the equivalent of Home Depot.  A Chinese big box store, if you will, instead of his usual hole in the wall specialty places where they only sell wheels, or rubber tubing, or specific sizes of screws.  On top of this massive hardware store there is an equally massive store selling appliances.  Mark assured me they had blenders–he claimed to have even seen a food processor–and, since I only needed this blender to make smoothies, I figured it was worth a shot.  We browsed the aisles accompanied by an eager Chinese saleswoman.  She and her colleagues were keen to talk to Ava and to tell me how pretty she was.  They were happy to show us the blenders and to make recommendations about quality and style.  At least that is what I thought they were doing since we were all trying to make ourselves understood in Mandarin.  I could have been completely off base.  They certainly seemed to be discussing the different blenders.  We all agreed on which blender would be the best.  One was most certainly the highest quality—a name brand number with a glass container.  I indicated that I wanted to buy the blender and that’s when things got confusing.

Buy it?  The salesladies were sorry, but I couldn’t buy that blender.  After all that discussion it turned out that there were only two blenders available for purchase.  Two out of at least twenty on display!  They were made by some random Chinese company, and, while they looked sturdy enough, I had my doubts.  So now the choice was only between the glass container or the plastic.  Which one would I prefer?  The instruction manual was completely in Chinese as were the indicators—only three speeds, mind you—on the dial.  The saleswoman pointed me toward the one with the glass container.  It was “very good”.  The plastic one?  Only “so so”.  I reluctantly bought the glass one.  I only needed it for smoothies, surely this thing could handle a few frozen banana slices, right?

This could say anything, really

Wrong.  When I went to make Ava a smoothie the next morning, the blender was incapable of grinding up even the smallest morsel of frozen anything.  Even paper thin frozen banana slices proved to be too much.  I tried the other settings.  I violently shook the container.  I stirred in between each futile whir of the blades.  The entire kitchen shook with the force of the blender’s motor, but every attempt produced the same result—yogurt with fruit chunks.  Any dreams of making pina coladas with this blender died as I tried and tried again.  There was no way this thing could handle ice cubes.  And there was a curious smell–burning plastic, maybe?—accompanying every flick of the dial.

This may very well say “Not an actual blender”

Chinese blender?  Epic fail.  Sigh.

Limbo

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One of the things that found most difficult this summer was the feeling that no place was really home.  We went back to Baltimore with an offer on the house and every intention of finishing the details of the sale in the following weeks.  We hadn’t seen the house since we left in December but had been assured it looked great and was showing well.  We weren’t thrilled with the offer, but we wanted to be done with the stress and worry of having an empty house on the other side of the world.  Well, I wanted to be finished with the stress.  Mark would have been content to wait a bit longer or to hold on to the house indefinitely.  After we agreed on the terms of the sale, the soon-to-be new owners wanted to get into the house early.  A few weeks early, before the loan was approved and well before the closing.  We didn’t want to do this, and were getting plenty of pressure to just relax and go ahead with things.  You can guess how that turned out.  No deal.  No sale.  Still own the Baltimore house.

After that disappointment, I went by the house to see how it looked.  I made the mistake of bringing the kids, thinking they would like to see the house again.  I had no idea the place would be dirty, with an overgrown yard that resembled a jungle.  When we opened the door, we were slapped in the face by the overpowering scent of empty old house.  Not the most pleasant way to come home.  All three children burst into tears because their house looked abandoned, unloved, and forgotten.  It made me sad, but more than that I was angry.  No wonder no one wanted to buy the house!  After seeing the shape our house was in after a few months unoccupied, I didn’t want to buy it either.

Our storage space wasn’t in much better shape.  It had been unloaded by the movers and had been packed from front to back as tightly as possible.  When I pulled up the metal door there was no way to move inside the space– the boxes and furniture were stacked all the way to the ceiling.  Some of the boxes were already starting to collapse.  This wasn’t surprising considering a few pieces of heavy furniture had been wedged on top of everything.  My brother helped me pull everything out and rearrange things into a larger space.  Surprisingly, not much seemed to be broken, but once again it was days of looking at things I used to love and knowing they were just going to be sitting unappreciated for who knows how long.

