Batgung - Children

Teaching kids about race

Mr Tall — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

There’s a remarkable article on kids and race in a recent issue of Newsweek magazine (yes, Newsweek actually still exists). The article’s authors, the novelist Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, have written a book on raising kids they’ve cutely titled NurtureShock. The article is an excerpt.

Bronson and Merryman begin by describing a research study conducted on a group of white children in the super-progressive college town of Austin, Texas. But they wring their metaphorical hands over its unexpected results: the children of good solid White parents (who bend over backwards to convey their multicultural bona fides) never the less think people of their own race are nicer than people from other races.

The authors note that many parents involved in this study dropped out. Why? They were so worried about saying the wrong thing that they couldn’t bring themselves to talk to their children about race at all – after all, their child might make an embarrassing statement in public that could implicate Ma and Pa as potential racists, or at least as insufficiently enthusiastic multiculturalists.

Another study the authors recount sounds even worse: children who attend ‘diverse’ schools are at least as likely to develop negative stereotypes of people from other races as do kids who attend monocultural schools.

So what’s the solution to all this racial angst? Do the authors entertain the possibility that intensive anti-racist, pro-multiculturalist, pro-diversity educational efforts actually heighten racial tensions rather than improve them?

Uh, no. Instead, they suggest that more explicit anti-racist guidance is required, starting as young as possible. Age three is suggested as a good place to get started teaching kids about race, since it’s before the ‘developmental window’ in which they’re easily malleable closes:

Small corrections in our thinking today could alter the character of society long term, one future citizen at a time. The way white families introduce the concept of race to their children is a prime example.

Another study quoted advocates teaching kids about race by packing some ideological punch:

White children who got the full story about historical discrimination had significantly better attitudes toward blacks than those who got the neutered version. Explicitness works. "It also made them feel some guilt," Bigler adds. "It knocked down their glorified view of white people."

But note the catch in both of the previous quotations: the ‘full story about historical discrimination’ has a big ‘Whites Only’ sign on the door. Children of other races are routinely taught ‘ethnic pride’, and that’s fine. So, as the authors admit:

That leads to the question that everyone wonders but rarely dares to ask. If "black pride" is good for African-American children, where does that leave white children? It's horrifying to imagine kids being "proud to be white." Yet many scholars argue that's exactly what children's brains are already computing. Just as minority children are aware that they belong to an ethnic group with less status and wealth, most white children naturally decipher that they belong to the race that has more power, wealth, and control in society; this provides security, if not confidence. So a pride message would not just be abhorrent—it'd be redundant.

****

What would happen if I tried to apply Bronson and Merryman’s approach to my mixed-race daughter here in Hong Kong? Is it ‘horrifying’ if I try to teach her to be proud of her white (i.e. European-American) heritage? And should Hong Kong schools teach local kids that it’s ‘abhorrent’ if they feel proud to be Chinese, because Chinese people hold the ‘power, wealth and control’ in Hong Kong society?

In fact, if we carry out the authors’ assumptions to their logical conclusions, Daughter Tall should feel doubly guilty: one of her parents is a white American, and the other is a member of a dominant majority culture. I guess Mrs Tall and I have a whole lot of ‘knocking down’ of Daughter Tall’s ‘glorified views’ of her heritage on our agenda!

Is this really what Bronson and Merryman have in mind? I find that hard to believe.

****

I find the Bronson and Merryman article particularly frustrating because I agree with Bronson on several other controversial issues raised in the book, parts of which are based on a series of articles he wrote for New York Magazine:

Bronson shoots down the theory of self-esteem being based on how much kids are praised, i.e. ‘How not to talk to your kids’. This is a superb article, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, in fact.
He makes a convincing case for nipping lying in the bud when kids are young in ‘Learning to lie’. I was also very favorably impressed with this article, since I knew in my heart that a certain daughter of mine was perfectly capable of telling lies at a very young age – much earlier than any baby books or developmental theories I’d encountered suggested was possible.
Bronson also argues very convincingly how important enough sleep is, especially to adolescents in ‘Snooze or lose’.

****

Bronson and Merryman are right, I think, in pointing out that kids are not simply going to benefit in some amorphous, mystical way just by being physically present in ‘diverse’ settings. Children inevitably notice racial differences and will at some point start to wonder about them. And I think there’s little doubt kids are drawn to people who look like themselves.

This is bad news for concerned parents who have assumed that dropping Junior off each day at Highly Diverse Multicultural School ensures that he’ll turn out to be a sensitive, tolerant, polished PC product. It means that the burden of teaching Junior about race has to fall on someone, and that as parents they can either trust his school to do a good job of it (and many people do not trust schools to this degree), or they have to take on the task themselves. Bronson and Merryman are right in that this issue can’t simply be sidestepped.

