Some of the funniest and tenderest moments we saw between them were at meal times. Our typical daily meal routine was pretty much the same our entire stay. Hao Hao (otherwise known as the "Little Rooster") would wake up between 5:00 and 5:30 am. In turn, of course, his babbling would wake the rest of the house. Lao Ye normally wakes up early, and he usually would already be up and about, putting the soy beans in the soy milk maker, emptying trash, and tidying up.
Kathy's and David's first order of business after dressing was very non-Chinese: we had bought some instant coffee and creamer, and we ran out to the kitchen to boil some water and make ourselves our morning coffees. One little ritual we kept from State-side.
As soon as Weina had struggled awake and changed Hao Hao's diaper, Lao Ye would grab him and they would take off for a stroller walk around the village. Dao Ji has a population of about 2,000, all living in about a square mile, with their gardens and fields surrounding the village itself. Weina's father has his own little garden, but since he's retired, his larger orchards and so on have been passed on to others.
The stroller walks usually took the boys into the center of the village, and then around the edges by the fields. Here and there, acquaintances of Lao Ye would shout out greetings as they passed on bicycles or leaned over their own gardens. By 6:00 am, people are out and about, heading to work, starting their latest little construction project, or whatever. A lady sells pork from a whole hog draped across a card table sitting at the corner of the main intersection of the village. She always has some friends gathered about, and every morning, they have to admire the little boy.
Interestingly, Chinese people look at Hao Hao and see him as a "foreigner" - not Chinese at all. On the other hand, most Americans we've met see his Asian heritage immediately. Thus, as a foreign baby, he would always attract profound interest - from men as well as women. The occasion was all the more remarkable because Lao Ye, a local villager, was pushing him in the stroller. If Kathy or I accompanied them on their walks, the attention would be almost unbearable because the villagers almost never see foreigners. But the Chinese, while intensely curious, are almost always very friendly. There are occasional looks that suggest one or two might not like Americans. In one instance, a local woman asked if we were Canadian (because a significant number of Canadians apparently visit China, and because many Chinese have emigrated to Canada). When I said, no, we are "mei guo ren" (American), a dark shadow passed over her eyes and that was the end of the conversation. But this was really the exception. The villagers loved when Kathy or I would attempt to speak our pidgin Chinese, and they always asked the same questions about the baby's father.
While Lao Ye and Hao Hao took their morning walk, Weina would start fixing breakfast, ably assisted by Kathy. David would do whatever remained to be done - often straightening up the courtyard from Hao Hao's adventures from the day before, or disposing of trash, or setting the table. Lao Ye and Hao Hao would return just about the time breakfast was ready, and one of Lao Ye's main responsibilities was to feed little Hao Hao:
They developed their own little signs and language, and when Lao Ye's eyes would twinkle in a smile, little Hao Hao would smile and giggle.
Once breakfast was done, Kathy and David would usually take care of washing dishes and cleaning up, and Weina would take a shower and otherwise get organized, while Lao Ye tended to Hao Hao in the courtyard. This varied, however, and Kathy and David took their turns keeping Hao Hao entertained as mama tried to get some time to herself. Here's a photo of Kathy and Hao Hao in the courtyard.
David took the photo from the roof of an outbuilding in the little complex, to which concrete steps rose. The roof is useful for watching sunrises and sunsets, looking out over the village, and for supporting the solar water heater Weina's dad has installed. Such solar water heaters are almost universal in China, from the smallest house in the smallest village, to the largest high-rises in the cities. While some apartments have "hot water on demand" equipment, those seem to be the minority still.
Soon after we cleaned up from breakfast, a trip to the market was in order and then it was time to fix lunch. Hao Hao usually took two naps a day - one for an hour-and-a-half or so in the morning starting around 9:00, and another in the afternoon starting at 2:30 or 3:00. Weina's father had his own errands and chores, such as tending his garden. So Weina and Kathy might head to the market to get vegetables and seafood or pork for the day's meals while Hao Hao napped. In these cases, David was the babysitter. Hao Hao is a very active sleeper, and needs someone to guard against him falling off the kang or bed onto the concrete floor. Here's a photo of David doing babysitting/guard duty during one of Hao Hao's naps:
A word about kangs. In many Chinese villages, the houses follow a common pattern, which was the pattern of Weina's father's house. There would be a main residence with two or three or four rooms, an adjoining courtyard surrounded by high stone or brick walls with a wooden front gate that could be closed and locked. Around the courtyard might be two or three structures in addition to the residence - such as a storage shed, a workshop, and a outhouse (no such thing as indoor plumbing in a Chinese village). Within the residence, two or three rooms might do double duty as bedrooms and other rooms. Most of this type of room would be taken up with a concrete and/or wood platform known as a "kang," which serves as the bed. In many cases, more than one person would sleep on a kang, and, presumably, in some cases the entire family. The kang is designed with a little coal stove underneath to heat it in the winter. The hard wood or concrete surface is usually (these days) covered with a vinyl flooring type of material. Since, as you can imagine, it would be very uncomfortable to sleep on this surface, kangs also have very large comforter-like blankets that can be rolled out and serve as mattresses. In Weina's father's house, he slept on a kang in one room; Weina and Hao Hao took the center room on a kang; and Kathy and David slept on wooden beds in the third room. These beds had been the childhood beds of Weina and her sister Hai Ni.