So the summer was all about letting go.  Letting go of my pretty house, letting go of all the possessions that used to make that house feel like a home, and letting go of the expectation that those things would be in pristine condition when we eventually return to the US.  In a way seeing things in their inevitable decline was good.  I was less disappointed when we came back to Shanghai and I was once again in my less than perfect house and trying to cook in my tiny kitchen. Not that the Baltimore house is perfect, but now the grass is a little less green, I suppose.  So here’s to being back in Shanghai and making another go of it, trying out some more new things, and plodding along with my Mandarin.  Here’s to the next few months of adapting and changing and rolling with the punches.  Here’s to making this work.

Re-entry

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By the end of our vacation, we were all a little ready to get back “home”.  For the kids this was apparently Shanghai.  They started moaning and groaning about missing the dog, their friends, and their bikes with a few weeks left in the United States.  I was less sure about heading back to China.  The summer was more stressful than I had anticipated, and when I got that feeling that I sometimes get on vacation—the one where I am missing my own bed–I realized that it wasn’t exactly the same.  I wasn’t really missing Shanghai. I am still not in love with China, and I was dreading the re-entry.

I started the trip home with the kids just hoping to make it back to Shanghai without killing any of them.  The long break had left us all a little tired of each other and the bickering was difficult to manage.  We were rushed at the airport in Baltimore, but I had been holding out a sliver of hope that we might be upgraded to business class for the 14-hour leg of the journey.  The ticketing agent said that would be unlikely, but that I should wait until we got to the gate in Newark to ask there.  Then she shooed us away and we hustled through security.

Waiting for the flight to leave Newark felt a lot like waiting to leave Shanghai.  The gate was full of Chinese people.  An older Chinese woman took an interest in Henry and said something to him in Mandarin as we sat down.  Her hands embarrassedly fluttered up to cover her mouth when she remembered where we were and that he most likely wouldn’t understand her.  But Henry did understand her.  He was shy, but Lucas and Ava made up for that.  Once everyone knew the kids spoke a little Mandarin, it was just like being back in China.  Our business was everyone’s business.  The woman disapproved of Henry’s video games, and covered his iPad screen with her hands.  She got out snacks and offered pumpkin seeds to the kids.  Henry happily accepted a handful and munched on them as we waited.  I was beginning to remember some of the things about Shanghai that were ok.  Having a trio of cute blonde ambassadors certainly didn’t hurt.  We got upgrades and we all did a little dance.  We even saw some neighbors from our compound and the kids excitedly shared tales of their summer adventures.  Maybe going back to Shanghai was going to be fine after all.

The flight was reasonable.  The upgrades made it easy for the kids to sleep.  There were ice cream sundaes!  Lucas watched a million movies!  The flight attendants were helpful!  What was usually the most difficult part of the journey was–dare I say it? —almost easy.  It looked like we were going to have a trouble free time getting back to Shanghai.  Oh, China.  Why was I worried?

We were about two hours away from the Shanghai airport when the pilot made an announcement.  There was a typhoon in Shanghai and we were being diverted to Beijing.  A typhoon?!  Well played, China.  Well played.  The details were sketchy, but they would let us know more once we landed.  The airline would put us up in a hotel and they would most likely fly us to Shanghai in the early morning.

The next few hours included plenty of general craziness, multiple shuttle and bus rides, and confusion.  I remembered some of the things I don’t like about China, like all the pushing and shoving it takes to get on those buses and shuttles and the refusal to accept the concept of personal space.   The Chinese might love my kids, but they think nothing of separating them from me in a crowd.  We were only allowed to bring our carry on luggage with us.  The checked things stayed on the plane. Each kid had a rolling suitcase and I was lucky to get us all on and off the million escalators in one piece with the wall of bodies both in front of and behind us.  My Chinese cell phone had died during the summer and was useless without the charger so I had packed it thinking I wouldn’t need it. I had put it in one of the checked bags that would now be spending the night at the airport.  My American cell phone clicked into expensive mode as I tried to get in touch with Mark to explain the details.