But if they get the form right, I believe they get the content wrong. They are too quick to accede to the prevailing conventional wisdom (at least in the USA) that posits that some races or cultures can be labeled as worthy of pride or celebration, while others must be subject to self-denunciation and apologies. This demeans all parties involved: it implies that members of some races are guilty by dint of their birth, and that members of others can only be held to lower standards. After all, which race (or ethnic group of any sort) is either an unqualified success, or an irredeemable disaster?

The content of what you teach your children about race is crucial. The messages we pass on to our children about race have to be more balanced and truthful than the politically-correct platitudes Bronson and Merryman quote in their article.

****

Although the issue of race is not an overweening presence in Hong Kong, it’s also never quite absent if you’re an expat, your spouse is local, and your children are mixed.

So what are the best ways to teach such children about their racial and cultural heritage, while avoiding both jingoistic cheerleading and self-indulgent (and ultimately self-congratulatory) guilt-wallowing and breast-beating?

I’m looking forward to responses.

A Performance Enjoyed By All

Mr Tall — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0000

If you’re new to Hong Kong, you may have noticed that just about every Hong Kong kid seems to take music/art lessons. But most don’t take them at school, or at individual instructors’ homes or studios. Instead, their parents sign them up at for-profit organizations that serve as venues/clearinghouses for piano, singing, drawing and drama teachers to practice their necromancy – uh, I mean to apply their talents in passing along our civilization’s cultural heritage to today’s youth.

But since most of these businesses are shoehorned into small shop spaces and the odd corners of big housing estates, they have no grand halls sufficiently lavish to display the glories of their young clients’ gifts. Many of them therefore rent spaces to hold once-a-year American Idol-like free-for-alls in which each and every kid gets a chance to get up there and face down the spotlight. For example, Daughter Tall’s arts tutorial center has for the past couple of years booked the musty little hall deep in the basement of the Hong Kong Arts Centre.

The programs themselves are part church Christmas pageant, part talent show, part (semi) formal recital, and part unholy chaos, as we shall see . . . .

Allow me to share with you some of the highlights of Daughter Tall’s center’s showcase, which we attended last week:

The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy, whose exertions on the skins clearly had not been sufficient to work off all of those Twinkies. His performance was puzzling. An obviously studio-produced song was played on the auditorium sound system, and he just kind of drummed along. Isn’t the point of a drummer (other than to beat up hoodlums who rush the stage, a la ‘The Commitments’) to set down the beat himself? Oh well, at least the song in question was a competently-executed if anodyne cover by what seemed to be a British (!?) blues band, so it was not especially painful.

A song 'performed' by a choir of the tiniest tots, i.e. the just-turned three-years-old set. Not much singing went on (none, come to think of it) but occasional hand motions were made. This gig featured the whole range of stock behavior one expects, and frankly loves to see, from kids in their first performance: one kid crying his eyes out, another lifting her dress over her head, one spending the whole performance waving to Mommy in the audience, another wandering off the side of the stage and being hustled back into place by Teacher, and so on.

A violin rendition of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ identifiable only by the title in the program. Come to think of it, the poor boy playing it might well have been trying out a wholly different song. His accompanist, one of the arts centre’s employees, clearly suspected this was the case, evidenced by the glares of deep frustration and badly-disguised contempt she directed at our soloist throughout this number. Let’s just say she did not appear to be the model of patience and long-suffering one desires in a children’s music teacher . . . .

Long sets of beginner piano students playing their recital pieces. Not much need be said here, except that these miniature Lang Langs are awfully cute when they pop up and do their lavish bows after finishing their pieces. At least their teachers get that part down pat!

A ‘drama’ with environmental overtones. Not only did Daughter Tall have a big speaking part, as the oldest child involved she was granted the privilege of holding the single available microphone, and of shoving it into the faces of the tots responsible for the remaining lines in the play. All went well at first, with Daughter Tall demonstrating only a mild tendency to jerk the instrument away from others (and back to herself) just before they’d been able to finish off their bits. This rough equilibrium deteriorated, however, during the drama’s climax – a song about trees, or perhaps bunnies – during which Daughter Tall took upon herself both sole possession of the microphone, and the heavy burden of Singing Leader, culminating in the song’s final extended high note, which Daughter Tall screeched into the mike in the style of a six-year-old female Tom Jones. The audience went wild, but as her father, I can’t say this was an unmixed blessing.

The program ended with all participants lining up on the stage for a rousing rendition of ‘We Are the World’. After the first couple of bars, however, the kids threw off the shackles of bourgeois etiquette and began energetically pursuing a mass expression of civil unrest. The ringleader of the vanguard (her father notes with a heavy sigh) was again Daughter Tall, and a fervent revolutionary urge to liberate the microphone from the hegemony of the running dogs of fair sharing was again the historically deterministic cause underlying the assault on the rotting moral superstructure, if you know what I mean. Ah, well. We got some good video.

