We subscribed to HBO, with that the cable company gave us a digital cable box that allowed us to watch shows on-demand. This turns out to be a good baby-sitting tool. Victor loves to watch all the PBS kids show. For a while his favorite show was Thomas & Friends. Nowadays he watches Bob the Builder, Curious George, Caillou, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, Sagwa the Chinese Cat, Dora and Diego, Fireman Sam, and Winnie the Pooh. He doesn't watch Teletubbies anymore; it's for younger children. We don't watch much TV at all. Victor and Oliver hog the TV for the on-demand shows. Victor never sits properly when watching. He is either standing, lying on the carpet, climbing up to the back of the sofa, or busy with his many chores (like "cooking" his Easter Eggs and candies in pans and pots). They can entertain themselves while we do some housework. We love the on-demand TV.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Childcare On-Demand
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This is where I envy Victor and his generation. It isn’t the internet, the IM or the omnipotent cell phone. I began to use email in 1990, IM in 1993 (back then a terminal program called Kermit was painfully clumsy but did the job). I don’t use the cell phone except for emergency calls.
The on-demand is special. The boys can choose the shows from an astounding selection. Here the technology works for people but does not enslave them.
When I was their age, our family only had a transistor radio. In 1975 my father assembled a TV. It was much harder than assemble a computer these days. He had to solder hundreds of parts according to the diagrams. He did something wrong, because the TV showed the images upside down! Still it was a hot commodity. When the Cultural Revolution ended, people wanted to watch the news and celebrations in Beijing. One day the neighbors congregated at our house. According to my father, the sound was loud and clear, but the images were not only upside down but also drifting across the screen at a steady pace! People watched with their necks twisted at an odd angel. Afterwards, they thanked my father for the “shadow play.”
When I was in school, we had a TV, several actually: a black-and-white 9-inch, a 12-inch color TV, and finally a 17-inch color TV (a luxury item). I heard some girls would marry men who had large color TVs. We were allowed to watch TV on Saturday night (back then we only had Sunday as the weekend). There was usually a TV series made in Hong Kong or Japan that captivated the entire audience of China: 资三四郎，上海滩，霍元甲，小鹿纯子，武则天，血疑，万水千山总是情，射雕英雄传，etc. After watching the shows, the boys imitated the heroes: throwing knives, kickboxing, trying to poke out someone’s eyes or dig his fingers into his skull, etc. The girls copied the heroines: wearing the long hair, wavy hair or short hair, blinking/smiling/walking/shrugging shoulders in a certain way, talking in an ultra feminine way or moody and snappy like one with the PMS.
Nowadays Korean movie stars win the hearts of Chinese teenagers. I envy Victor and Oliver for being able to choose a cartoon, pause it and go to the bathroom/take a nap, then return to the show if they feel like it. Victor likes the boy’s shows, but he is most captivated by Sagwa, the Chinese Siamese Cat. He always has to choose, sometimes for the narrative, other times for the pictures, songs and characters; each show appeals to his sensibility in a certain way that others don’t. He has a myriad of choices that I didn’t have at his age. I hope this autonomy helps him develop a taste for the finer things in life. In the years to come he’ll choose his friends, life goal and a mate; he should see his opportunity alongside responsibility.
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