The airline was nice enough to provide dinner, but because we had had nothing since the midflight snack we all got hungry well before the buffet would open at 6pm.  I was also skeptical that everyone from the entire flight could be reasonably fed in the one hour and thirty minutes the hotel restaurant had blocked out for us.  If the earlier mad rush of people crushing each other to secure a coveted seat on one of the buses was any indication, dinner would be tricky to navigate without injury.  I didn’t want to add an emergency room visit to our brief time in Beijing so I opted to take the kids down early and paid the equivalent of $100 for 4 bowls of minestrone soup, 1 small grilled cheese sandwich, 1 club sandwich, and 4 drinks.  It was not delicious.  We were all in bed by 6:30.

We ended up in a reasonable hotel, but in two rooms that were too far apart for my liking.  I sternly told the boys that they were not to leave their room until I came to get them in the morning.  As anyone could have predicted, this resulted in Henry yelling in the hallway a little after midnight having gone out to “walk around”.  He had, of course, locked himself out of his room.  Never in my life have I put on a pair of pants so quickly.  I was still buttoning as I burst into the hall hoping to keep Henry from boarding some random elevator.  This set us up nicely for the 1am wake up call and the 2am bus ride (AGAIN!) back to the airport.  They had us in the air by 5am.

But the fun wasn’t over yet.  We landed, but had no gate.  Customs didn’t want to let us off the plane, convinced the time we had spent navigating things in Beijing was not satisfactory.  Admittedly, our checked luggage hadn’t gone through customs, but at this point no one wanted to deal with the headache of processing us all again.  We sat down and stood back up no less than five times.  People milled about.  A Chinese woman made herself at home on my armrest rather than move the 8 steps back to her own seat.  Two hours later we were finally let off the plane and into the terminal where we all continued to move as if we were a swarm of bees.  They changed the baggage claim carousel twice and each time everyone from the flight moved like a giant amoeba, stepping on toes and pressing up against each other.   Then we all jammed ourselves around the conveyor belt and slung our bags into fellow passengers’ legs and torsos.   Finally, after a sweaty taxi ride, we were back at Team Erickson’s Shanghai outpost.  And I was actually just a little bit happy to be home.

Home Again

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We made it back to Baltimore after an uneventful flight.  When we moved to Shanghai, we flew business class—something we should never have let the children experience.  When they found out the trip back for summer vacation would be in economy, the reaction was universal.  “Economy?!” they all exclaimed.  “How can we survive in economy?!”  I must admit, I was feeling the same way.  I wasn’t looking forward to sitting straight up for thirteen hours and fighting to use the shared bathroom.  The new baggage restrictions were an unpleasant surprise—only one bag each for an international flight!—and having to pay for the wine I would need to survive flying with all three children by myself added insult to injury.  Luckily the kids are all still small enough to curl up in the seats so they arrived in Newark with several hours of sleep under their belts.  I wasn’t quite so lucky, but we made our connection and got to Grandmom’s house without much drama.

I headed straight to Target as soon as I could get myself organized.  I nearly had a panic attack as I filled my cart to overflowing.  I had a long list of things that were all “Made in China” but actually unavailable for purchase in China.  This is a most perplexing thing for me about living in Shanghai.  We joked about not taking anything from the US to China that would just be returning to the country of its birth, but it is nearly impossible to find all those cheap but reasonably well made things that are made in Chinese factories for sale in China.  There are poorly made things at all the markets and there are high end things in all the shopping malls, but that middle ground that is so crucial for elementary kids’ clothing, for example, is illusive.  I had to force myself to stop with only one cart when I realized I was now just throwing random items I “might need” on top of the crucial items from my carefully planned list.

I had the same reaction in Whole Foods.  I wanted to eat everything and could no longer muster up the energy to stop myself from just emptying entire shelves with my arm.  I also found myself marveling at how cheap and reasonable all the food was—at Whole Foods! You know you have been shopping in the wrong places when a trip to Whole Foods seems like a bargain.  Wait until I venture into Sam’s Club in a few weeks.  I am sure they will have me forcibly removed from the store.