As the song ended, but the rioting carried on with no decrease in intensity, parents organized themselves into search-and-rescue parties and stormed the stage to reclaim their offspring, and smiles and head-patting ensued – until next year’s extravaganza, that is.

The kicker for these programs is that parents must not only sacrifice several valuable hours of their lives and spend them witnessing the desecration of the flowers of human culture, they have to pay for the privilege. Renting that hall isn’t free, and given that there’s certain to be a captive audience of parents and other relatives, a rather shocking three-digit/ticket price is charged. I suspect it ends up being a nice little earner for the arts tutorial center.

Hong Kong parents: any similar tales of your own? I guarantee you a sympathetic ear, assuming mine still function after last week . . . .

Short stay accomodation / visiting HK with a toddler

haklh — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:29:53 +0000

Hi All, I would be grateful for any tips and info on coming to HK for a short visit with a toddler.

I am planning a family trip (3 adults and 1 20-month old toddler) to HK in October. It's only a short stay of one week.

I am trying to find a 2-3 bedroom furnished apartment, but most serviced apartment places require a 1-month minimum. The only place I can find so far is Olympic Terrace. Does anyone know anywhere else? I have looked on moveandstay.com and no luck there at this stage.

I would definitely prefer a place in the Wanchai / Causeway Bay area because I am already familiar with these areas...

Also, my experience from past visits suggest that HK is not a very pushchair-friendly place (lots of steps, narrow paths and aisles). Is this concern justified? Any tips on surviving a trip with a toddler who will need a lot of carrying around?

Family hiking in Hong Kong

Mr Tall — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:00:00 +0000

The Family Tall went out for our first hike of the 2007-08 season last Saturday morning, and in the flurry of preparations required for hiking with a five-year-old, I was reminded of both how easy it is to get out on Hong Kong’s hiking trails, but also of why it’s just enough trouble that surprisingly few people actually do it.

So my purpose today is to try to pass along a few tips that might make it more feasible to get out and about on family hikes in Hong Kong. Longer, more ambitious hikes for all grown-ups we’ll leave for other times.

So how do we go about planning our family hikes?

As our own dear mothers no doubt reminded all of us, ‘Safety first’! While we’re actually hiking, Mrs Tall and I are careful to keep Daughter Tall close by us, and to make sure she’s taking a hand or is otherwise supported on the rougher bits of the trail. That’s common sense. But we also suggest the following safety tips:

Bring more water than you think you’ll ever need. The number one danger of hiking in Hong Kong is dehydration and heat exhaustion/heat stroke. When you hear of people getting in trouble hiking in Hong Kong, the odds are it’s a medical problem, not really a ‘hiking’ problem such as a fall or getting lost.

Buy, carry and use Hong Kong’s admirable Countryside Series of maps. Although most of Hong Kong’s trails are pretty clearly marked and signposted, it’s still entirely possible to get lost, especially late in an afternoon when the light starts to dim a bit. Having a good map is essential, even though you’re hiking in the middle of one of the world’s densest urban conurbations.

Make sure someone else knows where you’re going to be. This is a simple hiker-safety procedure, but it’s also pretty easy to not bother with.

Always take hats and lots of sunscreen. Hong Kong’s autumn and winter weather can be deceptive. Although temperatures are often quite cool (under the influence of the Northeast monsoon), the sun is still strong, since Hong Kong is geographically in the tropics. Therefore it’s easy to get a severe sunburn even on a cold but sunny day here. Hazy days – and days with the thin overcast that’s common here – may also have surprisingly high UV ratings.

Watch out for snakes. The only really dangerous wildlife you’re likely to run into in Hong Kong are poisonous snakes. In the years I’ve been hiking here, I’ve seen just three significant snakes, but one of these was in fact this past Saturday. We Talls were just about finished with our walk, and were coming down toward Tseung Kwan O on a disused roadway, when Mrs Tall jumped and yelled. She’d spotted quite a large (maybe five or six foot long) snake right in front of us. I caught sight of it just as it was escaping into the undergrowth, but saw enough, in combination with Mrs Tall’s description, to tentatively identify it as a Red-necked Keelback, a poisonous snake that’s common around Hong Kong. Hong Kong is also home to several other poisonous species such as Bamboo snakes and cobras, plus some big constrictors and pythons. But if you stick to the trails and watch your step, the chances of your being bitten by a snake are vanishingly small. After our sighting last week, Mrs Tall is a bit harder to convince of this than she once was, but Daughter Tall and I took our snake encounter to be the crowning event in an exciting hike!

Watch out for other feral animals. Hong Kong’s infested with feral dogs, cattle and monkeys. The dogs are likely the most dangerous, but all are best avoided. If you’re going to be hiking in an area in which you know you’ll see such animals (as in the Golden Mountain hike I mention below) it’s not a bad idea for at least one member of your hiking party to carry a hiking stick that can double as a makeshift shoo-ing away weapon.

