Comments on: Scaffolding in Tiananmen Square

By: Eric Wroolie

Eric Wroolie — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:24:24 +0000

@Alex Thanks Alex. Everyone talks about the one child rule--even my kids learned about it at school, but not many people know the details about it. You must have a lot of insight into stereotypes, rumours, etc. that you get by living out there.

By: RunningTracker

RunningTracker — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:44:37 +0000

Interesting info Alex, thanks!

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:13:05 +0000

On the one child policy: Two single children of the one child policy are permitted to have 2 children at no extra penalty. Much of the reason it’s not happening with the current generation is complex, but two large factors include apartments that are built with one child in mind (always 2 bedrooms) and China being as competitive it is for young kids means parents seem to prefer to invest all they have in one child.

Ethnic minorities can have more kids, as can any rural resident who’s first-born is female (after 30 years of anaecdotal evidence this does nothing to prevent the sex gap – it exists in rural families where this allowance exists, but there is little evidence of a sex gap in urban areas which enforce the one child policy strictly).

By: Priyancka K Sharma

Priyancka K Sharma — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:46:00 +0000

Its sad about not having extended family.. Love reading your post as usual!

By: Eric Wroolie

Eric Wroolie — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 08:30:50 +0000

@RunningTracker
Actually, it wasn’t until a few days in that we realised that you could only have 4 people in a taxi. Since our youngest is only 4, most of them let us ride anyway. But, some taxi drivers would make us take two taxis. The kids like this because they could pretend we were in a car chase.

Most taxis cost us less than 30 yuan anyway. Only the unofficial taxis tried to soak us by charging more. So, it wasn’t too bad when taking two.

We never took the bus, and only took the subway twice. It was so crowded and we had the small kids–I was a bit worried about losing them.

By: RunningTracker

RunningTracker — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:19:17 +0000

Good experience! I’m wondering how did you manage to take the taxi with 3 kids? Did you ride in bigger cars?

We took the subway quite a lot during our stay in Beijing and it was almost always so crowded… Buses were also often packed, that was funny! Beijing is such a huge city!

By: Bj Highfield

Bj Highfield — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 05:31:00 +0000

That's a bummer about the scaffolding. I kind of dig the night-time photo at Tian An Men though. I wonder how long it will be before words like "aunt", "uncle" and "cousin" fade entirely from the Chinese lexicon.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000