Monday, June 25

We had a quiet school day today;  Julia’s field trips begin tomorrow, so we all just hung out and tried to pass the time!  Mr. Lee came in after school and worked on the internet for an hour; finally got it, although it has cut in and out all evening; we’ll see if I can get this sent in one open interval.


Here are some pictures of Julia enjoying her new hair cut, hair supplies, and the neighborhood:

Some tidbits about China, from Maggie and Mia.

This northeast section of Qingdao is only about 10 years old!  I was flabbergasted when I heard that.  Much of it looks more worn than that.  Is it the quality of the materials, the quality of the construction, the effect of the pollution on surfaces?   According to Maggie, 10 years ago this area was too far out to be considered a decent place to live; now, it is just slightly out of the downtown, very definitely in the city.

Maggie told me that the Chinese are not permitted to adopt Chinese orphans.  There is a slim area of exception for couples who are infertile, but even they have to wait to apply until they are 35—having proved, so to speak, that the infertility is real.  She also mentioned that in couples where both partners are only children, then these couples are permitted to have a second child without paying the fine.   She seems to think that in the relatively near future, the one child rule will be rolled back.  I am skeptical; yes, there are fewer children being born, but the population is so far above manageable….Maggie’s generation must feel they are paying the debt for generations of Chinese society—their parents had as many children as pleased them, and it is possible their children will have more latitude, if not quite the freedom of the grandparents.  It’s a hard place!  She spoke wistfully of a family in the school ‘lucky’ enough to have 3 children.

Mia told me of a traditional aphorism about ‘the Chinese lady’:  she cannot be too white, too thin, or too small.  Mia shared this aphorism in the context of bemoaning her own skin color.  I was a little taken aback; I hadn’t given it much thought beyond recognizing that there is a range of skin tones in the Chinese, just as there is a range of dark hair colors.  For Mia, bright, thoughtful, educated, to be harboring that sense made me feel sad (says a woman who has lived uncomfortably in her own body shape for 40 years, so who am I to speak?!)  Skin color, though—what an awful and tenacious prejudice across cultures.