October, 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.
Playing while learning
1. Colorful tea/coffee set (10 pieces): Small cups, trays and teapots that have been tested for food safety. Encourages socializing and playing make-believe. For kids age 8 and up. Ikea. RMB 99.
Beijing Mamas at The Village
Christine Surlien
Where are you from?
Norway. We arrived two weeks ago.
Do you have kids?
A 4-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy.
Where are you headed?
I’m waiting to go to a party at the Norwegian Embassy.
Where are your clothes from?
This dress is from Tommy Hilfiger. My bag is Gucci – I bought it off eBay, and these shoes are from London. These are RayBan sunglasses.
How would you describe your style?
I don’t normally dress like this. I would say I like to dress comfortably.
Invisible Ink
Ever wish you could send messages to your friends that no one else can see? Make your own invisible ink and the secret stays between the two of you.
I Want to be an Architect
Marco Zuttioni from Gorizia, Italy, chose to be an architect because the profession combines functionality and art, allowing him to turn buildings of concrete into works of self-expression. After studying in Madrid and Venice, he now works at Archea, an Italian architecture design firm with branches in Italy, China and Dubai. Beijingers can find buildings designed by Zuttioni and Archea around town, including the disco club Tango. Zuttioni, who’s lived in the city since 2004, talked to students at the Canadian International School of Beijing about his passion for architecture and his favorite buildings in the world.
Let's Get Cookin'
Young Cooks Fire Up the Woks
Want to whet your children’s appetite? Are your young ones budding chefs? Do you want to be off kitchen duty for good? Let young cooks touch, feel, smell and discover more about the food they’re eating at the kids’ cooking classes at The Hutong, located in Jiudaowan Zhongxiang hutong near Beixinqiao subway stop.
Hocus Pocus
Easy steps to creepy costumes
Chicken
There’s nothing wrong with being a little, er, chicken, during Halloween. Smaller kids will love dressing up as this adorable clucker.
How to do it: Cut a red glove about an inch from the fingers, stuff it with tissues and stitch it to the crown of an oversized hooded top. Stuff the hood with a cushion and tack-stitch yellow feather boas all over the top (stitches can later be removed). You’ll need about five boas for a costume that will fit a 5-year-old. Put on a pair of tights and then carefully slip on the top, stuffing it with cushions or towels to fatten it up. Stuff the ends of a pair of yellow gloves with tissues and then slip the gloves onto your feet. Cluck!
Tidbits
Life is an adventure in a big city. There’s always something to discover, but it can also be scary sometimes. With this month’s books, we discover new lands and dedicate the journey to all the young free spirits out there. Katharina Schulz
Little Polar Bear(for ages 4-8)
Written and illustrated by Hans de Beer
It’s a big day for Lars the polar bear as his father takes him hunting for the first time in his life. The night after their trip, Lars is so tired that he doesn’t notice the ice floe he sleeps on breaking away into the ocean. Clutching a wooden barrel to stay afloat, Lars ends up at a tropical island, where he meets Hippo. The hippopotamus explains how this tropical island is completely different from the North Pole. But can he also help Lars get back home? This charming book is the debut of Dutch illustrator Hans de Beer and has been translated into more than 26 languages. With nearly ten million copies sold, it is one of the most popular children’s books in the world. Little Polar Bear has smooth pastel colored drawings and a heartwarming story about adventure, wanderlust and finding the way back home.
Conclusion: The little polar bear’s adventure shows that discovering new places is an important part of life.
RMB 57 at Poplar Kids Republic Bookstore
Strange New Land
We were in unfamiliar territory, and yet we were home. When I was a child, my family moved to the US from Taiwan; we arrived with suitcases and a few phone numbers, and settled down as best as we could. We moved from the East to the West, but I bet new expats in Beijing won’t have much trouble identifying with our experience.
The move was a planned one, so we had expected certain things to be quite different. Like the language. For months before the move, my parents, sister, brother and I had attended classes as a family, shouting out sentences in unison, trying to master the melodic tones of this foreign tongue. As for food, my parents were positive that what passed for cuisine in this new place couldn’t possibly match the tastes of home. Fruits and vegetables wouldn’t be as fresh; fish and meat would come in unrecognizable packages.
