As Joni Mitchell said, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” and perhaps we can’t really appreciate what Beijing means to us until we’re leaving. To get some insight, we talked to Cecilia Cao, a Year 13 student at the Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing). Cao is leaving this summer to study Art at Rhode Island School of Design, and we asked her what her first memories were of coming to Beijing when she was ten years old.

“To be honest,” she said, “I was actually feeling really melancholy. I was reluctant to come here with all the smog. I’d left all my friends in Vancouver, where it’s really sunny. I was crying very often. I missed my friends back home, and we had a house there which was furnished so nicely… here we had a rented apartment, with gaudy furniture. My earliest memory of Beijing is utmost dread.”

Cao’s IB exhibition

Fortunately, this didn’t last.

“I naturally got accustomed to it,” Cao said, “and came to appreciate the culture. When I first came back I identified as a Canadian citizen. But as I rediscovered my heritage I came to think of myself as Chinese. Now I like it a lot more than Canada. There’s a lot more people here! And it’s good for me to take inspiration artistically, how the country has changed in the last 50 years.”

We asked Cao what she loved most about Beijing.

“I do love 798 Art District,” she told us. “I held a photo shoot there with my friends. It has a lot of history and industrial heritage, but also wonderful art. China’s artists are just as talented and diverse as artists in the west but we don’t hear a lot about them. It’s a wonderful place to explore art.”

Cao’s captivating art on display

Cao aims to be a comic book artist and named as a favorite Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi’s celebrated memoir of growing up in Iran. Where in the city influenced her own art, we wondered?

“The biggest influence, of course, is 798 because I appreciate its industrial, grungy style. But I’m also a huge fan of the Forbidden City. It appeases my love of history; in China’s history it’s gone through so much, been partially destroyed, then reconstructed, now there’s clothes, artwork, all the prestigious history of China…”

Cao has just finished her IB Art exhibition, and we asked her to tell us more about her work.

An attendee at the exhibition admires Cao’s work

“For the last two years, I’ve been developing my theme, of gender expectations and roles, both ancient and contemporary. Men’s clothes reflect their roles in various settings, political, familial, and social. Then there’s the inner world of women, which is often smothered, disregarded. So in the exhibition, on the front, you see boards with pieces of clothing associated with masculinity. Then you have to walk round to see a smaller board with pieces associated with femininity.”

“It’s interesting to reflect on how dynamics are changing, or not changing, in Chinese culture. Last year five feminists were detained, for ‘creating trouble’. But all they were doing was handing out flyers on trains to prevent sexual harassment on public transport.”

Her sculpture work shows her versatility

We asked her what she’s going to miss about Beijing.

“I’m honestly going to miss my friends. Once you stay in a place you become accustomed to it, Beijing is home, my family is here. There’s a sense of potential wherever you go.”

What about the food, we asked?

“I wasn’t born in Beijing,” she said, “so I won’t miss Beijing cuisine. I find the desserts here really gross. I was born in Sichuan, so I love hotpot and barbecues. I will miss roast duck though.”

Attendees took the time to appreciate Cao’s work during the exhibition

And what, we wondered, will she miss least?

“The pollution,” she said immediately. “But really I’m just very eager to start university, connecting with new people, meeting new friends, discovering a new culture. I’ve visited Rhode Island and the professors were so genuine, so wonderful, I can’t wait.”

Finally, we asked how she would describe Beijing to her new friends, in one sentence.

“The first thing I would say is making sure you have money,” she said. “It’s such a consumer culture here, and the rents are so high… but ‘changing’ is the one word I would use. Beijing is so many things.”

This post is paid for by YCIS Beijing 

Photos: YCIS Beijing 

Vivek Bammi, Theory of Knowledge teacher at Keystone Academy, teaches his bilingual International Baccalaureate course with a Chinese co-teacher, enabling him and his students to witness the Chinese love of deep learning in a global context. Fueled by a desire for fresh challenges and a fascination for Chinese history and culture, Bammi came here two years ago from Indonesia, where he taught at an international school for over 25 years. Although Bammi enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle as a child in East India’s Assam, where his father worked as a manager of a tea plantation, he did not follow his father’s footsteps, but was led to academia by his love for learning. Since then, he has never regretted his decision, but enjoys teaching the subjects he loves most: the humanities—history, geography, literature, and the arts—for the rich, multi-dimensional perspectives the subjects offer into the human experience

How would you (or your students) describe your teaching style?
My teaching style reflects my passion and enthusiasm for lifelong learning: I want to engage the students in an active exploration and discussion of ideas and issues that are shaping their world. Ultimately, the teacher must hand over the control of learning to the students, so that they can move away from ‘traditional’ and ‘out-dated’ models of thinking.

