24: Babies

In America, if I went up to a random baby in a stroller and started playing with it, I’m sure the mother would pull the baby away, with a disapproving look back at me. In China, the opposite happens. Today I approached a baby during a hutong tour. The baby was chubby and adorable, and surprisingly not afraid of me. I overheard the mom proudly telling her parents “look! A foreigner thinks our baby is cute!” In China, it is not uncommon for babies to be favored over anyone else. I’ve seen people ignore elderly people on the subway, only to give up their seat as soon as a toddler comes up. People will give you free food if you have a baby in your arms, telling you that you should feed your baby more, as it’s still growing.

Also, one of the weirder things about children is that before they’re potty-trained, they wear pants with a slit down the middle. If the child has to pee or poo, they’ll just tell the parents and they can pee anywhere. It’s really normal to see a little toddler peeing off a sidewalk in a park. In fact, people will still be cooing at the child, as it pees.

Every baby that you’ll see in China has a shaved head. The reason why they do this is the same reason why prepubescent boys shave their peach fuzz: they believe future hair will grow in thicker. Maybe if Americans started doing that, we could get rid of male pattern baldness in a generation!

And finally, as an American, the weirdest thing to me is that often times, parents are happy to hand over their baby to people, even strangers in the street. I grew up learning from my parents that it was better to be safe than sorry and avoid strangers at all costs, whereas here, Chinese parents run up to foreigners and ask them to hold their baby and take pictures with them.

It’s unfortunate that America has created a sort of culture that prevents this sort of interaction (or should I say, it’s unfortunate that incidents have caused this kind of thinking to be prevalent? It’s quite an understandable fear). I love children, as they allow me to be crazy and immature with an excuse. I love that children are constantly curious about the world and are everyday discovering new things. But, I AM a large and imposing person to some people, and I’ve definitely had some interesting interactions with some over-paranoid parents. For now, I’ll play with babies in hutongs, and I’ll figure it out when I get home.