But so much else was also different, and the list of changes we never anticipated ballooned.
Solana
A thousand brands, 30 restaurants, and one skating rink Solana, located near Chaoyang Park, is a newly opened lifestyle shopping center that boasts a wide variety of restaurants, retail stores (1,000 brands), small parks and an indoor skating rink. Nineteen Western-style buildings, surrounded by the Liangmahe river, provide families with great options for browsing clothes and jewelry, dining out or hanging out on a leisurely weekend afternoon. If you’re longing for the looks and tastes of home, you might just find them in shops such as Zara, Guess and the 30 restaurants offering different cuisines.
Young Nomads
Expat kids and the school of hard knocks
They speak three languages, have jam-packed passports, and have studied among students from all over the world. These are “third-culture kids”; they don’t belong fully to China or to their home country – their identities come from their experiences of living abroad long-term. When parents have jobs that require relocating to a new country, their young globetrotters face a slew of adjustments unique to their transition overseas.
The good news, according to psychologists at international schools in Beijing, is that adolescents don’t necessarily have more emotional problems even though they’re adjusting to the transition of a new school in a new country.
“They’re expats, but I don’t think the issues are really any different for these kids,” says American Steven Sutherford, a psychologist at the International School of Beijing (ISB). “They still have the same issues of growing up – they are at the age where they begin to push away and deal with the challenges of making friends and being a student.”
Hearty Wintermelon
A traditional Chinese diet food
I have this theory about food. There are some foods that are inherently appealing to human taste buds, despite cultural differences, personal tastes and habits, or the way you were raised. In the nature versus nurture debate, let’s call these foods the nature foods. My theory says that nature foods appeal to the most basic human survival instincts. Salt. Sugar. Fat. The essentials. These are the no-brainers. No one will turn down a roasted chicken, fried rice or ice cream. You probably would, however, on first tasting, turn down some extra stinky tofu.
Let’s Get Cookin’
Young cooks fire up the woks
Want to whet your children’s appetite? Are your young ones budding chefs? Do you want to be off kitchen duty for good? Let young cooks touch, feel, smell and discover more about the food they’re eating at the kids’ cooking classes at The Hutong, located in Jiudaowan Zhongxiang hutong near Beixinqiao subway stop.
Destination: India
Travelers: Ronni (Ranjeev) and Isabelle Krishana and their daughter Maya (4). The Plan: The Krishana family traveled to India for 18 days to visit family and cruise the “Golden Triangle” of northern India – New Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. On this trip, Isabelle and Maya’s first to India, the family flew into New Delhi, then hired a driver to take them to Agra (the city of the Taj Mahal), then on to Jaipur (the land of Rajput kings) and back to New Delhi.
Say Hello to Beijing’s Smallest
Keira Catherine Burke
Australian. Born to Olivia Mary Burke and Brendan Allan Burke on Apr 4 at Beijing United Family Hospital.
Journey into the Unknown
Anti-parent maniac? Not quite Some might say that once a girl enters the teen years, she transforms from daddy’s little girl into an anti-parent maniac who tries to get as far away from home as possible. That’s not entirely my story, though there might be an element of truth in that. Speaking for all teens with a globetrotting itch here, it’s a little more complicated. Yes, I’m a teenager, and yes, I yearn to leave Beijing after years of adventurous journeying between Hong Kong, my first home, and Beijing. But instead of labeling me a rebel, let’s just say I long for more independence, freedom and change. I’ve made Beijing my home for almost four years now, which is exactly the reason why it’s time to move again. Truth is, I’ve never stayed in a school for more than three years. As Barack Obama would say, it’s time for me to ask for change and create a difference.
You, Me, and Everybody We Know on Facebook
The rules of friending, tagging and blocking With social networking sites such as Facebook becoming de rigeur for the very young and even the slightly old, making friends has become a bit more complicated. beijingkids sat down with four students – all friends with each other on Facebook – from the Harrow International School Beijing about privacy issues online, who they’d never be friends with and the benefits of being connected to so many people.