What are some of the topics you cover?
I cover different topics of world history, including aspects of social (such as family, food, sports) and aesthetic (music, film, art) history, since every individual is constructed by multiple influences. In Theory of Knowledge, we focus on contemporary issues which are often contestable and exciting, such as plastic surgery, cloning, genetic engineering, abortion, preserving or discarding cultural practices, consumerism, gender orientation, and equality.

What topic was the most challenging to cover with children? Why?
In my subject area, we cover many topics with multiple perspectives, which often challenge the students to re-examine their own viewpoints and opinions and to consider alternative ways of thinking and reasoning. This can be upsetting for young adults; it is also difficult to convey uncertainty and ambiguity in knowledge, since much of school education is predicated on the opposite.

What topic was the most interesting to your students? Why?
Paradoxically, the topics that are the most challenging (involving different perspectives and examining contemporary issues) are also the most interesting for most students! Many let me know that the active interaction and discussion with their peers helped to clarify their own thinking and stance. The teenage years are fluid, and an active engagement in the classroom begins to shape an identity (or identities) which they can further explore in the wider world.

What class project in your teaching career was the most meaningful to you?
I taught a course in anthropology in Indonesia; after studying the concept of “culture” in some depth, we organized a field trip to Central Java, which included a range of activities: a paleontological ‘dig’ at the site where “Java Man” was discovered, and visits to a Javanese village, an art school, the Palace, and a museum of “batik” cloth. This kind of “experiential learning” is very meaningful, and changed many students’ perspectives: most of them were international and tended to have a superficial view of Indonesian society based on their narrowed world view. After this experience, they began to appreciate the depth and beauty of Indonesian culture, its tolerance and acceptance of others, the kindness and mellow temperament of its people. This experience was transformative for me as well, and Indonesia is my favorite land in the world!

This article originally appeared on page 38 of the November/ December issue of beijingkids magazine. Click here for your free online copy. To find out how you can obtain a hard copy, contact distribution@truerun.com.

PHOTOS: UNI YOU, COURTESY OF KEYSTONE ACADEMY

"Parenting the Love and Logic Way" is a six week parenting course open to all parents, held at Dulwich College Beijing (DCB). While it can be adopted by parents with kids of all ages, it’s just what my husband and I need right now to take on the challenges of parenting a teenager.

We were in desperate need of a new approach to parenting our younger daughter. At 13 going on 14, she is your average teenager, displaying all the cliched behavioral changes. Our ‘Rant, rave and rescue’ approach, which worked for the older one, is somehow completely failing us now. Not to mention the guilt we feel after having come down hard on her, and then fearing it will sever our relationship with our daughter in the long run.

Each child is different, we are told time and again. Our ultimate goal is to raise a respectful, responsible and confident human being, capable of pulling her weight in society, so we jumped at the opportunity to learn and try a different strategy in the hopes of being better ourselves. Two sessions in today, and we are already feeling better equipped to deal with what she throws at us. The approach was devised from results of extensive research and years of experience, by Charles Fay, PhD, and Jim Fay. 

Lesson 1: Creative ways to put an end to arguing and talking back, which is typical teenage behavior. How do we do it? Simple! Just refuse to engage and don’t take the bait to dive into a lecture. Sentences such as… "I love you too much to argue…", "I know!" or "Thanks for sharing!" can help us go figuratively ‘brain dead’ and essentially be unreactive when they push our buttons. Reacting was not working out for us at all! Delaying the consequences with this newly adopted approach is working, much to our delight. She is unsure as to why we are not responding with angst anymore, which in turn is forcing her to think about what she’s saying or asking of us.

Lesson 2: Teaching responsibility without losing their love, by being empathetic. I can’t wait to try this out as it ties in with the first lesson. The book says, "Empathy allows us to remain the good guy, while allowing our child’s poor decision to be the bad guy." Some sentences to show empathy and yet hold them accountable for an action… "That’s never good!", "What a bummer!" or "This is so sad… what are you going to do?" Only time will tell how well this works, but our initial results have been very encouraging.

