Octopus For Lunch: Notes About My Daughter's English/Chinese School in Shanghai

A month or so ago, my two-year-old daughter started preschool at an English/Chinese school around the corner from our apartment. Her class--made up of Western kids, Chinese kids, and kids of mixed origins--has one American teacher (who speaks very good Chinese), one American teacher (who speaks decent Chinese), and one Chinese teacher/ayi (who speaks no English at all). As you can imagine, Tully is speaking Chinese better and more comfortably than she was prior to starting school.

"Zai jian," she calls to the guard as we pass through the gate at school. Good-bye.

"Mei you," she says when I ask if she has something in her mouth. I don't have anything.

Every morning when we first arrive, each child has to visit the nurse who sits at a desk in the schoolyard. Now that she's learned the ropes, Tully trots right over, stands in line, holds still while the nurse takes her temperature, and opens her mouth and extends her hands for inspection when instructed to do so. All, of course, in Chinese. The nurse speaks very quickly and unless I ask her to slow down, I don't have a clue what she's saying to me in Mandarin. Tully? She gets it the first time around.

Though there is an administrator who speaks fluent English, the principal, the nurse, and all support staff of the school speak only Chinese. I love all the stuff Tully is learning/absorbing by being in a school with such diversity, but from time to time I come up against some challenging cultural differences.

Like at the Spring/Easter party. Guess what kind of candy was hidden in the play-yard for the toddlers to find and eat? Wrapped hard candy. You know, like sour balls. The perfect size hard candy to choke a running toddler. The kind of candy most parents back home in the U.S. wouldn't dream of passing out to a bunch of energetic, don't-hold-still-for-a-moment two-year-olds. Here? All the Chinese toddlers I know eat hard candy. (That day, I let Tully find the candy. Then I confiscated it. Then I made sure her teachers weren't allowing it in the classroom. They weren't.)

But perhaps most interestingly is the daily snack/lunch menu at school. Yesterday? Sweet and sour steak with fried basil. Today? Braised octopus.

I honestly have no idea what meat floss is (see Monday's menu), but from what the teachers said, none of the kids ate much of it.