Trick or Treat...and Trust
Learning to let go
He was a puppy in Russia and a bird in Armenia, back when he was too young to choose his own costume. He was Bob the Builder in Kazakhstan, and he refused to take the costume off for a full week after Halloween. Back home again in America, he discovered superheroes and Star Wars, so he struggled with the choices before finally settling on Batman.
We’ve celebrated Halloween all across the globe, but nowhere is the holiday quite as popular as right here in Shunyi. Last year, on our first Chinese Halloween, we ran out of candy within an hour. Witches, skeletons and other frightening creatures overran our neighborhood, proffering goody bags in tiny hands as they darted from house to house.
Perfectly Structured
1. Aquascutum Tara double-breasted coat – GBP 1,695 (RMB 21,433); www.net-a-porter.com.
Nappie Time (Again): Elsa wets the bed
Elsa’s transition to sleeping dry through the night started off promisingly, a happy if unexpected result of my poor household planning. Several months ago, I discovered just before her bedtime that I had completely run out of nappies. Too embarrassed to cart a pajama-clad Elsa down to the store for yet another last minute purchase, I instructed my long-suffering child that she would have to manage without. To my amazement, this cold turkey approach actually worked. The bed was accident free the next morning, and – until recently – we never looked back.
Perhaps I displeased some higher power by boasting once too often of Elsa’s talents in the toilet department (“got the hang of it first go you know, and still only two”). Or perhaps Elsa herself decided this had been a premature move. But the events that shortly unfolded held true to the universally acknowledged child-rearing law: Just when you think you’ve got parenting sussed your child will delight in proving you wrong.
Get a Life (Goal)
What does my future hold? This past summer, the subject of what I might do for the rest of my life came up frequently with friends and family, and much more often than I liked. I was less than excited to think about the subject; I had no idea what I wanted to do.
History Comes Full Circle
Daniel and his great-grandfather
Even before I got engaged to my now wife Su, I had heard horrible things about how much Chinese families “welcome” laowai interlopers to steal their daughters. Luckily, in my case, I found this to not to be true. Not only that, but I also soon discovered that there was actually a cosmopolitan streak in her family: my wife Su’s granddad (Laoye) came from a cosmopolitan upbringing in pre-war Shanghai. Moreover, back in the days when ganbei was about the only word of Chinese I knew, it was an unlooked-for blessing to find that I could even communicate with him directly – after a fashion, at least. Laoye spoke French, a language I used to mangle at school.
Beijing 101
How to order a Chinese banquet to impress a guest
The traditional delicacy Beijing duck (北京烤鸭 běijīngkǎoyā) will impress any guest – succulent meat, thin pancakes, a variety of sauces, and the spectacle of watching the chef prepare the duck. Laowai cai (foreign dishes) won’t disappoint foreign tastebuds; try kung pao chicken (宫爆鸡丁 gōngbǎo jīdīng), “fish-fragrance” shredded pork (鱼香肉丝 yúxīangròusī), and fried green beans (干煸四季豆 gānbǐan sìjìdoù). Moreover, Sichuan hotpot, with both mild and spicy broths, allows guests to participate in cooking. Other no-fail dishes include fish in spicy oil (水煮鱼 shuǐzhǔyú), pineapple rice (菠萝饭 bōlúofàn), a Yunnan dish that combines rice with the sweet-tart fruit, and of course, dumplings (饺子 jiǎozi). Cecily Huang
The Roaming Rahmans
Canadians Tariq Rahman, Sylvie Boulay and their kids Tabatha (10) and Adam (7) certainly get around, having already lived in Canada, the US, Sweden and the UK. Next on the agenda: a family-friendly life in Shunyi. Here are a few of their Beijing favorites. Would you like to share your Beijing Favorites? E-mail editor@beijing-kids.com. Toy Shop
Kid Plus at Pinnacle Plaza is definitely Adam’s favorite. Second best is the little toy shop in Jenny Lou’s. Saturday Night
We always eat out. Our favorite restaurants are Piazza Café because it has Chinese, Thai and Western, and Baan Chokdee which is Thai but has the best hamburgers in town, according to the kids. Lunch Spot
Wine and Dine in front of the Canadian Embassy is great value for lunch – the menu includes great food, a glass of wine, dessert and coffee.
