Beijing

The problem with moving.

Autism, Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As I think forward to the concept of moving again, I reflect upon the difficulties this will present. I also think about the difficulties it has presented in the past.

My wife and I do not enjoy moving, in fact we detest it. Even if our living arrangement is not ideal, the idea of packing everything to move is more frightful. We would rather repair, and disinfect a place ourselves than to move out of an unhealthy situation. We have done exactly that in the past.

While living in ChaoYang, I had some serious difficulty with a coworker at that time. We had a mold issue near the living-room window, the apartment only had 2 bedrooms and a large living room. When we moved in there was a broken kitchen counter, and the gas range fan was caked with an inch of grease.

We repaired the counter using my tools, fixed the toilet flush. And spent nearly a whole day scrubbing the grease off the kitchen exhaust fan.

We had our routines that we loved though. There was a wet market around the corner that we could get almost anything we needed. They had seamstresses for clothing repair. There was fruit and vegetables and fresh meat on the first floor. They sold basic furniture, electronics, blankets, curtains, and everything you needed for a home. They had a pet store, and seafood. There was gardening equipment, and home-repair tools. A whole floor of stationary and decorations for festivals. We loved going there all the time.

There was a supermarket across the street. That building had food booths, and restaurants. every Canadian Thanksgiving we used to go to a certain restaurant we called “The Red Restaurant” because of the sign. They had a Tailor, and pharmacies there. We knew exactly where everything was. Unfortunately the supermarket itself shrank twice while we were there. It began as a 2 floor market, then it shrank to just the first floor. Then our last year there, it shrank to half the first floor. Piano schools, dance schools, and science academies moved in upstairs.

There were two malls that were a short walk away, and we enjoyed walking there as a family. These malls, had movie theaters, and cat-cafe’s. You could sit with your drink and pet a cat. There was a lot of things to do there, including eating, board games, VR games, a couple large playgrounds for the kids and more.

Just around the corner was a great street food culture in the evenings. If we didn’t feel like cooking, we could just walk down the street and buy a large variety of food. All of these little food carts would appear in the early evening, and some of the foods were amazing, and cheap.

After moving to the ShunYi area, we have gone to visit the malls and the wet market in ChaoYang a couple of times. But we have tried to build new routines here. It has been hard, however. ShunYi, while more spread out and suburban, has less things like home repair and tools shops. It took us a while to find good green grocers, and there isn’t a large mall nearby. Instead there is a cosmopolitan shopping plaza.

This area is more expensive than ChaoYang, and it took us a while to get used to it. There is a lot more variety in restaurants and coffee shops. The plaza has more things for the children as well. They can buy birdseed and feed pigeons at “Pigeon Plaza”. There is an outside playground surrounded by a permanent farmer’s market. The plaza has 2 trains for families to ride around on.

Unfortunately some of the difficulties in our routines that arose is change. For the first couple of years we would find a coffee shop, grocery store or restaurant we liked, and it would disappear, or get down-sized and moved. For example there was a great restaurant / cafe next to a fountain plaza. They had an amazing bakery, and excellent fried chicken. after we had been patrons for about 7 months, (Bare minimum to make it a routine), it closed and moved practically next door. Now it is 1/4 the size, has no bakery, and no restaurant. They sell coffee, ice-cream, and sandwiches now.

Our second favorite cafe did the same a few months after that, and moved to the far side of the plaza, a good 20 minutes walk through the compound.

Now My wife and I consistently go to a cafe attached to a book store. It has survived.

But now, we have given notice to our school that we plan to move after this school year. My son has graduated, and we wish to get out of Beijing. While this is exciting, it has already begun to cause fear in my family. We don’t know where we are going yet. We don’t know what type of place it will be. We don’t know how long we will be needing to get acclimate to the new area.

My wife and I are both quite nervous about this, and I we still have 6 months left at this house and school. We have both lost sleep over this, but we made a promise to ourselves that we would leave Beijing.

I feel that even if we stayed, our family dynamic is changing as my son will be a legal adult. And this in itself is a very scary point for us. While he plans to have a gap year to focus on language learning, things are different.

Can we get him a visa to stay with us next year? Can we find a language school for him? Will he have to move out to another country? Is he ready to go out on his own? Have we taught him how to handle himself and his difficulties well enough? What support will he have if he’s out on his own?

If I’m still having trouble setting up and managing myself and my difficulties, how is he going to do?

And this all causes other issues. The more I worry about things, the more I get distracted, disorganized, and lost. I have been needing my personal space, and my huggables more often.

Most people don’t realize this, but it causes me to have more indigestion and heartburn. It also causes me to have more balance issues. (Both of these will be discusses in other articles.)

So as I look forward to the next school year, I need to sit down to put on my shoes more, and rely on my akla-seltzer tablets more. I also get lost in my classroom as I move from my desk at the back to the front of the room. I tend to head back to my desk 2 or 3 times now to get papers and material I prepared and forgot about. I need my alarms more to remind me when I have to finish class, or go get the children. And I need to sit down more when I am on duty watching the children outside.

At home I feel more sluggish in making decisions, and just want to find that next job so I have an idea of where we will be going to.

Wish me luck.

Playgrounds: Fun & Games or Danger?

Daily Life, Family, Musings, , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As a parent, living abroad, I have had a very hard time finding free places for my children to play. This has been an ongoing difficulty for the last 18 years. Parks and recreation areas exist, but are not geared for children.

In Beijing, there are a lot of green space parks. I see them all around the city. We walk through them and can relax easily. The one thing I have noticed about these parks, is that they are often equipped with outdoor exercise equipment. Equipment that is suited for the aging senior citizen population. There are no swings, or see saws, or climbing rigs. Instead there are walkers, and stair climbers, and rigs for rotating arms and wrists.

I asked someone about this once. I was told that children needed to use their energy to study and prepare for adulthood. After retirement, they could play.

Apartment compounds are similarly equipped for seniors. The one compound we lived in did have an aging wooden climbing rig with some metal rocking horses on springs. but they were falling apart and not cared for at all. It had no children playing at it.

The school I worked for years at fluctuated on this. When I joined 18 years ago, they had a jungle gym with a slide, climbing bars and stepping stones. Less than a year after I joined a little boy got hurt on the rig. The school removed it to avoid a lawsuit. For the next 2 years there was no playground, just a running track, and soccer field.

Three years later, they installed some new climbing bars. That same year, a girl fell off them and banged her head on the bars on the way down. They were dug up and removed.

5 years later they installed a swing set near the front gate. The security guards would keep an eye on it. I am not clear on the cause, but within a month, they removed the swing and left the frame.

Every few years the school would put something in, and within 2 or 3 months it would be gone.

For the entire primary school years of my two older children, we had to pay for them to enter private playgrounds. They would appear at supermarkets, or malls. However, as soon as there was enough Yearly passes sold, they would disappear. Few of them stayed open. and they were always packed.

I asked one of my son’s classmate’s parents once about how they arranged social time. I was told, that they arranged for their child to attend the same math classes and English classes after school as their friends. Then they could play in class. This seemed to be the general consensus. We did eventually get my son to be able to visit his friend’s house to play a few times. My daughter was not so lucky.

When we moved to my new school I thought things might be different. The school has a lovely playground, and it takes care of it. During the pandemic, my children had free reign over the playground with the other kids that lived on campus. It was great.

Kids at this school had to have insurance. It was a requirement to even register with the school. So if a child gets hurt, the parents wouldn’t sue the school. Theoretically.

Last summer they replaced the playground with a great big new playground. It has climbing poles, and nets, and slides, and in one area 3 roundabouts. 2 that you can sit on and 1 that you hang from.

Well a little girl was on the roundabout and flew off while it was spinning. So the school welded them all still. The kids, being kids, broke the weld by forcing the roundabouts around. and the school bolted them.

So now we have 3 brand new roundabouts that are useless, and are just seats, or hanging bars.

My point with all this is this. When did society decide that children cannot play? Or that they can only play where there is a profit to be made from them?

I remember being thrown off of a seesaw when I was a child. I lost a tooth, and bloodied my nose. It was terrifying, and I don’t recommend it. But from my experience, everyone nearby learned. The compound kept the seesaw. When the other kids played on it, they made sure that the weight was close to even.

I cannot imagine what would happen here and now if that happened.

Look I don’t want my children being mauled or disabled by playground equipment. but I do want them to be able to learn from making mistakes. They need to learn to identify problems or dangers. If we take all dangers away from them, they cannot learn this fundamental skill.

My children used to see more playgrounds in Peppa Pig and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse than they did in real life. So with the youngest I want to keep her out playing as long as the air is clean enough. If she gets hurt, we’ll hug her and she will learn from it. Worse case scenario, she needs a doctor for an injury. but still, she will get support from us, and will learn. She will also get time to play with other kids, and learn social skills that we had to fight hard to expose her older siblings to.

Does this make me a bad parent in the world’s eyes?