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China Elevator Stories
“It’s way too cold for your baby to be outside”
I chat with a cab driver in Siping.
06/11/2014
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
It’s October 2014. We’re in my husband’s hometown, Siping. Siping is in Northeast China, and it’s already quite cold at this time of year. Lows are in the single digits (around 2°C or 35°F). During the day, we still get a lot of sunshine. I often pack up our little one and go for a walk in the early afternoon.
One day, we take a cab. When the cab driver sees our son, he turns up the heating and asks:
“How old is he?”
I tell him: “He’s 14 weeks.”
The cab driver says, aghast: “Only 3 months? It’s way too cold for him to be outside.”
Have people ever told you that it’s too cold to take your child outside?
This is part of the series ‘Conversations with Locals in China,’ where I share conversations with Chinese people on my blog.