Now that you’ve got all the safety concerns squared away, and you’re looking to get out on a family hike soon, where do you start?

Of course you have to identify a hike that’s feasible for children. This is easier than it sounds, though. For example, although Daughter Tall is just five, she can handle a trail that’s surprisingly rough. Most of Hong Kong’s trails are therefore possibilities. In fact, Daughter Tall is much more balky and uninterested when our hikes come out on paved roads or other ‘easy’ sections: there’s just not as much novelty value and excitement for her. But it’s also foolish to plan a hike that has lots of steep climbs or rough sections; small kids do tire easily, and you don't want to be stuck a long way from anywhere with a child who won't walk.

If you’re lucky (like we are), you’ve got a hiking trail or country park near your home that you can use as a base. This past week we just took a taxi up the hill behind our housing estate, and we were on the Wilson Trail. But we've also got a number of other favorite short hikes that we take that are all family-friendly, i.e. their starting/ending points are easy enough to get to; they’re at a difficulty level a small child can handle; and they’ve got enough inherent scenic or other interest to make for good clean family fun:

One lovely, nearly all-downhill walk we do starts at the Peak Tram station, goes down the south side of the Peak, then around the Pokfulam Reservoir, coming out right at a bus stop on Pokfulam Road. The hightlights here are getting up to the Peak itself, spending a little time at the station, maybe for lunch, and the very pleasant segment of the walk around the reservoir itself. Tips for this one: you do have to turn off the road that leads down from the Peak and onto a regular dirt hiking trail. There’s a signpost there to guide you, but it’s still easy to miss.

An alternative on Hong Kong Island is to start at Wan Chai Gap, near the Police Museum, then walk down to Aberdeen via the Aberdeen Reservoirs.

Back on the other side of the harbour, we do any number of routes starting from the ‘Golden Mountain’ section of the Maclehose Trail, i.e. the point at which the trail crosses Tai Po Road; this spot is also popularly known as ‘Monkey Hill’, since it’s where crowds of feral macaques gather to harass, and be harassed. We’ve never had any serious problem with them (until recently; see below!), but you do need to take care not to expose food to them, as they have been known to attack. Usually we head west from this point, and do some combination of the paths around the Kowloon Reservoirs; they’re flat, with water always on one side.

The Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve, also off Tai Po Road. This little gem of a country park is circled by a variety of generally easy trails of differing lengths. To me, it’s the best spot in Hong Kong to get a feel of a ‘real forest’, as its trees are quite mature and dense.

The hike across Lamma Island, from So Kwu Wan to Yueng Shue Wan, is also very suitable for families, and includes nice ferry rides, which kids like.

So, readers: what are your favorite trails, especially those for the whole family?

MissB's kindergarten - did we make the right choice?

mrb — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 01:00:00 +0000

This time last year we were taking MissB along to kindergarten interviews. She’s just finishing her first term, and I'm pleased to report it's turned out really well. But though we're happy with our choice, it seems noone else is!

Why do we like it?

The simple fact that MissB looks forward to kindergarten each day is probably the best reason. Also, the teachers' attitudes were what we liked most at interview time, and fortunately they have continued through to the actual schooling.

It’s a local (ie not international) kindergarten, so the big change is how MissB’s spoken Cantonese has blossomed in the last three months. She never had a problem understanding it, but used to be happier speaking English. Now she’s equally confident in either language, and possibly more chatty in Cantonese. It took a while, as for the first few weeks she’d still speak English at school. The teachers would repeat each of her answers in Cantonese, and it didn’t take long for her to make the switch.

Then although she only attends morning classes, she stays on for school lunch. The happy benefit there is that she’s now eating a wider variety of food than when she just ate at home.

So the teachers are doing a great job, and take a lot of effort to tailor teaching to support the child. Little things like sitting MissB next to the chattiest two girls, so she’s always hearing lots of Cantonese. Or sending her home with a book to read that relates to a concern we’d raised in the parent-teacher meeting.

Other little touches I like include telling parents that getting clothes ready for the Christmas party (some creative use of recycled articles required) shouldn’t take more than two hours max. I’ve heard that these home projects can easily escalate into full-on quests for perfection, so some simple guidelines help keep the priorities clear.

We’ve also been pleased with the two school outings we’ve made, one to the zoological gardens, and one to the Lions Nature Education Centre. Now Hong Kong only has a limited selection of outing-friendly destinations, so in true Hong Kong-style you’ll be looking at the animal / plant / picture crowded in with several other groups of children. It’s a good chance to see some of the other schools’ teachers in action. They looked efficient, but just didn’t seem to be having as much fun.

What's not to like?