Four more sessions to go, Fridays 8.30-10.00am at DCB. Feel free to attend if you’re curious, or even just looking for a few ideas to incorporate into your already effective parenting style.

Photo: Pixabay

As a professional musician, I never imagined I’d one day purchase an instrument online. It’s my trade, after all; I need an instrument sure to be the right fit for me, that sings to me when I touch it, that resonates with me personally. And while I still wouldn’t buy a top-of-the-line instrument on the Internet (read: expensive), when it comes to purchasing workable, daily-use instruments online, I’ve definitely changed my tune.

People ask guitarists, especially, why we have to have so many guitars. I just laugh. I’m rather tame with only six guitars to my name (some of my friends have dozens), but for those still surprised by that number, I always point out that a new instrument comes with new songs in it! As songwriters, how can we resist coaxing them out from new wood?

I have recently been teaching some guitar and ukulele lessons to kids and adults, which brought me to purchase the “guitalele,” (otherwise known as the kiku), a cross between a classical guitar and a baritone ukulele—small and tuned up a fourth, but still with six strings. I bought this instrument on Taobao for under RMB 300 and its voice is clear and bright. I love it. What a great option for travelling, too.

I followed up that purchase with a very basic ukulele, again under RMB 300, in order to play alongside my students, and then helped my guitar student purchase a classical guitar from a Yamaha vendor on Taobao for RMB 899. My student is thrilled with her instrument and the guitar is solid and well made. Each of these purchases came with free case, tuner and extra strings; nice bonuses!

There’s really nothing like cruising down to Gulou Dong Dajie and going in and out of the instrument shops, but now that I have a toddler and a pre-schooler, opportunities to cruise just about anywhere, uninterrupted by runny noses or the need to go "pee pee," have been reduced to once or twice a year. So, thank you Taobao, for helping me continue the tradition of discovering new songs tucked inside the wood of new instruments! This musician mom shall play on.

Photos: Ember Swift
 

It happened rather unexpectedly. Our daughter missed a week of school due to illness and then had a week off due to a trip. When school resumed, Reina struggled to keep up in Chinese class. She clearly needed extra help, but my Chinese is laughable and her mother’s work schedule was making it difficult for Savvy to assist her too. We decided that what our daughter really needed was a tutor, but how to find one?

I contacted her school and was surprised that there was no official recommendations for where to find one. Savvy also checked with a few of the local neighborhood moms, usually our best source of information, but this time she came up empty-handed.

Fortunately, one of the staff at our daughter’s school had used a service to locate a tutor for her son last year and she sent us a link, www.jiajiao100.com. Savvy gave them a call and that weekend Anne, an English major still in university, showed up and spent two hours patiently working with Reina.

After the lesson, we decided to hire Anne for three 2-hour sessions a week at RMB 75 an hour. In the beginning it was slow going, but within a couple of weeks, Reina had caught up with the class. Most days she can now complete the homework on her own if she hasn’t finished it up at school. Even though Reina isn’t struggling anymore, we are keeping Anne on as her tutor so that she can delve deeper into lessons with Reina and so that they can spend time reading together.

 Photo: Mac Vincente (via Flickr)

This app was bought by the Pearson Education Incorporated in mid 2013. This app has math based tutorials to help confused math students in both middle and high school and is free. 

Features
This app is a very useful tool for students who are having a difficult time remembering how to do specific types of math problems. The videos offer clear step by step with a teacher demonstrating the idea on a whiteboard. The app is not for students only but comes in handy for parents and non-math teachers.

The app has a short description for the less than 5 minutes videos for the various sections making sure that the selection of the videos is made easily. Virtual need Mobile Math is divided into three sections, Pearson Mathematics Program, Common Core and Virtual Nerd. The Pearson Mathematics Program features Grade 6-8 digits, integrated high school, Algebra 1and 2, and geometry to pick from. In the Common Core section users can get Grade 1-8 basic maths (number and operation in Base Ten, measurement and data, and more) and high school topics such as number and quantity, algebra, geometry, and more. In the Virtual Nerd section this is divided into two categories – by grade (6-8, high school) and assessments (SAT and ACT). 

The videos are short and pretty straight forward and of outstanding value since its free. The lack of access to videos site such as YouTube and Vimeo, this app has a video library that is easy to access and searchable. Also, the instructions are accurate and clear.

