New York might be the city that never sleeps, but Beijing is the city that never stops drilling. One of the most … exciting … experiences of being a baby-mom here is figuring out how to deal with the soul-piercing drilling happening (what seems to be right outside your bedroom wall … or within your skull, who can tell?) right at the very moment your colicky baby finally fell asleep. But that is only one of the superpowers that you will acquire whilst living here.
As an expat baby-mom in Beijing, I am always kept fit by my camera-phone-jumping routine. Oh, you haven’t heard of it? It’s pretty rad, and super easy. Whenever strangers attempt to stick their camera in either of my babies’ faces, I jump in front of them! Bonus points if you simultaneously whip out your own phone to record them recording you.
Then there is my new superpower, the Temperature Tingles! The what, now? Well, it is like spidey senses, except I can sense when someone is about to grab my baby daughter’s leg to check whether she is dressed warm enough. Being the daring mom that I am, I am constantly taking my baby outside without socks, knowing full well that in China, the 30-degree weather could lead to her getting hypothermia. I guess I just like living life on the edge.
The Central Heating Headache: If you are fortunate enough to live in an apartment building that has central heating, you know how wonderful it is. Sure, it saves money, but it also builds endurance! It is always turned on long after it has gotten cold, and stays on long after it has warmed up again, and it is almost scorching enough to justify turning on your AC as a counterattack. The most fun part is, of course, getting your kicking, wriggling baby or toddler from wearing just a vest to the 20,000 layers they’ll need for the sub-zero temperatures before going outside. And then if you are going into any mall, you’ll have the pleasure of peeling all those layers off again as you jump between flaming hot and icy cold. If putting on and taking off layers from uncooperative children were an Olympic sport, I’d be a medalist.
My temperature skills are, however, only rivaled by my innate ability to judge the pollution level by how many buildings I can see in the distance. Who needs an AQI reader when you can tell whether it is safe to take the babies outside by whether you can stare directly into the sun?
Being here has also refined my mosquito swatting skills to “Ninja” level. No matter how many repellent stickers you have plastered on your baby, the mosquitoes in Beijing are relentless on a nuclear level. Nothing deters them! Except, of course, waving a hand-held fan around your child as if she were the Queen of Sheba. Bonus points if yours is a palm-leaf fan. The only level above Ninja is, of course, Shushu-Ninja level!
It is a good thing that phones in China come with such large memory capacity, because any expat mom will know that the vast number of cute photos of your babies on your phone are only at risk of being surpassed by the insane amount of undeleted screenshots for translation. There was once a time in my life when there was a fine line between taking a screenshot or locking my phone and adjusting the volume. Not anymore, baby! I can now take 100 screenshots per split second that will forever remain on my phone … or until our descendants discover them in an archaeological excavation.
Sometimes I reminisce about the days when I hyperventilated at the thought of being hooted at by the car behind us if I didn’t get out of the DiDi fast enough. I have instead developed a stare that is the mom equivalent of the “baby onboard” sticker, a stare that practically dares the driver behind us to hoot while I unload and unfold the double stroller, into which I need to “wrestle” my two monkeys, three bags, four half-eaten snacks, five stray toys, and a sense of humor.
In the end, the constant drilling, the temperature patrols and the linguistic acrobatics aren’t just annoyances; they’re the forge in which the expat baby-mom’s superpower is tempered. And while it’s endlessly entertaining to complain about them, the truth is, they come with a hidden, priceless reward. We are raising our children in a city of breathtaking contrasts, where ancient hutongs sit in the shadow of glittering skyscrapers. Our kids are learning flexibility, resilience and a deep, intuitive understanding that the world is filled with different kinds of wonderful. For the chance to see this sprawling, maddening, magnificent city through their wide, curious eyes, I’d jump in front of a thousand cameras and swat a million mosquitoes. The chaos is the price of admission, but the show … the vibrant, unforgettable, daily show of life here … is absolutely worth it.
Images: Janita Shahsavari