Well if there were prizes for high-volume snot-production, our house would be a winner. I think her kindergarten must be like a viral buffet, with MissB bringing home a different sample each week to share with friends and family. She’s also brought home another common Hong Kong viral infection – she now makes that ‘V’ hand signal if you point a camera at her. Oh, and whining. MissB seems to have learned some new ways to whinge and whine when she’s trying to get her own way. I picture the children all sitting together and trading tips – “Try this, it really drives my dad mad…”

I can’t really blame the kindergarten for any of those problems, they are just part of the fun of having a three-year old in the house. So it’s all working well, and yet we recently found out an odd thing. The local mums we know think we’re sending MissB to the wrong place!

They don’t say anything direct to MrsB, but grumble to our daily helper instead. I couldn’t understand it at first, because I know at least two of them complain about their children being unhappy at their chosen kindergartens. MrsB explained their reasoning as a combination of:

- It’s a shame MissB goes to a local school when as a mixed child she could be going to an international school. The perception being that international schools are somehow more fun to attend, there’s less homework, but somehow the kids still come out the other end having learned something! Also,

- It’s a shame she goes to that kindergarten when she could have gone to one of the big names. This one is a bit more complex. First there’s the feeling that since she’s mixed, she gets the novelty pass to gain easy access to the “Saint …” kindergartens that are usually difficult to find a place at. Then there seems to be a feeling that since MissB’s kindergarten is run by Caritas it’s seen as a sort of charity, somewhere you’d only go to if you couldn’t find somewhere better.

I suppose they might be right, but so far we’re all happy with our choice. I’ll let you know if that changes, but we’re keeping fingers crossed that the school's good work this first term will continue for the full three years.

Regards, MrB

Travel tips for your next home leave

mrb — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 01:00:00 +0000

If you're an expat with a young family, taking them on long journeys back home is a part of life. In our case it's a 12-hour flight to the UK, then a 4-hour drive in a hire car to my hometown. Here are a couple of things that helped on this year's trip...

Entertainment for our three year-old daughter

On the plane we knew she'd be happily glued to the children's channel of the inflight TV, but we were nervous about the car ride. Her experience of sitting in a car was limited to the occasional short taxi ride, so how would we/she survive the 4-hours drive?

I wanted to take her favourite movies, but didn't want the extra luggage of taking a portable DVD player (plus I hoped she'd enjoy looking out of the car window at least some of the time.) We thought we'd try just taking the soundtracks for her to listen to, as she's watched them so often at home that the movie plays inside her head anyway!

The first step was to record the soundtracks into MP3 files, which I did using a copy of FREE Hi-Q Recorder. It meant I had to play the DVDs to record them - there's probably a quicker way to rip the sound files directly from the DVD, but the slow method worked fine.

Next I burned the MP3 files to a CD, in the hope that the car's CD player could play MP3s. There was room for 7 or 8 movies and TV shows on the one CD. As a backup I also copied the files onto MrsB's MP3 player, and bought a small FM transmitter for HK$140. That plugs into the MP3 player's headphone socket, and lets you listen to the recordings on the car's FM radio - or any FM radio for that matter.

The hire car's CD player had no trouble with the MP3 CD, and MissB was happy, so we considered it a success. The only downside was that I must have listened to the same 'Little Einsteins' episode around 30 times, and can't get that theme tune out of my head... 'We're going on a trip in our favourite rocket ship...'

Camera or Camcorder?

My digital camera takes good photos and reasonable videos, but a 1Gb card can only hold around 10 minutes of video before it fills up. I didn't want to run out of storage for new films / photos half way through the trip, and it's too expensive to buy lots of spare cards.

My camcorder uses tapes, so no problem of running out of storage. It takes great videos and reasonable photos, but is quite bulky to carry around. I haven't used it for a couple of years now.

How to get the best of both worlds?

I decided to leave the camcorder at home and borrowed a friend's DigiMateII to overcome the camera's limited storage. The basic Digimate costs less than HK$200, then you have to add on several hundred $$$ for the cost of a notebook hard drive. (Or borrow the whole thing from a friend!) The one I borrowed had a 40Gb hard drive inside - so I could fill my 1Gb SD card 40 times (400 minutes of video) before the Digimate would run out of room.

It's very compact:

In use it is very simple as there are just two buttons. You take the memory card from your camera and slide it into the Digimate. Press the 'On' button, press the 'copy' button, and wait until the LCD shows it has finished copying. Each time you do this it creates a new folder on it's hard drive, with a complete copy of the SD card. Then you put the card back in the camera, and delete the films and photos so there is room for more.

The Digimate also acts as a USB hard drive, so when you get back home you just hook it up to the computer, download the files, and import them into into your camera's photo software.

It even has a rechargeable battery, so is meant to be completely portable. In practice I found that I was getting odd errors, and copies that would fail half way through. I eventually worked out that these only happened when I ran it on battery power. As long as it was connected to external power, I never had any problems (it includes a universal 100-240V power adapter, or it can be powered via USB). Also recommended.