The app has no distractions in that, there are no links to social media, outside ads or in-app purchases.

Ages: 10+
Category: Education
Content: videos
Platform: iPad only
Language: English, German, Northern Sami, Spanish
Price: Free

Photos: appannie.com

My daughter is away for the week and it’s just me and my infant son, Paz. Their daddy is doing gigs out of town. Their grandma (nainai) is the one who took Echo back to the family’s hometown. It’s officially the second time in my experience of motherhood that I’ll have been separated from her for a whole week. I’m already not sure what to do with myself.

A friend of mine in Canada remarked that she wished she had someone she trusted enough with whom she could send her kids away for a week. It got me thinking…

This close relationship that I have with my mother-in-law as part of the child rearing team has been a hard one for me. Even though I knew that she was going to be a big part of our family dynamic when any kids arrived, the first year of her constant presence in my life was a strain. (I wrote a lot about that!) I spent more time with her than I did with my husband and I still do! Almost like a forced additional “marriage” (domestically, that is), I have found myself smirking at the irony of co-raising my children with a woman even though I actually married a man.

The things we imagine for our future sometimes happen–just not exactly in the ways we plan them to!

In China, my feminist defences go up when people describe my mother-in-law as having come to Beijing to “help me care for the kids.” I argue that she is here to help “us” and not “me,” as the mother. They laugh. They think I’m far too “foreign” about it. I rarely can inspire likemindedness on this point.

Sexist and old-fashioned philosophies like this one have created a strained domestic reality in my household. To be blunt, I expected more of my partner. He has no qualms about passing off his responsibility to his mother; it’s the Chinese way. But, my Canadian (Western) expectations for him to be more engaged with the day-to-day activities of our family can’t be erased either. It’s the Canadian way, I say, defensively. The result? A broken feminist heart and two onlookers (husband and MIL) who are bewildered by my response. It’s a battle I’ve only recently realized cannot be won.

With that realization, came two other realizations, leaving me three separate stacks of wisdom piled up around this half-empty house:
I’m actually quite lucky. I realize that the additional assistance from my mother-in-law is absolutely golden. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not interchangeable. If I could have more engagement from my husband, I’d be happier, but regardless of my opinions about him, her presence is a winning lottery ticket that I’ve been cashing in for the past two years. As you can tell by my “Mama Mia” video, I’m extremely grateful for her in my life.

And stack #3 is a realization about myself: I am being the mother I want to be. No matter what my husband does or doesn’t do, I wouldn’t change my level of engagement in the least. That’s because I am LOVING being a mother. I choose this sleepless, occasionally irritating, exhausting role with pride. It’s a source of joy, in the end. It’s perfect.

So, when I realized all of these things put together like three wobbly stacks of wisdom blocks, I had to stare long and hard at them to fix them in my mind. And, I could finally do so because I don’t have a toddler raging through the room eager to knock them down with a burst of giggles.

This is what I’ve come to:
Because I’m so grateful for her, it’s much easier to just let my mother-in-law be as involved as she is without comparing her to my husband. That means letting her take Echo back to their home city for a week because I do trust her, implicitly. I know that I’ll be back in Echo’s life in just a few days and that she will miss her mommy while she’s away. I know this because she proves to me every day with cuddles and smiles that I’m being a good mother.

And, thus, the war that I can’t win with my partner has suddenly stopped being a war I even want to wage. I’m learning to just step back and wait. Eventually, I have to believe that he’ll catch up without me nagging him to do so. In the end, our decisions around the type of parent we want to be must come from ourselves. What’s more, I concede that, as babies, children do need their mothers differently than they need their father. All I can be is the mother I want to be. Being the dad he wants to be is up to him.

{One week later}

Guess who has missed his daughter so much this week? Guess who keeps calling me from his out-of-town gigs and telling me how happy he is to be a family? Guess who can’t wait to go and pick up his daughter from the train station tomorrow? Guess who came to say good-night to her this evening, on her first night back home, and tucked her in?

The things we imagine for the future sometimes happen–just not exactly in the ways we plan them to!

This post first appeared on Ember Swift’s site on May 3, 2014.

