Family Adventure in the Middle Kingdom

Be Prepared: Have Your Kids Read Up on the Destination Prior to Your Trip

Nothing will prepare your child to be fully engaged than to know about the places they’re about to visit. Two excellent books will introduce them to Chinese culture and the problems the country faces. While both books are geared toward the juvenile reader, they are unforgettable for adults as well. Red Scarf Girl is the true story of Ji-li Jiang’s childhood during the peak of the Cultural Revolution. Another riveting account is the Diary of Ma Yan, the actual journal of a modern girl who struggles to get an education among the crushing poverty in rural China. Her diary and the story of how it fell into the hands of a French journalist in 2001, thrusting her into the international spotlight, is moving. You won’t be able to stop thinking of Ma Yan when you visit the rural countryside near the Great Wall.

Like But Don’t Look at the Local Food

Like Chinese food? Most people do. What’s not to love? Rice, noodles, chicken, vegetables, crunchy bovine intestines, tree fungus, pig gums. What? Crunchy bovine intestines aren’t listed on the menu at the Chinese restaurant around the corner from your house?

I remember once telling a colleague to not look too closely to his food or else he wouldn’t eat anything. If the thought of bovine intestines make you squeamish, then that’s sage advice if you plan on eating anywhere other than Kentucky Fried Chicken. Just keep your picture dictionary handy and steer clear of any restaurants displaying pictures of dogs. At our bravest, we simply went to a restaurant near our hostel, looked around at what the other patrons were eating, and pointed to what looked best. While the food was usually delicious, I generally had no idea what we were eating.

At times, though, I confess needing my comfort food. Hands down, the best burrito in Beijing is at the Mexican Wave, ironically located near the Russian Embassy. It also has entertainment and one musician who does a great Neil Young set.

• A array of Chinese food ready to be devoured.
• Jade Law

Get Into the Culture

Shopping

The Chinese entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. Everyone has something to sell you, from baseball hats to DVDs of the Hollywood blockbuster that opened just last night. Make a game of it with your kids and count the different things for sale in a two-clock radius of your hotel or hostel. One grocery store in Beijing we visited was packed cheek to jowl. The odd thing was that there seemed to be more employees than patrons.

Watch Your Step

When shopping or sightseeing, watch your step when crossing the street. The person with the most expensive car has the right of way at intersections. Pedestrians have fewer rights to the road than manhole covers. So exercise patience and caution.

Warn your children that kids under 18 cannot use the internet in China. That’s one solution to protecting children from online predators—deny access entirely. When the staff of one Internet café realized my 11-year-old daughter was on the ‘net, we were kicked out.

• Pedestrians beware on the streets in China. They have fewer rights than drivers.
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Don’t Mind Others’ Manners

No queues
In a country with 1.3 billion people, it would be reasonable to assume that some resources are limited. We saw many examples of people staking their claim for a limited resource and not backing down; for example, the concept of standing in line for a movie or the subway simply doesn’t exist. During one point of our time in China, we were in the company of a couple from the United States. The woman was paraplegic and wheelchair-bound, but there was no way anyone would give up their seat for her on crowded buses or trains.

It’s okay to stare
In Western culture, it’s rude beyond words to stare at someone that may be considered different, but in China staring is a spectator sport. Our waitress at a hot-pot restaurant was so amused at our family’s inability to retrieve food from a boiling pot of oil using only chopsticks that she fetched the rest of the staff to gawk at us. For the remainder of the meal the staff surrounded our table pointing, guffawing and giving a play-by-play account of our attempt to feed ourselves. We were simply the evening’s entertainment.

Spitting as sport
The Chinese believe that discharging phlegm is healthy and they are prodigious at it; for all I know, it will be a new Olympic event, with the judging based on production in gallons per hour. I sat next to one grandmotherly Olympian for several hours on a ferry. Her ability to produce deep-throated discharges of phlegm was truly impressive.

What makes China a great destination for families? The experiences you will have are so far removed from the sphere of influence of the average suburban kid. If you want to push the envelope of that sphere for your children, there’s no better place to start than China.