Leave the chargers at home

After using the Digimate for a while I realised that its power adapter just had a standard USB socket, giving out USB 5V power. It's easy to buy USB cables to charge mobile phones, so I could have taken one along and left our phone chargers at home.

I include this for the fancy-free who only use carry-on luggage, and delight in shaving a few grams off the load. Our days of travelling lightly are on hold for a while. (You can also buy the power supplies separately - they cost HKD20.)

Protecting your camera

Finally a plug for the da Protector products - odd name, but I recommend them to anyone with a digital camera.

I keep my digital camera in my trouser pocket, uncased. This was never a problem until I bought a newer camera (a Digital Ixus 40) with a much larger - and more fragile - LCD. After having to pay to replace the screen for a second time I went looking for a solution, and found da Protector.

It's definitely low-tech - a piece of thick perspex cut neatly, and supplied with adhesive strips to cover your camera's screen. But it does the job, cost just USD8 including shipping, and arrived in Hong Kong just three days after ordering.

+ + +

How about you? What ways have you found to lighten the luggage load, and minimise the stresses of long journeys with young children?

MrB

Entertaining young children in Hong Kong

mrb — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 01:00:00 +0000

The boundless energy of a young child combined with the small size of a typical Hong Kong flat means you'll soon be looking for somewhere to take them out. Miss B Sr. is now two years and nine months, and lists her current favourites as:

'Big Park' (aka Ocean Park). The bargain here is that you can buy an Adult's annual pass for $495 (all prices in Hong Kong dollars), or $375 if you can give up Sundays and public Holidays. Under-three's get in free, so it's an inexpensive place to visit on a regular basis.

Our current route is to take the cable car out to the headland, and visit the sea lions and the big aquarium ('atoll reef'). The dolphin show has been closed for renovation recently, but we'll try that as soon as it reopens. She finds the shark exhibit too dark and a bit scary, so we give that a miss. (Though she also says the butterfly place is scary, so who knows what is going through her little mind?). It is definitely worth playing the 'Finding Nemo' movie before you go, as she likes to look for all the main characters swimming around in the aquarium.

Back to the lowland area and we can spend a couple of hours in the children's section. She especially enjoys the sea-lion show, so it's worth checking the timetable to see when that starts. Then we usually pay the Pandas a visit, before heading for home.

The food for sale is mainly chips and fried snacks. It's ok once or twice, but if you're visiting regularly you'll soon want to start bringing your own food.

Visit their website for more info.

'Downstairs park'. This is just our local public park, but somewhere we head every Saturday morning. Hong Kong has plenty of parks with playground equipment (see a map of some of our favourites), so you've probably got something to play on in a park near you. We try and get there early, as once the sun is higher than the nearby buildings it gets very hot. I also try to go there about the same time every week, so that over time Miss B sees the same children, I can see the same parents / helpers / grandparents, and we get to make some new friends. The only downside is that all these playgrounds seem to have the same little black midges that give me itchy bites. Miss B doesn't seem to get bitten - so either wear insect repellant, or run around as much as your children!

'Torya Park' (aka Victoria Park). If we're in TST or Causeway Bay, we try and take her to the playgrounds in Kowloon Park or Victoria Park respectively. The equipment is similar to that in an ordinary public park, but there's a lot more of it, and some more fancy stuff to play on.

'Monkey Park' (aka The Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens). As the name suggests, it's got monkeys and Orang Utangs to see, lots of pretty birds (currently off limits due to the Avian flu scare), an open area to play with other kids by the fountains, and a playground right at the top by Robinson Road.

Swimming pools. If your children like swimming, they have plenty of choice here. In the cooler weather we go to the Kowloon park indoor pool, as it is nice and bright - but can be a bit chilly. There's also the Morrison Hill pool in Wanchai, but I've always found it a bit crowded and a little bit grubby, so it's definitely the backup choice. Or you can pay $100 to be a member at the South China Athletic Association (SCAA) in Caroline Hill (near Causeway Bay), and they have a clean, warm children's pool.

In the Summer your options expand, as the outdoor pools open. You'll probably want to go in the late afternoon to avoid the strongest sun, or in mid-Summer it can be nice to go for a cooling splash in the evening when it is dark, as the outdoor pools are floodlit and stay open until 10pm.

More about Hong Kong pools, and the SCAA.

Beaches. Living in such a crowded place has its benefits - you're never far away from the countryside or the beaches. Take your pick from the list . We're currently going to Deep Water Bay and Chung Hom Kok on HK Island most often as they are easy to reach on public transport. There are lots more good beaches, and we'll expand our range again when Miss B Jr. is a bit older.

What about when it is too hot / cold / rainy to play outside?