Ember Swift is a Canadian songwriter, musician, writer, cyclist, green thumb, cupcake fan and proud mom living in Beijing with her husband, Guo Jian, and their daughter Echo (born January 2012). They are expecting a second child at the end of 2013. Ember writes professionally for several print and online publications (including beijingkids), as well as three blogs through her own site: www.emberswift.com. She is also an internationally touring musician and performs regularly in China with her all-girl local band. She has released 11 independent musical albums over the years but, these days, prefers to be with her family rather than on the road touring. She continues to release her music online and hopes to have completed her memoir project by the end of 2014.

Photo courtesy of wikimedia commons

In a recent New York Times article titled, "Age Approriate Chores for Children and Why They’re Not Doing Them," written by Motherlode columnist KJ Dell’Antonia was sparked after the above photo was posted on Maria Montessori’s Facebook Page and the comments it had generated. The reason that the writer gave for why children were not doing their chores was drawn from her own personal experience:

We have a chore wheel, perused with dedication to determine who feeds which animals at which part of the day, but several of the chores on it (“clean kitchen” and “empty dishwasher” spring to mind) go undone. Even our older children feel lame about this. “You should make us do our chores,” my 9-year-old told me recently. “Or you shouldn’t give us, like, half of our allowance.” (Allowance isn’t tied to chores at our house, although we’ve gone through haphazard efforts at taking it away if things aren’t done.)

There were those who opposed and those who supported the implementation of the list. The reasons of having children do or not do the chores is purely based on the personal values of each household as the articles illustrated by publishing some of the comments.

The list was created by Jennifer Flaunder, an author and stay home mom, based on their family’s philosophy on children’s chores after being asked by other parents what type of chores did they let their kids do. She gives tips of her own about this list:

Of course, every child is different, and some will need more supervision than others, over a longer period of time, before they can complete the chore up to standard. But try to be an encourager rather than a drill sergeant while you are training your children to do their work and to do it well.

Also remember that working side-by-side — or at least in the same corner of the house or yard — is good for camaraderie and morale, as is putting on some lively music to work by.

The Flaunder Family’s has a printable version of the list.

Photo courtesy of the Flaunder Family website.

In conjunction with the music theme of our February 2014 magazine, we’ll be profiling other Chinese instruments that your kids may enjoy learning here on the beijingkids blog. To see how a group of US exchange students took to erhu, guzheng, Peking opera, and Chinese bamboo flute, turn to page 62 of our latest issue.

The mystical sounds of string-plucked instruments arguably provide the most archetypal soundtrack to Chinese life. These are the instruments responsible for the numinous soundtracks found in almost every film that features misty mountains and long-bearded wise men.

We featured the guzheng in our most recent edition, but here are some others from the same family that are available for your kids to learn here in Beijing.

Ruan 阮

Commonly found in Chinese orchestras and Peking opera, the ruan is a small, four-stringed lute dating back over 2000 years. While not dissimilar to a western banjo in shape, it is usually made of wood and traditionally has silk strings, although most are now made of steel.

The instrument is either played with either a plectrum, as often used for a guitar, or using acrylic nails attached to the players’ fingers. The former allows for volume and the latter is most commonly used for intricate pieces or solos.

Young players of guitar, banjo, and other fretted string instruments may take well to the ruan.

Liuqin 柳琴

The liuquin is a pear-shaped mandolin that, like the ruan, has four strings, now also made of steel. It is a miniature version of the larger pipa (琵琶), and thus produces a higher tone than its more commonly-played cousin. The instrument’s small size requires that players have deft and intricate finger movements. Perfect for kids whose hand size limits their ability to stretch across the neck of a guitar.

The frets sit much higher than on Western string instruments, to the extent that the players’ fingers won’t touch the instrument’s body. This allows greater control over the sound produced, and results in less noise and fewer annoyed neighbors.

Sanxian 三弦

The sanxian (literally “three strings”) looks a lot like the erhu, the two-stringed fiddle you will have seen played at tourist destinations around the capital. In fact, the playing technique could not be less alike.

Rather than using a horse-hair bow, the sanxian is played like a guitar and, thanks to the resonator at the bottom, can produce a rather loud sound. There are no frets on a sanxian, so the player adjusts the tone by sliding their finger up and down, as one would a violin.

The instrument has declined in popularity, partly due to its price. It is significantly more expensive to produce than other simpler string instruments. But as they’re available for rent in Beijing, why not give it a go?

For more information on these instruments, or to find lessons for your kids in Beijing, visit the Chinese instrument music school CNEthnic.

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons