Found - playground

Finally, after living here for 5 weeks, we have found a playground. It's a decent hike - maybe 30 minutes or so. I think that by the time we found it, L-- had become convinced that I'd lied to her. There's no playground, she must have thought. Why should there be? We haven't seen one yet in China!

Totally true. The only playgrounds we've seen so far have been inside expat housing complexes. A main reason we chose where we'll live is because there are so many playgrounds there, which seem covered with children all the time.

There are a number of parks within the immediate vicinity of our hotel. They're all very planned out. L-- gets joy out of pushing the stroller around on the maze of pathways through them. But having no place to play was clearly wearing on her.

One park nearby has what seems to be fitness equipment. Like those.. oh, what were they called? Parks in the US used to have those sit-up and chin-up systems placed along walking paths - remember? They were always made of thick brown wood, like small railroad ties. And no one every used them.

Here, they're made of brightly painted metal bars. And they're rather complex. There are a number of them we can't figure out how to use, even after watching people on them! They have treadmills, ellipticals, various balance units, all with no motor and using the rider's body as resistance. I find them wildly boring, and L-- tends to fall off of them. But these units were the closest thing to a playground we could find. The one close to our hotel was often populated with 8-year-old boys, but more often filled with cadres of retired Chinese. Men and women doing their daily exercises, playing cards and sitting around smoking cigarettes. Many of them would talk to our girls, which made L-- nervous but made S-- quite happy. It could be a fun multi-generational opportunity, if we spoke much Chinese and it weren't so smoky.

I was so excited to hear about the playground nearby that we set out quickly and with snacks this morning to find it. After a long search, we came to a less than perfect playground. It somehow manages to look both modern and outdated at the same time. As if they took a playground from the mid-seventies - rusty chains on the swings and peeling paint on the metal bars - and added a few large plastic pieces to make it look new. L-- didn't care. She loved it. She ran right in, circled the place a few times, and then went straight to ride on the bouncing duck. Following her, I was quickly stopped. Apparently there's a fee for this playground - hardly fitting in a communist country to charge children to play, in my opinion. The charge is 8RMB per child. That includes S--, who never left the stroller. And it doesn't include me, which meant that I couldn't play.

I'm not kidding.

The attendant yelled at me.

L-- was riding the duck, and asked me to ride the horsey next to her. These are serious little metal animals, on huge metal springs. Someone much larger than I could ride these little animals and do no damage. But parents are not allowed to play with their children. There are benches set out for parents. The guard blew her whistle at me.

I'll admit, I have a tendency to bristle against authority. I wanted very badly to ride the horse, once told not to. It took everything in me not to ride the horse again, or to jump onto the duck once L-- finished. For my children, I managed not to get us kicked out of the playground. But I can't promise that it won't happen soon.