Kids in China - A Joy to Behold

I’ll admit that I was a little apprehensive about what children in China would be like. We all know about China’s One Child Policy which was instituted in 1979 to help control the population. As you can imagine, that one child was the recipient of love and attention not only of their parents but also grandparents. Unfortunately, however, since sons have traditionally been the heirs and caretakers for their parents, new parents were taking drastic measures to insure that their one child was a boy. The result was a drastic imbalance between the number of boys versus girls born for almost 40 years. In 2015 the government eased that policy and families are now having more than one child which was evident everywhere we went!

There seemed to be children everywhere we went and I’ve been getting a kick out of seeing them (and their parents)!! I also ended up taking pictures (some candid - some with the proud parents’ permission) of kids doing what kids do anywhere in the world. I’ve created a GOOGLE SITE WITH PICTURES I’ve taken. The captions tell you where we are and the jist of what’s going on - but what I was struck by was how similar kids are - wherever they are from and whatever their circumstances.

Every kid likes to feed goldfish, ride piggy-back, go on outings with grandma and play in a bouncy house. All adults have to split their time between playing, teaching and just plain keeping their small charges occupied while they go about their daily tasks. The Chinese children reacted to us in a variety of predictable ways - some were a bit frightened, many stared at us and some just giggled their heads off. Any child able to speak seemed to know how to say at least a few words of English. A few just marched right up to us to say “hello”, others hid behind parents who tried to get them to speak to us and some, like the children in the school we visited outside of Xi’an treated us like super-stars: either standing shyly to one side or giving us pictures they’d drawn or, in the case of Jenny and Hannah, asking for autographs!

My favorite interaction was with a 4 year-old in a Beijing restaurant. It began with him playing peek-a-boo with my husband Rob. Then he and I began to do some Kung-Fu “fighting” between the tables. Ultimately, he just ran full-tilt at us and threw himself into our arms while his parents and grandparents snapped pictures. Seeing children like him, and the others from various parts of China, have been some of the highlights of my trip. Now I look for children wherever we are! Watch the Google site linked above - I’ll be adding other snaps of kids for the rest of the time I’m here in China!