Life and Travel in China

My good Chinese friend became an aunt. He now has many extracurricular activities. The problem is that the baby does not want to eat mother's milk and they have to buy powdered milk. In any normal country there would be nothing extraordinary, but to buy safe milk in China you have to go shopping in Hong Kong. I often saw people crossing the border with bags stuffed with milk cans. Another friend of ours once also received such an order - she transported milk for her friends. All these problems started in 2008, when poisoned milk powder and the melamine scandal were discovered. Since then, average Chinese people have not trusted domestic producers. What amazes me is the fact that society does not demand changes or thorough inspections, they simply do not trust the authorities' assurances, and probably no reasonable person will ever give their child typically Chinese milk.

I've neglected the website a bit lately and there are still a lot of photos to add. Unfortunately, I am much busier now, I have built several new websites - not only about China, and I am planning to rebuild this website. Usually graphics, HTML, CSS and the MySQL database take a lot of time, so I don't have time to add new photos or texts. Nevertheless, I will try to post something and as soon as I have more time I will take care of fotochiny.com!

I have recently noticed that more and more people in China can afford a second child. The word STAND should be taken literally here - because most often you pay a fine for a second child, this especially applies to large cities if the child's parents are not only children. My friend decided to have a second child, I know that financially it is not a problem for him, he is doing very well. The only thing that pisses me off is this injustice, because the Chinese authorities are taking this money for themselves, not for this child's future. And it's not about small amounts, because it's usually PLN 50-100,000. Many young Chinese have become rich so quickly that they treat such fines as something normal, a standard fare. Another issue is that these children are most often taken care of by grandparents or the mother herself. Fathers are simply busy with business, business trips, late dinners with business partners, karaoke clubs, and sometimes, unfortunately, lovers. In China, having a baby simply means more work for women and grandparents. The father's role often begins and ends at the moment of conception, then it is the woman's problem how to raise the child, how to deal with it and how to deal with all the problems. A man brings money and this is his main role in a modern Chinese family. Of course, dads are very proud, they show photos and videos of the child to their friends, and if it is a son, they are in seventh heaven. Unfortunately, they do not devote much time to children on a daily basis and they seem to be next to their own family.

I recently saw a Chinese man take a taxi from Hong Kong to the border with Shenzhen and load the entire vehicle with Pampers diapers. I remember that because of the milk scandal, hundreds of thousands of Chinese bought their babies' milk in Hong Kong because it was safer and healthier there. But should the problem also apply to diapers? Maybe someone just carries them for profit, resells them, or distributes them to friends, because no one needs so many Pampers of the same size for one child. Or maybe they have twins? I don't know, but the taxi looked funny, the trunk, the seat next to the driver and the couch in the back - all in Pampers. Of course, these products are also available in China - maybe different quality? Although from my own parenting experience I will say that the Chinese ones are not bad.

There is a mania for possessions in China. You have a 75 m2 apartment, why don't you buy a 115 m2 apartment? You have one car - buy another! You have a wife, you can also afford two keepers. The middle class is simply getting richer and wants to show that they can afford certain material goods in larger quantities or sizes than they even need. The most banal thing is that on the one hand they show their prosperity, and on the other they still live in a simple way. They have one pot and one frying pan, an old fridge, they don't go on vacation - because they don't have much vacation time, they have big TVs - but no time to watch TV. The only thing they do for entertainment is going to big department stores, sometimes to the cinema. They don't know how to enjoy life. They don't have any hobbies, they are limited by visa regulations - they can't just travel and they don't have that much free time. They exist in a certain tangle of work, limited time and money. More and more often, their lives become empty and banal.