It is spring in Beijing. The temperature has gone from too cold to too hot, the winds of Mongolia have coated the city in a fine yellow dust and the mobile phone salesmen have come out of their winter slumber.
China has more mobile phone users than any other country in the world–over a billion and rising by the second. Many of the mobile phones here are covered in glittering rhinestones and embellished with pink bunny ears.
As much as I would like to have a more technologically advanced phone and deck it out in jewels and cute body parts, I cannot give up my simple prepaid Nokia due to a vow I took seven years ago.
Despite the amazing number of mobile phone deals available here, I was forever dissuaded from having a whizzy phone after my last experience with a phone contract when we left our home in the US.
The build-up to the departure was the most exhilarating and exhausting four weeks of my life. We put our businesses online, we sold cars, we sold houses, and we figured out our four teenage daughters’ educational needs. During the entire process of shutting down our life in the US, we had almost zero frustrations. Almost zero.
I inadvertently left my mobile on the airport hotel nightstand the morning of our departure. I had not yet canceled my mobile account since I wanted to use the phone until we left the country.
Once in Mexico, I spent hours and hours and faxes and faxes getting the contract canceled. For some reason, the cancellation of a mobile contract requires an act of God to complete—and God must be willing to go in person to the mobile phone office to speak with someone who can’t help him. All in all it was a three-month process during which I had to pay for use of a phone I did not have and could not have used.
Forever scarred by the memory of that contract process, I have vowed to purchase only the most basic prepaid phones. Seven years and eight countries later, I have stuck with that vow–jewels and bunny ears be damned.
For English teachers abroad, the “family tree” lesson plan almost teaches itself. First, you draw a generic tree on the blackboard. Next, there is the question and answer section to define how many family titles a particular person might have in a family tree. And then the grand finale—having the students draw their own family tree. If a teacher does it right, he can stretch the lesson out over two class periods—and spend hardly any time prepping.
I did the family tree lesson last week in my kindergarten class and it was over before it began thanks to China’s one-child policy. Because the policy has been in place since 1978, China is into the second generation of only-children. Turns out that contemporary Chinese family trees look pretty much like a stick with a couple of leaves at the top.
Most of my students have no uncles, aunts or cousins and an average of 7 people in a their three-generation family tree. I did my best to explain what uncles, aunts and cousins are but if you don’t have any, a five year old has a hard time with the concept.
Also due to the one-child policy is a high degree of franticness demonstrated by parents. They are obsessed with doing everything right for their only-children, which means they do everything for them. This anxiety is heightened due to the fact that EVERYONE they talk to about parenting also has just one child and is doing exactly the same thing.
Not only are the parents frantic about raising the one perfect child, the grandparents are also heavily invested in that one grandchild becoming a good student, a good person and good provider. He/she is their meal ticket when they get old, and of course Mom and Dad’s meal ticket as well.
The only non-anxious member of the family unit appears to be the kids themselves. With four grandparents and two parents around to do everything for them, they barely need to lift a finger. Perhaps it is best to keep them in the dark as long as possible before exposing them to the bright harshness of being the single root.
