Last, lovely, family meal

I think this is just about the first weekday that the kids haven't gone to school. But of course they had other places to go to. So I was allowed some time to mull. I have been reading some rather worrying articles about world population recently, and how although it is possible to manage to feed everyone (through non-organic farming means), it isn't going to be tenable going forward. At least that's my understanding. It's one of the reasons I don't generally buy organic food, as it seems to be encouraging a market that, if it was the only way of producing food, would only be able to feed about half of the world's current population. If that is anything near the truth then I am justified in my avoidance of organic. Having said that, it may be that most of what I eat here is organic. If so that's great as it feeds the local population and we don't ship it half way across the world. Plus, here we have a policy that limits population.

What a sore point. Almost as a reaction I was against this. But being aware of, and living in two very different cultures, I have to at least analyse things I would otherwise dismiss out of hand. The one child policy is rather severe, but was probably born (no pun) out of a perceived necessity. I am now of the opinion that regulating population is a necessity. It is a hard thing to say, but now that we are aware of the impacts of what we do we have a responsibility to not totally screw things up for our future generations. If people really agree (as it seems they do) that fossil fuel pollution and other such man-made planet-endangering things are bad then it makes sense to not have as many people who are doing this to the planet. Although I recognise this as being a completely different reason from the Chinese policy, I have been thinking about what might be the best way. I don't want to have a blanket "one-child-unless-you-live-in-the-countryside-and-your-first-child-is-a-girl-or-disfigured" approach, but I'm thinking something more like "two-children-unless-both-are-the-same-sex-in-which-case-you-can-have-more-until-you-have-both-genders". I love having two kids and I know so very very well I'm lucky to have one of each. Just about every Chinese parent I know has said such nice things about us having had a boy and a girl, with no remorse about only having had one kid. I feel almost embarrassed. But I think my horrible algorithmic way of population control would be a good thing. I just can't stand the way that certain cultures (more like religions) emphasise the importance of breeding just so they can have more than the others.

For the evening meal we kept it a family affair. Waipo and Jiuma, having spent so much time with the kids outside of school (and allowing Tan and I to have our own lives with our own friends, and our own marital time together) were to make a rare venture out, along with Lin Hong and her daughter Tian Tian. A Heng and Ling Ming also came and us blokes shared a couple of beers and some nice food, and we had a genuinely nice family meal. Our last such for a long time.

Last family meal
Rather than be sad for the rest of the waking day, A Hua invited us to karaoke for a final time. Though it was a mainly girls' night out there were a couple of blokes so I managed a few last ganbei's of the year. But knowing that you're leaving the next day somewhat sobers you up and I got Tan home around 1amish. "Home" - I don't take that for granted here as it is more our own place than our abode in London.

KTV on last night in Pingguo 2011