Lunch would repeat the breakfast scenario, with Weina (as chef) and Kathy (as sous-chef) doing the preparation, then everyone assembling to eat, and David and Kathy doing dishes and cleaning up. Our typical meal consisted of four or five dishes, plus loaves of bread. In this area of China, it isn't as typical for a family to eat rice with their meal, as to eat small loaves of bread, or baozi (buns), or jiaozi (dumplings) as the grain. The main dishes would usually include one or two vegetable dishes, perhaps a tofu dish, and certainly one or two dishes with seafood such as clams, fish or crabs (common because Dao Ji is near the seashore on China's East coast). Often a pork dish would also be included. Stir-frying with lots of oil, garlic, ginger, soy sauce and/or vinegar was the most common style of preparation.
After lunch we would find some sort of activity to keep Hao Hao busy until his afternoon nap. One weekend, Weina's former student, Amy (the English name she chose in the English class she took from Weina) visited. Amy is a good-time-Charlie, and she jumped right in to devise games and ways to entertain Hao Hao.
One favorite Hao Hao pastime was to play with empty water bottles. Because tap water in China is not potable, we bought many cases of bottled water, and so we had piles of empty water bottles floating around the courtyard, waiting to be recycled. Some families have water coolers, but Weina's father did not, so bottles it was. In the middle of the courtyard is a concrete basin with an old, rusted pump that had originally been the source of water for the home. The pump no longer functions, so it has become basically ornamental. We decided to use the concrete basin as the storage bin for all the empty water bottles, and Hao Hao loved crawling over to it and pulling all the water bottles out of the basin and throw them on the concrete floor of the courtyard.
When Amy visited, Kathy thought of using Hao Hao's ball and some empty water bottles to play bowling. We taught Amy how to bowl, and then all of us helped Hao Hao try to knock over the plastic bottle "pins." In his case, while he does like to play "catch" with the ball and can throw it, his accuracy can best be described as random. So we showed him how to knock down the pins with his hands - which he found very entertaining.
Here's a photo of Amy, Hao Hao, Weina and Lao Ye in the courtyard:
By the time of Hao Hao's afternoon nap, it would be time to start preparing dinner, so Weina and Kathy would again take up their chef-ly duties and David would watch Hao Hao, clean up, set the table, etc. David discovered that there were lots of spaces of time where there wasn't much to do, so he brought out his trusty Kindle (see the photo above with Hao Hao sleeping on the kang) and occupied himself that way.
Occasionally, walks around the village were a great pastime, and indeed sometimes this was necessary because Hao Hao often would not go down for his afternoon nap without a great deal of "assistance." One of our ultimate weapons was the dreaded "stroller walk." If Weina wasn't able to get him to fall asleep on the kang, we would strap him into the stroller and someone (usually David) would take him out on a walk until the motion of the stroller overcame his active (and sometimes very vocal) resistance, and he would fall, finally, into the arms of Morpheus.
Once dinner was finished, it would be almost 7:00 pm. Hao Hao always got a bath and then Weina would put him to sleep. David and Kathy would retire to their bedroom (often after a shower) and read. Lao Ye would hang out outside, go for a walk, or visit with friends. All would be asleep by about 9:00 pm.
Nearly every day in the village also involved a visit to or from one relative or another. Weina's father has three brothers and one sister. His brothers all live in the village and his sister lives in the adjoining town of Ze Tou, which is where Amy happens to be from as well. We were constantly receiving invitations to lunch or to visit, and we had fun introducing Hao Hao to the aunts, uncles and their grandchildren (in China, the grandparents are often the childcare providers since their adult children have to work). Hao Hao took particularly to one of Lao Ye's brothers, and to the husband of Lao Ye's sister.
For us, these visits were mixed blessings. They were always very friendly and enjoyable, with lots of good food served and jovial play with Hao Hao. However, our Chinese isn't good enough to be able to understand or speak it fully. So usually we would sit and smile while everyone else spoke about things we knew not. Usually, we could make ourselves known in various situations with a combination of our limited Chinese and hand signals or with Weina's translation skills if she were present; but, much of the time, it was like living in a foreign film without subtitles.
We decided, as an interlude during the village stay, to have a driver take us to Wei Hai, a coastal resort town not too far from the village, where we stayed overnight. The next blog post will tell about that.
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