If there’s one thing that schools learned last year, it’s to have many contingency plans to choose from in the event we need to shut down and move to e-learning. Part of those plans includes the possibility of shifting school vacation dates as needed or eliminating some breaks entirely to compensate for missed time in person. In fact, when it was announced that Shunyi schools would start online, many chose to extend the Chinese New Year break and forego spring break in an attempt to maximize how much time students will spend together in the classroom. Other schools are keeping this option in their back pocket.

School vacations, and especially the Spring Festival, are usually times that families travel out of Beijing. But with guidelines discouraging travel and most people staying put, it’s possible that school breaks aren’t as necessary while we still have Covid outbreaks, even small and controlled ones. Rather than seeing a school year as starting on a fixed day and ending at a set time with scheduled breaks, maybe it’s time to consider a more flexible timeframe.

Summer vacations, after all, evolved mostly out of convenience over the years. In some areas, it was too hot during those summer months to even be inside a classroom. Summers have since come to mean downtime, summer jobs, and a chance to see family or go on vacations, or for some students, it’s considered a forth semester to continue studies elsewhere.

What do you think we should do? Take this year a few weeks at a time or rethink our idea of vacations entirely? Scan the QR code to let us know!

KEEP READING: Growing Up In a Gentler World: Encouraging Kids To Be Kind

Images: Canva

Is it really that big of a deal to let your child have a sip of alcohol during the holidays?

For the record, drinking age in China is 18 years old, but I’ve yet to see a single restaurant card their younger-looking customers, and videos of small children doing beer and cigarette runs for their dad have been circulating on video streaming sites for years now.

I’m from California, and while the legal drinking age in the US is 21, my mom, along with my friends’ parents, were all pretty lenient about us having a drink with dinner and even having parties with alcohol in high school. I think their logic was sound. “They’re high school kids and they’re going to drink anyway. Might as well let them do it with us around so we know they’re safe.” Making alcohol available to us took away the thrill that we were doing something taboo. It made it unnecessary to own a fake ID and it allowed us to know our own limits before jetting off to college.

We never had to throw parties behind our parents’ backs. Every party, no matter how crazy it got, always had an adult present who stayed out of our way but was available if anything happened.

My fellow Southern Californian beijingkids editor Drew Pittock had a different experience growing up. His parents didn’t allow him to drink a single drop of alcohol at home before he was 21, but when they were on vacation in other countries where the drinking age is 18, he’d be allowed to drink alcohol. It wasn’t a matter of health and safety, it was a matter of legality.

So what’s Beijing parents’ take on letting their kids have a sip during the holidays?

According to Zeus Zou, a Beijing native, he grew up having small sips of beer and wine at family dinners along with the occasion sips of baijiu when he still in his teens, especially around the holidays. “None of us are alcoholics or even that into drinking. It’s just the family culture that everyone gets a drink around the holidays and during family reunions, ” says Zou.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese parents, especially the dads, to give their sons as young as 8 or 9 years old sips of baijiu or beer in front of other adults. I’ve also seen dads proudly tell other dinner guests that his 8-year-old son likes the taste of beer as if it was a rite of passage to manhood.

Not all parents in Beijing agree though.

“The evidence is there for all to see: drinking while your brain is developing, as a child, through your teens and even in your early twenties, has been shown to cause permanent damage to the still-developing brain.” Juliet London tells beijingkids. London is a mother of two, ages 17 and 20. “Most of my friends think I’m being ridiculous when I say we should expect our children not to drink, but I strongly believe that our children are most likely to conform to our expectations. While we don’t want them to drink, if we expect them to, then, guess what? They are likely to drink. I don’t not let my children. Instead, I take an informed consent approach. I have given my children as much information as possible about the reasons they should delay drinking alcohol. I have never banned it. But equally, I have not encouraged them to drink at home with the belief that ‘A little bit can’t do them any harm.’ It definitely can do them harm. Research shows it. We try to keep the channels open. I’m aware that my children have drunk alcohol and of course occasionally continue to do so and are open about it. I would never punish them for this. If there is ever a problem, either for them personally or their friends, that they know they can tell me about it. Indeed, even at their tender ages, they tell me they are concerned about friends who they know are drinking alcohol in an unhealthy way – they come from all kinds of backgrounds, from the most abstemious to the most lenient.”

Alan Wong, founder and owner of the Hatsune Group and father of two, is a regular on the Beijing and Shanghai food and beverage scene. He sees it differently. He gave his son his first taste of wine at just 3 months. “I wanted to see his reaction,” Wong tells beijingkids. “For me, it’s the same thing as parents putting lemons or wasabi in kid’s mouths.” His son Mason is now 10 years old and still takes sips of dad’s wine at dinners. According to Wong, Mason has an impressively refined wine palette. His younger son Ryder is 7 years old and prefers a different beverage. Unlike his brother, Ryder likes the taste of beer. When we asked if Wong is worried that he’ll get in trouble with other parents, “I don’t care, I’m in the restaurant business, they’re gonna drink…”

Similarly, food and beverage professional, owner and founder of TRB Hospitality Group Ignace Lecleir is known for treating his kids like young adults. “I’m from Europe. My grandfather gave me sips of wine from when I was 8 years old. By 10 years old, having a glass of diluted wine with water on the weekends was pretty standard.” Lecleir tells beijingkids. “For me, it’s not a real issue to introduce kids to the different flavors of alcohol. I personally feel that when it’s a taboo, it becomes more exciting for kids to break the rules. When my daughter Paris turned 16 years old she expressed a strong interest in having some cocktails so we went to Janes and Hooch and had 2 cocktails. She enjoyed them, and got sick on the way home. She has been having an occasional drink ever since. She’s not 18 years old and has a very healthy, responsible relationship with alcohol.”

POLL:
Share with us your thoughts and scan the QR code to vote!

Is it OK for underage kids to drink alcohol?

Yes. Why not?
No. Absolutely not!
I’d rather not know what my kid is doing.
It’s only OK if I’m around.
It’s only OK around the holiday season.

Photos: giphy, unsplash, Alan Wang

This week we reported about a hidden statistical nugget in a story from China Daily, claiming that Beijing men spend almost as much time (1 hour 50 minutes) on daily household tasks as women (1 hour and 58 minutes). To test this we conducted a little survey of our own.

Early polling of beijingkids readers show women doing almost 2.5x the amount of housework compared to men, despite this original report stating that men and women were just about equal. Our tally is currently at 117 minutes for women compared to 43 minutes from men.

The original study by the Beijing survey office of the National Bureau of Statistics was created to analyze the rise in working hours of Beijingers, and polled 4,238 people older than 15 in 1,700 households. It stated that while Beijing women averaged 58 minutes less in the workplace, they worked eight minutes more than men doing chores.

While our readers’ numbers might be skewed by their dependency on ayis or mother-in-laws pitching in, the skewed ratio still holds: women in our readership group are doing nearly three times the housework than men. We hope this isn’t the case as there is much that can still be done by men outside of cleaning and cooking to share the mental load. Help us to more accurately determine who’s doing the lion’s share by forwarding our survey to your friends and acquaintances so that we can conclude our ultimate treatise on the Beijing expat family chore wars.

While it might be the tendency to believe that men don’t do their share of housework, times are definitely changing and it is becoming the norm for the patriarch to shoulder more and more of these household responsibilities.

If you are a mother out there looking for more support from the old man, set aside some time to develop a plan or a chore wheel to support each other through equally divvying out these essential responsibilities. Also, check this list out for more ways dads can help share the mental/physical load of parenthood.