When I go to bed and my wife stays in living room late into night, it's most often due to some of her mommy friends crying on WeChat over what the husband's mother or father did or didn't do.
Consider a common sight in these parts - a grandfather in the courtyard watching over their grandchild playing with other kids, maybe holding a smaller sibling himself, all the while chain smoking.
That's some wisdom to pass.
@cloudtrapezer: " in China the grandparents look after the kids anyway"
I'd advice to not generalize that too much.
My observations as a parent in China are that given the economic opportunity to choose between educated caregiver and a grandparent of their own, many Chinese would choose the former even if it didn't come with added competitiveness for the kid.
I know I would, if our son's grandparents were even an option.
Chinese parents in cities are increasingly forward-thinking, and some grandparents are simply not.
While trying to keep the kids competitive among their peers may be the first priority for Chinese parents, I don't think that it's the only motivation to enroll them in summer programs.
Considering that Chinese parents generally do not have summer vacations, I don't know if many families would have resources to supervise their children if they didn't attend these activities monitored by (hopefully) professional educators.
In these circumstances, 24/7 glued to the screen is not the worst that could happen with children in home by themselves.
English training is not the only form of commercial activity that families here can choose from.
I don't know how popular it would be with Chinese parents, if there was equivalent commercial activity to have kids just "enjoy their summers" and "develop social skills" with no additional pressure - other than some adult supervision.
However, in recent years the business environment has changed from flat out requiring initial capital investment in cash to allowing businesses to get started and then presentng the red tapes later on.
For example now there are business types where also foreign partners can give their capital investment in their work input rather than hard currency, but lot of officials do not know how to proceed when the business license doesn't show any capital investment amount.
We met this red tape with foreign exchange authority, when we had work done for foreign customers and wanted to get on with invoicing them. Apparently for each invoiced amount of foreign currency that you want to bring in the country, you need to have equivalent or more in RMB previously deposited in China.
Advice from the same authority in Kunming: Do like everyone else and have the foreign customers make payments to the manager's personal bank account, off the company records.
From what I am seeing, it's still often not so much about desperately needing teachers, but about increasing market value of the establishment toward paying customers - needing the foreign faces.
Especially in training school type of setups (link in OP), as opposed to normal primary and high schools and universities.
No results found.
Video: Zen and the art of patisserie with chef Igor Nataf
Posted by@sezuwupom : "JanJal is living the good life [...] Igor's delivers to your door."
You forgot to mention that I recycle and care for environment, which is why I would prefer to pick up my bakeries on my way rather than have someone on scooter deliver it wrapped in plastics. Even if it would leave the plastic maker and the scooter driver jobless. They could find new jobs in Just Hot, which I keep in business.
But I wish best of luck to Igor's. If location is everything, they have some catching up to do to reach out to potential customers like they are doing in this paid review..
Video: Zen and the art of patisserie with chef Igor Nataf
Posted byWent here one morning after grocery shopping in nearby Walmart.
No surprise, shelves were less than half-empty like they are in all upper scale bakeries I've visited in Kunming, specifically in the mornings before lunch.
They all seem to get stocked up few hours after lunch time, which for me is too late because I like to consume my sweets at home(=office) couple of hours after lunch, without making a separate trip for it.
Thus my staple bakeries remain from big and soulless chains like Just Hot, that have their donuts ready before 11am.
What does organic mean in China?
Posted byThey also say time is a healer, and it takes time to grow. While time does get peope killed, it also helps greatly in reproduction. Without time, we would not have gotten where we are now - nor would we get to develop into extradimensional beings bound by neither space nor time, if we ban it now.
What I propose, is that we do not ban time, but instead develop ourselves beyond time, so that we no longer depend on it, and becomes indifferent to us.
On a related but more serious note, should humanity also develop beoynd organic in our feeding patterns?
For most people, things like "organic" or "free range" has already developed past hunting wild game and gathering roots and berries. For the minority that still practises such, our current methods to grow our food must appear as strange as eating protein grown in reactors would sound to many of us.
What does organic mean in China?
Posted byA store we frequent for vegetables and meat is Q+Life in B1 level of TKP Shopping Mall (Beijing Lu / Baiyun Lu). My wife has bought for their green advertising, I cannot vouch either way but I'm satisfied with the quality.
It's official: Yunnan facing serious drought
Posted byWell, we are having minor thunderstorm right now. Earlier in the week my phone's weather forecast showed daily rain drops in Kunming from end of this week til end of eternity, Or was it just the two weeks ahead it can show.