A favourite is the Toy Library on the second floor of Central Library (which confusingly is in Causeway Bay and not Central). There are areas where you can play house, doctor, etc, and you can also request games from their catalogue. As you can guess, it is very popular so you'll need to book in advance - there is one session per hour.

Libraries. On the same floor of the Central library is the Children's section of the library, with a large selection of English-language books. Have you ever visited your local library? The selection of English-language books for adults can be disappointing, but there are usually plenty of English-language books for children and a pleasant area to sit and read them. Here is the list of libraries in Hong Kong.

Childrens play rooms. These are much less fancy than the Toy Library - basically just a big padded room with some simple padded shapes to play with. Still, if it's a rainy day and your children are driving you crazy thay can give you a break. Most of the urban sports centers have one.

Science Museum. This is the most recent addition to our list of places to visit. I'm not sure Miss B's knowledge of science has increased significantly, but there are buttons to press, animals to see, bubbles to blow, etc. The annual pass is another bargain, at $200 for a family of four, and giving you access to all of Hong Kong's museums plus a 10% discount on the cost of an Ocean Park annual pass!

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So, what are we missing? This list is biased towards Hong Kong island and South Kowloon - all the places that are easy to get to from where we live. Where do you take your children to play?

MrB

What's in a name?

mrb — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:00:00 +0000

If having a baby is difficult, sometimes choosing their name seems even harder. And when you've got two cultures & languages in the mix, things get even more complicated.

Choosing the English names for our two daughters has been my job, with MrsB holding the power of veto. The first time around, before we knew the baby's sex, I was suggesting "Huw" if it was a boy. It's a friend's name, and has a link to Wales where I'm from. "No!" says MrsB, "any Chinese person that hears you call his name will think you're swearing at him". Lucky it was a girl...

On the Chinese side, I carelessly suggested the baby could have MrsB's surname, since my Chinese surname doesn't have any great family history attached (in fact it stretches all the way back to 1989, when colleagues at my first job here decided I needed a Chinese name). "What? And have people think he's illegitemate?". Oops, wrong again.

I've also been to blame for some of the delays in choosing Chinese names. I'm embarrased to say that "Too hard to write" has been one of my guidelines for names to be avoided. Then with my limited Cantonese vocabulary, some choices conjure up bizarre images as I guess what she's saying. Despite MrsB's "Don't be stupid, it doesn't sound anything like that", those names have been dropped too.

I did question the choice of MissB Snr's Chinese name. Unlike English names, Chinese given names are made out of regular words, so hers literally the two characters "happy" and "child". I thought she'd feel odd about this when she's say 50 years old, but MrsB assures me it's ok. MissB Jr's names have also caused us a few headaches. I'd decided early on that I liked Ann as a name. Ann it was for several months as the bump grew, till a relative pointed out that when a name has a single syllable, Cantonese speakers add "Ah-" to the front. We decided that we didn't want the blame for giving her a stutter from hearing Ah-Ann, so Ann was struck from the list.

For her Chinese name, MrsB had a couple of ideas before the baby was born, but one was dropped soon after. The chosen character "had too many mouths in, and MissB is already noisy enough" !! (The character for "mouth" appears as a part of many other more complicated Chinese characters.) I only found out the final choice yesterday, when MrsB returned from the registry office with the birth certificate. There were still two choices when she left the house, so I'm still not sure how the final decision was reached.

After writing this, a flash of inspiration: Something that irritates me in the playgrounds is local Mums calling their children "baby" when they are already three or four. I've just realised it probably means they haven't been able to choose a name yet!

MrB

MsB's kindergarten interviews, part II

mrb — Sat, 17 Dec 2005 08:00:24 +0000

We had another interview on a recent Saturday, this time at a popular kindergarten in mid-levels. The style was different again, but left us feeling even more convinced that kindergarten #3 mentioned in the previous article was the right choice for us. Then on Monday we received a letter saying that #3 had accepted MsB, so all is well with the world. Still, this brush with the interviewing process has opened my eyes to a business opportunity…

There are books on sale that list kindergartens, neatly tabulating their staff-pupil ratios, monthly fees, etc. I’m thinking of releasing a new version of the booklet with some extra columns, including:

Hello-Kitty rating
Kindergarten #4 achieved maximum points on this rating, meeting all criteria:

- Pastel coloured uniforms for staff (they even got the bonus point for pink)
- Staff age below 30
- Use of baby-talk voice to encourage “Deh” behaviour as early as possible

Kindergarten #3 failed miserably, not managing to get past zero

Religious fervour
While MsB is at such an impressionable age, I’d like her to get a brief description of what’s going on at different religion’s festival times, and let her make her own mind up about her religious persuasion when she is older and wiser. That is always going to be tricky in Hong Kong, with many of the schools linked to one of the Christian faiths.