We spent our two weeks in Baltimore visiting friends and dealing with our house.  The sale fell through a few days after our arrival and that took up plenty of the time I would have spent standing in front of my mother-in-law’s refrigerator and marveling at all the space inside it.  I was also moved almost to tears by the efficiency of her washer and dryer and spent some time enjoying the fresh scent of clean clothes that had been allowed to dry completely.  Oh, the things that I once took for granted.  How I have missed you.

 

Explorations: Chinese Printed Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall

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My friend Shanghai Sue is lucky enough to have a driver.  Getting around in Shanghai isn’t too difficult by taxi or subway, but having the chance to tag along with her when she has the driver makes all that work just to get from place to place seem like such effort.   I miss being able to hop in my car and run a few errands without having each stop become a major production.  Using the driver is more complicated than driving yourself—you need to plan ahead and make arrangements that include someone else being part of everything—but I don’t think I would want to try driving in Shanghai.  For now I am content to let Sue be in charge of transportation every now and then.

Today’s stop—the former French Concession (you have to say former or face the wrath of the Chinese government) and the Chinese Printed Blue Nankeen Exhibition Hall.

Sue has relatives that are into fabric and she wanted to check out the Chinese style indigo batik.  There is allegedly a museum with all the information you would need about the process of making the cloth and the history of nankeen in China, but we never managed to get to any museum.  Maybe because the lane we had to walk down to find the place looked like this.

We pushed past all the laundry and wandered down the alley.  Sue’s driver had a difficult time finding the lane we needed so there was always that sliver of possibility that we were completely in the wrong place.  There had been a sign that seemed to say we were headed in the right direction, but when the alley got extremely narrow and the only indication that we should keep going was a handwritten sign all in characters, well, I was tempted to give up.

Sue:  “How is your reading these days?”

Me:  “Not great.  Poor.”

Sue:  “Hmm.”

At one point Sue tried a random door hoping we weren’t about to burst in on someone’s afternoon bath.  Luckily, the door was locked and we avoided arrest for breaking and entering.

Suddenly we were in someone’s back yard with the most beautiful laundry you have ever seen hanging on the line.  After some confusion with where exactly the entrance might be, we were in!  We had found it! 

They have beautiful things, but I resisted making any purchases right before we leave for vacation.  Maybe next time…

Changle Lu 637, House 24, Shanghai

In Praise of … Cautiousness?

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Last week Ava’s teacher sent me an email inviting me to their class assembly.  Ava would be receiving an award so I told her I would be there.  It is a little bittersweet to get an award at the last assembly of the school year before you ride off into the sunset and change schools, but we would take it!  Ava had told me that in class they had voted for their classmates in a variety of different categories for awards to be given out the last week of school.  I didn’t ask too much follow up so I just assumed that was what I was going to be seeing when I went to the assembly.

Dear China,

Please remind me never to assume anything while we are living here.  Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Gwen

This assembly had nothing to do with the awards Ava had been discussing.  This assembly was one of the school’s character assemblies.  Yes, character, and not like cartoon.  Throughout the school year, the classes make presentations about specific attributes that are part of their character education program.  I am all for building character, and when I heard about this part of the school curriculum I wasn’t too alarmed.  The school has a religious element, not too strong, but there none the less.  It seemed at first to be just the melding of Western and Asian culture that would help the kids to better understand China and make sense of their experiences here.  It leans heavily toward Christianity, but my kids have had exposure to other religions.  Done well a little character education might be nice, right?

Ava showed me her “character cards” during our parent conference a month or so ago and I asked her some questions about them.  She was vague, maybe because she wasn’t entirely clear on things.  Some of the assemblies and discussions were from the beginning of the year and she had only participated in a few.  These character cards had cartoon animals on them –I am guessing the animal is supposed to represent that character trait somehow—and then a small description.  Some of them were confusing, and there were quite a few of them that I was a bit skeptical about.  There are things like “discernment” and “hospitality”.  The kinds of things that are difficult to define and the explanations didn’t always fit my interpretation.

