I say “The Real China” because the famed China- the Great Wall, great mausoleums, and grand old palaces- was something I would only pass through once as a tourist, and it seemed so dusty and ancient when compared with its living historical descendants. I walked through “the real China” every day. Here is one of the many things I saw daily, and what that experience was like.
In China, the people are surprised to hear every foreigner comment on the grandmothers. Squat, square-shouldered women in cotton jackets, dark pants, white socks, and simple black shoes or sandals who spend their days taking care of their grandchild (usually there is only one per Chinese laws), walking hand in hand to the park or following behind a little boy on his toy scooter. This is a very common sight in China- it is their way of life- and the people cannot imagine why it should be any other way. Because parents are limited to one child, Chinese families are top heavy, inverted pyramids. Farm town families might get by with having multiple children, but city dwellers who have more than one child need to be wealthy enough to pay the extra fees, and then they should not be members of the Communist Party which is expected to model its own policy. So, while mom and dad go off to earn a paycheck, grandma gets to babysit her prized grandson (the current ratio between males and females significantly favors the boys). China does have preschools and kindergarten classes, but the daycare duties mostly fall on the grandmothers’ shoulders. Likewise, when elderly parents are too old to take care of themselves, their children don’t look into nursing homes or retirement communities. Parents move in or the children visit their parents several times a week.
Chinese families strive to stay close together, generations commonly living in the same town or the same house. When I queried my students about their post-graduation plans, nearly all of them, with their minds firmly made up, told me straightaway they were going to return to their hometown. The American customs: migrating wherever one’s career demands and shipping inconvenient parents off to a caregiver facility, are almost unthinkable to the Chinese. They are not alone in recoiling at America’s treatment of elderly parents. Ask an immigrant or foreign visitor what they think of our callous, businesslike handling of elderly parents and about other matters of family and hospitality.
A small example: when guests leave a home in America, the hosts might shut the door behind them, or even sit in their seats and say, “Okay, goodbye,” both which come across as rude, cold, or confusing (“Did I do something to offend them?”) to people from cultures that expect the hosts to escort the guests out to their car, or maybe walk them all the way down the street to the subway station.
But the focus back on China, the everyday sight of grandmothers walking with grandchildren has to be understood in Chinese terms. It is economically necessary for the parents to find a caregiver, and because life in the land of Confucius is very much centered on the family unit and esteem for parents, the child’s grandmother is the obvious choice. Also, grandma might have only one grandchild, so she prizes all the time she can spend with him. Then, factor in the incredible numbers of people- more than four times the population of the United States- nearly all living in modest apartments, and it is made clear why I saw groups of grandmothers and small children converging on and congregating in the parks every day. I’ve said this before, but in Iowa and other parts of America, I am often struck with melancholy when I see empty park benches and green spaces filled only with squirrels. Some architect or city planner had envisioned a thriving scene with children frolicking in the grass as students with backpacks walked past local residents having coffee and a chat on the benches. But the reality is that most Americans are busy at work, sitting at home, or driving between the two; park spaces are forlorn in favor of the TV screen. Television is of course also popular throughout China’s households, but limited personal space means people are inclined to spending their recreation time in public parks, practicing in Tai Chi groups or watching their children play together.
Mothers in the park with their children is a common sight, yes, but the sight of grandmothers tagging along behind youngsters, many times tugging a leash hooked to the back of the child’s overalls, was so much more common that every Westerner comments on how peculiar it seems. For the Chinese, seeing an elderly woman with craggy facial features chatter at a boy wearing thick, winter pajamas and a harness was as everyday as seeing a soccer mom with kids in a minivan. They didn’t look twice.
I had never seen so many pairings before, so I always looked them over and examined things like the baby’s clothes. Before the child is potty-trained (a relative term in China; I wonder if they might not even have an equivalent translation for “potty-trained”), he wears a one-piece outfit with a split down the rear seam. This made it so that all was on display whenever the child leaned over or crawled up on top of something. I could have taken pictures of all the baby bottoms I saw and compiled them into a desktop calendar for American women who like things like cats, pictures of naked babies, and being bizarre around co-workers.
“That’s China.”
Why the split in the pants? Why was I able to see bare skin where I expected a diaper? Because Chinese grandmothers hold their grandbaby on their lap, pull the garment open, and hiss air through their teeth until the child goes. On the sidewalk, on the street, the children grow up relieving themselves most anywhere. (Infamous pictures have gone viral on China’s internet- I know of one of a child squatting on a train car, and one in the aisle of an airplane; a quick internet search reveals more shocking stories like these.) To outsiders’ amazement, Chinese consider street-soiling a normal fact of life and shrug off suggestions to dispose of children’s waste otherwise. “What? It’s natural,” I was told.
As much as the grandmothers depicted the image of China to me, this defined it more so: seeing a girl, old enough to have thin, stork legs, squat down on a busy commercial street corner and watch herself in the act as her family conversed nearby after their Saturday night meal. What I thought must be universally disgusting was ignored or accepted with aloofness. But with such cramped and dirty conditions, it was impossible to turn a blind eye to the filth in and on the streets. One had to step around it constantly. As the natives would shrug and say, “That’s China.”
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