Of Births and Borders part 2 of 3

There must be something in the water here at our international school. We have had five babies born to staff members or their wives since the school year began.

After I blogged this winter about some of the cultural differences that our colleague experienced when she gave birth here, one of you asked whether or not the child was given citizenship status because he was born in Hong Kong.

Great question. The answer –of course- is no.

But I thought it was such a great question because it had never dawned on me to ask it. It never even occurred to me that a child born to a citizen of another country who had been living and working in Hong Kong for just eighteen months might be granted citizen status.

The practice of granting citizenship to anyone born on that country’s soil is known in Latin as jus soli which literally means “right of the soil.” Less than twenty percent of the world’s countries’ grant citizenship status based on jus soli. Virtually no European or Asian country grants citizenship to individuals just because they happen to be born within that nation’s boundaries. The United States is the largest and one of the few nations that issues citizenship based on jus soli.

The vast majority of the world’s nations require that one or both parents have citizen or some sort of residency status. This practice is known as jus sanguinis –or “right of blood.”

Of Births and Borders part 1 of 3

Ever since the handover of Hong Kong back to China in 1997, people both inside and outside of Hong Kong have been speculating about just how much Beijing has been calling the shots from behind the scenes. According to the 1997 handover agreement, Hong Kong is to be a Special Administrative Region (SAR) for the next fifty years. One nation, two systems. Hong Kong is to enjoy a large amount of autonomy even though she has been reunited with China.

The more leery citizens of Hong Kong claim Beijing exerts a whole lot more control over Hong Kong than she publically lets on. Every so often something comes up that indicates that this may very well be the case.

In 2010, over 88,000 babies were born in Hong Kong hospitals. 41,000 of them –almost half- were born to mainland mothers who had come over for the express purpose of having their babies here. One of the biggest draws is that children of Chinese parents born in Hong Kong are immediately granted permanent residency status – a process that otherwise requires seven years of residency in Hong Kong.

Last month, 800 Hong Kong labor and delivery doctors signed a petition calling for tighter restrictions on use of the Hong Kong health care system. They said they are overworked and resources are being spread too thin.

Hong Kong has ways to clamp down on this massive influx of expecting mothers, but for some reason is choosing not to. This is what has caused some to speculate that there is more going on than meets that eye.

From Hong Kong’s perspective, there’s a problem. But from Beijing’s perspective –one could argue- there is no problem. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong . . . it’s all part of China. If citizens from one city want to go to another city to have their baby because it has more modern facilities, so be it.

In fact, from a politburo’s perspective sitting up in Beijing, it might actually look like a good thing.

Wow

This from a new reader.

What a wonderful blog. I stumbled onto it while looking for international teaching blogs and I ended up reading it in its entirety over the past few days. My husband and I will be going to an international school in Beijing this summer, so it was lovely to find such a frank, humorous account of your family's time in Hong Kong.

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences. It's been a real pleasure to read.

- Sev

ifake part 2 of 2

My friend handed the phone back to the man just long enough to get cash out of his pocket. My friend gave the man the money and the man tucked the phone into my friend's pants pocket, patted it, smiled, and congratulated my friend on his new purchase. My friend pulled his new phone out of his pocket and glanced down at it. When he glanced back up, the man was gone having blended into the crowd.

My friend looked down again at his new iphone. The case was real enough, but instead of the iphone he had just been examining a moment early, in the case was a worthless, plastic display phone.

In the few seconds it had taken my friend to hand over his money, the man had performed a slight of hand and had switched phones.

As much as it stung, my friend was telling the story pretty freely on Monday morning at work. When I asked him if he kept the plastic phone as a prop to go with his tale of woe, he said no. He was so disgusted with himself that he gave it to his buddy Andy and told him to give it to his kids as a toy.

The hustler got hustled.

Well, at least my friend’s instinct was right on one account: the phone he’d been examining was in fact a real iphone.

It’s just too bad it wasn’t the one he walked away with.

-Jack

ifake part 1 of 2

My friend and colleague was over the border in China doing some wheeling and dealing. My friend is Chinese Canadian and by his own admission, there is no deal that can’t be made more favorable with a little haggling.

My friend is pretty shrewd. He drives a tough bargain. He has a pretty good nose for opportunity and can ferret out a bad deal from twenty paces away. The problem wasn’t that his radar didn’t go off, it’s that my friend choose to override it.He and his friend Andy were approached on the streets of Shenzhen by a guy trying to sell them a new iphone. Nothing unusual in that. You get approached on the city streets of all the time.

Instead of walking away, my friend stopped to check out the phone. Granted, it was probably a knock off, but my friend was taken aback by how authentic it looked. It had the right amount of heft, it looked really good. It was fully functional. It ran beautifully. It was responsive and fast.“I don’t know Andy, I think this may be the real thing,” my friend said.

The man was asking about US $150 for the phone.My friend played with it for a few more minutes, weighing the phone and weighing his options. “I am going to go for it!” he finally said to Andy.

[photo by Elise VanNoord]

Moldin' Golden Arches

Way to go Elise. Third place at the fifth-grade science fair. (Turns out McDonald's burgers do have a freakishly long shelf life. What do they put in those things?)

Assorted Pictures of Borneo

It’s supposed to be fun!

Borneo was a working vacation. Thursday through Saturday, I attended a teachers’ conference. It was an excellent conference and I brought back a lot of ideas for my classroom.

The last night of the conference, the organizers put on an evening of drinks, appetizers, and live music in the grand ballroom. It was quite an evening. After a week of discussion the relative merits of heterogeneous groupings versus homogenous groupings, nearly a thousand teachers from all over Southeast Asia let their hair down.

The live band found its groove and people took to the dance floor. I am not a big dancer. I lack rhythm. And that’s not just my opinion; it’s actually well documented. My kindergarten teacher Mrs. Ostdyk wrote on my report card, “The rhythmic element of music seems to elude Jack.”

Not much has changed in the ensuing forty years.

But the live music and my wife’s cajoling proved to be too much for even me. Before I knew it, I found myself out on the parquet floor. It had been years since I had attempted to dance and I decided that it would be best for everyone involved if I tried to ease into it. Step to the left, swing the arms. Step to the right, swing the arms. Small movements, Jack, small movements.

I thought that –like riding a bike- it would all come right back to me. It didn’t. It was taking me a while to get my groove back.

I knew that I wasn’t doing so well, but I didn’t realize just how badly I was doing until a stranger intervened. A women I had never met before came up behind me, grabbed my elbows and started to swing my arms forwards and backwards yelling over the music, “It’s supposed be fun!”

Well, would you mind telling that to my feet?

a rescued orang utan baby