Western kids: antagonism and being touched by strangers

Not relevant to this post. In another
I'll describe Maddie's paparazzi

There are many cultural differences between China and the US with regards to children. For me there are two behaviors that really stand out. One is touching the faces and hands of kids you don't even know, and the second is antagonizing them as a way of interacting with them. I probably notice these behaviors mostly because I don't really understand why people would do these things and they sometimes upset my girl. There's lots of other kid related details that I think are interesting and if I have room I'll include some here.

Before Maddie was in pre-school it was a lot harder to take care of the mundane errands associated with living. It's because I didn't always have a choice of wether or not to drag her out in public because something had to get done. It got to the point where sometimes she would just shutdown under all the attention and touching she was experiencing; and that was easily the worst part of being here. It's awful to not feel like I'm protecting her enough. Over time I got better at protecting her, but there's only so much you can do to prevent these behaviors. I am one person in a dense city surrounded by people. I think at this point she's gotten more used to it all. Since she's in preschool, she's simply not in public nearly as much as she used to be also.

The first is the way complete strangers will touch Maddie's cheek or grab her hands. Sometimes it's almost as if they're checking to see if she's real. She gets called baby doll in Chinese pretty often. People will do this that aren't even in her line of sight. Think of how strange it would be to have somebody reach over and touch your cheek as you're walking down the street. Now think about it if you didn't see them coming but only felt it. This is how it is with Maddie; often. Everybody loves to touch her and some people will repeatedly do it, like if we're on the train. Some people are at least only grabbing her hands. But even with that there were times she would yank her hands away and get upset. Who would want their person to be touched by strangers all the time? Certainly not me.

The other behavior I wanted to mention is the way people seem to antagonize children here as a way of playing. We had a friend from Dylan's work come over and he spent the entire 4 hours he was here occasionally taking something of Maddie's and saying it was his now. He'd grab her favorite doll and then say to her "Maddie, this is mine now, not yours anymore." It was really strange. She, of course, would get upset because she really believed that he was stealing her toys; not sharing nicely as we're trying to teach her, but fully taking them away from her to be his now. I've met people in our courtyard who have done the same thing. One took her tricycle helmet. All this does is upset her. Is this treatment unique to Western kids, or is this also how people interact with their friend's kids in China?

UPDATE: I've seen many, many other situations (now that I've been here 6 months and this post was actually written months before it was published) where people antagonize kids as a way to play. Most of these situations don't involve Maddie, so it's not specific to western kids or me as a Mom.

Being stalked by the shop clerks

I was holding off from blogging because I remember how I felt like it took up so much of my time before. Maybe that was because previously I was in the midst of the chaos of having our first baby. Now I'm thinking that blogging a bit might be something worth reading later on and it might help me with the situations I'm experiencing and lack of having anybody to talk to about them. The hardest part of being here is being alone most of the time. I guess you can never have it all at the same time - free time, money, and friends.

I'm not working while we're here, unless I decide to go and teach English, or something along those lines. So I've been cooking a lot. We don't have an oven in our apartment - they're not that common - and we bought a toaster oven recently. (At some point I'll write another blog entry about the scavenger hunt of finding certain ingredients. And the process and experience of buying a "bigger ticket item" like a toaster oven.) I recently ran across baking yeast; the kind you'd use to make bread. Since I have the time and the internet to tell me how, I was thinking I'd make bread while we're here. Why not? It's something I've played with a couple of times and it's something that Dylan eats quite a bit of. I'm not really such a big bread fan, though I will eat it from time to time.

There's a boutique store in this shopping plaza about a mile from our house that has niche baking things; bread pans and small silicon mini-cupcake sheets. I might not need to mention that this place is expensive for China. I'm guess that's because it's really targeting foreigners with it's products. The shop is small enough that you can see everything in the store from anywhere else in the store. There are no tall shelves or places to hide while you might shoplift something. Even though I know that has nothing to do with the experience I frequently have while shopping, and the experience I had again today.

I walk into this shop and immediately the two only employees are within a couple feet of me. They stand so close that they are actually in the way if I wanted to walk down the aisle and browse. When I reach to see a price tag, one that is sitting visible on the table, they try and beat me to it, so they can tell me the price. If I move around at all, they follow me closely. This experience is not particular to this store. I have this experience pretty much every time I walk into a store and it sometimes drives me crazy. If you look at it a certain way, it's sort of funny because when I'm not in the mood to ignore this stalking it prevents me from buying anything because I walk out so quickly. I don't really enjoy shopping anyway, so this is just icing on the cake. I did discover that if I go to a shop when it's slammed - like the weekend - I get a lot less attention.

I'm getting better at ignoring people, and not caring when I'm clearly being stared at, watched, or shopping clerk stalked. I care a lot less now than I did when I arrived. I had to or I'd go crazy. But I still have my moments when it just drives me to stay home, or to starbucks with my nose in my computer or a book. Sometimes I don't understand because there are actually a fair number of westerners here. I can easily see 20 in a day.

I stick out for reasons that go beyond my western-ness. Like my clothes, and my light colored hair, and my size. I stick out because I'm not one of maybe 95% of the women here who are wearing high heels. I'm not wearing girl shoes either, so I stick out from that other 5% as well. I'm not wearing dark drab colors or a skirt. My hair is still stuffed into a sloppy bun, unlike all the carefully dressed women here. I more closely match the workers who sweep the streets than the average women here.

So here I am, writing this after fleeing the cookery boutique without my bread pan. Maybe tomorrow I'll try again. I think the yeast will wait until then.