Our China: Grass

Remember when you were a little kid and you ran around outside barefoot? Me too.

But my kids really have little idea what that’s like. Here in our city, grass is pretty sparse. Nature seems carefully controlled. One of our laughable memories is a trip we took to a mountainside park to get away for a little nature break. The paved paths through the park were no surprise–we see those everywhere. What shocked us was the piped-in music blaring over a loudspeaker system, covering up the sounds of the sea below, the birds, the wind. The speakers seemed to be cutting in and out, so the kids and I said a quick prayer that it wouldn’t play while we were there. Soon the music stopped, and we were able to really enjoy all the sights, smells and sounds.

There are large, sprawling parks here, but they often have firm reminders posted:

There are one or two parks where it’s fine to sit on the grass, but people usually don’t come into direct contact with it, because as my son discovered recently, human and animal influence in such a populated place means you really should be vigilant at all times. On a recent outing, he came home with quite a bit of doggy doo-doo on his clothes. (Yuck!)

So we were thrilled that our Mother’s Day outing included a trip to a local golf course. The day included a tree-planting ceremony, a buffet lunch, and afterward, while JavaMan turned into the resident golf pro, the kids and I shed our shoes and socks and ran in the glorious grass! A few people looked at us like we were crazy foreigners, but we didn’t care.

Grass. Glorious grass.