It was interesting meeting the boy, let's call him Til. I've never been the sort of person who reaches out to children. I am quite happy to hold babies and play with children but with babies, I usually wait to get asked by their parents if I wanted to hold them and I don't always do; and with older children, I tend to wait to see how they warm up to me before I really try to engage.
But the thing with Til is that, which is supposedly common with children who have been in orphanages or foster care, they reach out to any and all adults for affirmation and affection. It might only be true with children below a certain age, I don't know. In any event, Til reached out from the get go, was all smiley an charming, and wanted to be carried and everything. But Caroline explained to me that he does that; he charms all adult. She also said that for the bonding process between child and new parent though, it is fairly important that he does not bond with anyone else. Well, especially not, for example, me seeing as I am the first person other than Caroline whom he will be spending a lot of time with since leaving foster care. How will he know her as his mother if he also bonds with me or anyone else? Of course, it can be said, and I know some people do, that all that is going a bit too far. That surely a bit of bonding here or there will do no harm. After all, he will be home with Caroline for the rest of the year. So they will have all that time to re-bond. Well, say what you will, I see no reason to confuse the kid anymore than he needs to be.
As it was, a couple of times when we were walking around, he wanted to hold both our hands. And he called me "mama" a few times too which makes us think that he might just think that that is what any adult woman is to be called. He also called a couple of random men "baba". How do you explain to a child that not every adult is his mama or baba when he doesn't know what it means? He's never had any single person whom he learnt to trust would always be there. So perhaps anyone with a somewhat protective or authoritative role becomes a parent?
Anyway, so to avoid any potential problems, I ended up taking on the role of pram pusher when he was not in the pram so Caroline was the one holding his hand and helping him up and down stairs or carrying him when he was tired. That worked well, for the most part.
I will say this though, anyone thinking of travelling to Qingdao (I can't comment in the rest of the country, having never been anywhere else yet) with a toddler (and a pram) in August, don't. Make the trip when your child is over or two months later in the year. We plodded around in the sticky humid hear in a city that, aside from being somewhat hilly, is not made for prams (or wheelchairs, I suppose). Steps everywhere! Paths had a random few steps cut in here and here. It was tiring enough work pulling the pram up and down those steps without the heat and humidity.
Aside from the step, it was quite a nice day. It was sort of the first day the Caroline really spent the day out and walked with Til for so much. The first item on our itinerary was the zoo, and the first thing on our itinerary there was the giant pandas. And there they were. They were a lot smaller than I expected and cleaner. I'd head stories about giant panda being more brown than white just from being in the dirt. These weren't too dirty because sadly there wasn't much dirty for them to be in. They were two of them, kept in two separate enclosures, neither of which were very big. I later saw on the news that pandas in China had to be moved to sealed and air conditioned rooms because of the heat. I wonder if that had something to do with it. Poor Pandas. They were so cute though. One of them was busy just stuffing his face with bamboo shoots while the other was moving up and down and standing up to the glass, checking out everything that was going on. All in all though, if not for the fact that I worry about what would happen to the animals if the zoo doesn't have any money, I would not recommend it. It was very sad to see how little space the animals had, especially being used to many of the "better" zoos in Europe and the States which take far more consideration of the welfare of the animals.
It's no wonder that giving animals more space is not a priority though. As one of our taxi drivers told me with a shaking head, there are too many people in Qingdao. Too many cars, too many people. Too many people in China. He would not believe it when I told him that Caroline and I lived in a country of about nine million. "Nine million??! The whole country??!" he asked several times, trying to wrap his head around this fact. He also told me that he knew that Caroline and I were not from the same country as she is fair "white" and I am dark "black". I almost wanted to say "Oh really??!! Wow, I hadn't noticed!" Neither my Mandarin nor my bravado stretches that far, so I didn't say it.
People were most intrigued about our little miss matched trio. We got a lot of stares. And we even had a group of girls want to have their photo taken with us! That was an amusing experience. We joked about charging for having out photo taken in future. People were also baffled about how Caroline managed to have a Chinese baby.
On the Mandarin front, people have been amused with my efforts to speak. I am not sure if the efforts are laughable or if they are just tickled by the fact that they were completely caught off guard. We stumbled into a random place at lunch though which required abilities far exceeding mine. It was one of those places where you pick the ingredients and they cook it for you. Trying to understand what was being offered and what we wanted involved heavy reliance on the app Pleco which translated whatever I wanted to say into Mandarin and whatever the waitress wanted to say into English. She patiently had a conversation with me with us takin terms to write random words into my phone app. We were not sure what we were going to get before it arrived, but when it did, it was good!
All in all, a long and tiring day, but a good one. Ending the day by enjoying a beer - a Tsingtao in Qingdao, just had to be done.
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