Peanuts

The wife sits behind me as I write this very sentence, so I will start a rave about her. A male student in one of my classes this evening said that women are better at raising children than men. I would have to testify that from my experience this is absolutely true. To see my wife handle Tony with such skill and grace, I know I could be nothing but an oaf, if it was just me with the boy, and I was trying to feed, bathe, and dress him. Not just any oaf would I be; I would be the clumsiest oaf there ever was.

My wife tells me just now to not drive her mad.

In the same class where a student made his observation about women and child-rearing, I heard of a not too uncommon situation where a mother is separated from her child for economic reasons. One of the students working in Wuxi is a mother of a 20 month old child who is living in another province with the mother's parents. The mother has a job at Wuxi with a good foreign company. Her parents can't move to Wuxi till next year. Currently, the mother hasn't seen the baby since early October!

This revelation lead me to ask the students their opinions about universal day-care and the economic viability of families with stay-at-home moms. The students thought universal child-care was a great idea. Social workers could raise children better than mothers they figured. As well, because of the one-child policy, universal day-care would mean children would not be raised alone. I am naturally opposed to this idea, but I wasn't interested in arguing the point - I was curious about their opinions. The students thought also that is not economically possible for a family to have a stay-at-home mom, even if they have but one child to raise. My mother, a stay-at-home, raised three of us I told them. They said this was because I grew up in a developed Western country. But I pointed out to them that it has become less and less viable for mothers to stay at home in the West or so I have been lead to believe. (I feel this is because the increased portion of salaries going to government as well as a desire to have more than we can really afford)

Telling the same students that it has been thirty years since the Chinese government began to implement economic reforms, I asked what they thought China must do in the future to continue with their economic progress. They told me that China must not just be a manufacturing country having the advantage of cheap labour, and so should become more of an innovative. They also said that China has to rid itself of its many monopolies that at first benefited from the growth but are now stifling it. Broaching the topic of political reform, I told the students that the world looks at China and wonders about the party. One of the student then told me she was a member of the party, but she immediately skewered the awkwardness of the moment for me by telling me that she wondered why she had joined the party. She joined the party because she was told it was necessary to advance in Chinese society, but she never became an active member except attending quarterly meetings where she sat and watched. She felt now a scepticism about the party and wondered about its future.


Riding the bike home, I observed two things worthy of blog entries. I first saw a sidewalk seller, his wares laid out on the sidewalk, as I rode through a underpass tunnel after nine p.m. What business could this man possibly get from cyclists at that time of day? I wondered. But they must get some because sidewalk sellers are not an uncommon sight when I ride home at night. I have even seen them hawking DVDs and bike helmets late into the evening. I then saw a female cyclist, in her twenties, wearing a parka with a picture of characters from the Peanuts cartoon strip on the back. The popularity of Peanuts, especially Snoopy, here in China surprises me to no end. I have ridden in a car emblazoned with Snoopy pictures. I have also seen autos bearing the image of Hello Kitty. (No images of a little Calvin peeing on a Japanese flag)


Seagate is shutting its plant in Wuxi for two weeks starting December 24th. They just haven't been getting any orders lately.