Last week’s assembly was about “cautiousness” and I was treated to a performance all about following the rules and being obedient.  Some of it was easy to agree with.  I am all for internet safety and leaving the scene when you think you might be in danger, but there were parts that made me uncomfortable.  There was so much of the performance that was about the rules and how following them made everyone safer.  Now, I am not against rules or following the rules.  But I like my rules with a healthy dose of explanation.  I don’t think that kids should blindly accept the rules just because an adult tells them to and I don’t think adults should be offended when kids ask them to explain where a rule comes from or why we all should follow it.  I am not excited to hear people say that we have a rule “just because”.  Sadly, much of this assembly was about how grown ups know more than kids and, for that reason, kids should do what grown ups say.  An administrator got up at the end to thank the children for their work in putting on the performance.  He reiterated how the rules were in place to keep kids safe and that grown ups know more than kids.  Rules help us to have more fun, not less!  All hail, cautiousness!

Next came the awards and I began to get a sinking feeling that Ava was about to get an award celebrating her cautiousness.  Each class gave two awards and one of her teachers stood up to sing the praises of the first lucky student.  He always raises his hand.  He always asks permission.  He always does things at the right time.  He was all smiles as he came up to receive his award.  The Chinese-speaking teacher got up and presented the second award.  I have no idea what was actually said because the combination of Mandarin and the growing dread of Ava being recognized for cautiousness was just too overwhelming.  When her name was called, Ava looked genuinely surprised.  Her face lit up and she rushed forward to get the coveted piece of paper.  She beamed for the rest of the assembly as the other classes handed out their awards.  When she made eye contact with me her smile intensified and she bounced a bit, her excitement unable to compete with her cautiousness, apparently.

When it was finished she ran over to me gushing about the award.  She had never been given an award before and she was elated to have been recognized.  Thrilled.  I shared some of her enthusiasm, but it was tinged with a bit of regret.  I know how hard these last few months have been for her and how difficult it has been to adapt to this new school.  She has trouble sitting still and tends to be the kid who bounces around full of crazy ideas.  Here she has been told that she needs to be quiet and she needs to raise her hand.  She needs to follow directions and she has had to wear a uniform to conform even more.  The first few weeks of this were excruciating.  She was trying so hard and it was so exhausting.  It got better, but now here we are getting rewarded for our cautiousness.  I found myself hoping that they had given her the award only because she hadn’t gotten one before and they didn’t want to leave her out.  I am hoping that they were just being nice, because the alternative is that Ava has squished herself so tiny in the last few months that her teachers actually see her as exemplifying cautiousness.  I don’t want her to be cautious.  I want her to be fearless.

Mark met me on his way to the metro station and I told him about the award and the assembly.  He laughed because he had just spent the last few days interviewing Chinese job applicants and had noticed that they were awfully, um, cautious.  This was starting to look like some sort of Chinese thing, this cautiousness!  He had to snap a few photos of the award to show his colleagues.

Later when I bemoaned the award and my mixed feelings, my friend took up the cause of cautiousness.  “Why couldn’t she have been recognized for “Enthusiasm” or Hospitality?” I had wailed.  “Something I could get behind.”

“You could get behind “Hospitality”? she had asked.

“Yes, maybe.  If it was done right.  I mean, I’m from the South.”

But Ava didn’t get an award for hospitality.  She got one for her cautiousness.  A trait that I am not entirely sure I can get behind.  The more we talked about it, the clearer it became—Mark and I don’t always value cautiousness.  We moved to China, leaving all our family and friends.  We took the kids out of wonderful schools and put our house on the market.  We decided to put our faith in something that has a pretty high failure rate.  That isn’t cautiousness.  That is risk– calculated risk.  We take chances.  We try to think things through, but occasionally we decide that even  though it isn’t 100% safe we are going to jump anyway.  How can we tell our kids to be cautious if it means shying away from a few calculated risks?  I want to raise kids that see the merit in weighing their options and sometimes taking a risk.  I want them to do the unexpected every now and then.  I understand that sometimes it pays to be cautious, but I also know that sometimes it is just the fear talking.  It would have been so much easier to stay home and let things stay the same, but then the kids wouldn’t be learning Mandarin or living in Shanghai.  Those experiences are worth a little risk.