#2, the international kindergarten worked much the way I wanted, scoring low on the fervometer. #1 and #4 rated high, with #3 coming in at a medium (daily prayers, but not high profile otherwise).

Tolerance to bugs and dirt
If you can’t eat earthworms when you’re three, you might not get the chance later (or at least, not until you are much older and eating China business-trip dinners).

#1 scored low on this test, with their belief that outdoor play should be avoided since “Hong Kong is very dusty and our pupils' parents wouldn't like it.”

#2 was also low, with no outdoor play area
#4 had a good play area, scoring medium
#3 was the clear winner, with outdoor play area, regular field trips, and pictures of happy kids playing in paddling pools in the summer

The Blackberry / Academia factor
I originally thought these would be two separate columns, but statistical analysis shows a high correlation. The Blackberry factor assigns one point for each disinterested father that is checking email / making business calls while attending the school interview. Academia points are granted for each parent giving intensive questioning on how the kindergarten will help them get their progeny into the right school.

#3 failed miserably again. They provided personal tours of the classes, so I didn’t get a single chance to check mail or make a call! And they skirted questions on schools, preferring to talk about how they turn out a whole child (though MrsB noted the pupils’ workbooks had the most sophisticated Chinese writing of all four sites)

#1 was barely better. It seems to have the reputation of being the place your kids go if they don’t get an offer from a ‘good’ kindergarten.

#2 and #4 both scored highly. #2 was the early leader, with charts on display showing the schools their 6-year old alumni were gracing. #4 made a strong recovery when the head-mistress’s talk about her school focused exclusively on learning and academic achievement.

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This is written with tongue firmly in cheek, but there’s an element of truth to it. Several of the local mums MrsB talks to had also visited the #3 that we liked so much. Mostly the comment was that they didn’t like it because it was old and scruffy, though they did comment on how they liked the approach of the school and the attitude of the staff.

Sigh.

The building is old (but clean), and ok the toys weren’t all bought this year – but is that really more important than the attitude of the people who will be spending five days a week with your children for the next three years?

Top 10 Tips for Hong Kong Disneyland

Mr Tall — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 15:37:16 +0000

1 Do try to arrive right at the opening, and go deep into the park immediately to take a couple of the rides you're really looking forward to. This is standard advice for amusement parks, but it really paid off for us, as a couple of the Fantasyland rides we walked right onto first thing in the morning had hour-long queues just a little later.

2 Don't waste time taking photos with the characters that greet you at the gate as the park opens (see point 1!), unless getting such photos is one of your top priorities. If so, you're not reading the right set of tips. Okay, okay, I aim to please: if you're committed to posing with Mickey, have at it right away, although you'll have lots of company. You might also consider heading straight for the 'Fantasy Gardens' section of 'Fantasyland' when you arrive, where you can pose to your heart's content.

3 Don't bother trying to 'stick to a plan' for working your way through the park. It's so small you can change your mind anytime you want, and walk right across the place in five or ten minutes. This is actually a blessing if you've got small children in tow, and when you're off to get 'fastpasses', which we'll discuss next.

4 Do make use of the 'fastpass' system. A fastpass is a pre-booking you can make on any of five popular attractions. You put your park admission ticket into a machine, and are issued another ticket with a time range on it. During that period, you can turn up at the attraction and get right on it, ahead of the normal queue. You can only hold one fastpass at a time, and it has to have expired before you can get another one.

5 Don't bother tying up a fastpass on the Lion King stage show, though. Although those with fastpasses were indeed cordoned off into a 'special' waiting area when we visited, they were admitted into the show right along with us ordinary-queue proletarians in a single stampede.

6 Do take advantage of the 'Single riders' option at Space Mountain if you are a couple with small kids, or if you and your companions don't mind riding alone. Using this 'queue', Mrs Tall and I rode twice each and waited a total of about three minutes.

7 Do use sunscreen and wear hats if it's sunny. Sounds obvious, but although most waiting areas were at least partially shaded, on the day we visited there were still hundreds of painfully red faces and shoulders around, proving that some of us need little reminders.

8 Do buy orange juice. There are plastic bottles of fresh orange juice on sale all over the place for HKD15. That's not bad, given the general range of prices around the park, and it's delicious.

9 Don't expect to ride all the way around the park on the little train if the park's busy. The train has two stops: at the entrance, and at the opposite side of the park in Fantasyland. We found out that when the park gets crowded, you can only go from one stop to the next one, where you then have to get off.

10 Don't go crazy trying to get a good spot to see the fireworks. We saw people staking out positions to watch them almost an hour and a half in advance. This is surely not worth it. We waited till the last minute, and still were able to squeeze into the main plaza in front of the castle where the show is centered. We had a tree branch obscuring a bit of our view, but it was still fine.

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See also my Hong Kong Disneyland review.

Oh, and by the way: here's the HK Disneyland homepage.