Batgung

I was chatting with a colleague of mine the other day, and the subject of babies came up, as it often does -- she's pregnant, due in less than four months. She and her husband had been out over the weekend doing some 'getting ready for Baby' shopping at a very large, expat-oriented baby-n-kids shop in Horizon Plaza in Ap Lei Chau. HK expats with kids will already know the place, and for the rest of you, the name will likely be meaningless anyway, so I'll just omit it. The point was, this colleague (who's originally from New Zealand, by the way) asked me what I thought of the place, and was relieved to find that I thought it was fairly creepy, as she had, too.

The reasons for this negative reaction are complex -- it's a nice store, actually, with a good range of high-quality products, and staff who try hard to be helpful. I have no desire to slander the place; I wish them well, and in fact might go back there myself if there were something I needed that they had, and that I couldn't get elsewhere. No, the problem with the place has more to do with the mood or feeling it's conveying: everything, and everybody, there is trying to convince you that you need to buy 'the very best' for your baby.

Trying to decide what's 'right' for your new baby can really add to the pressures of being an expat, and resolving this issue can be less straightforward than in your home country. I'll try to explain some of the sometimes-conflicting themes that come into play here.

First, it's one thing to be adventurous when you're choosing a restaurant or holiday destination, but when Baby is on the way, many expats get very conservative. For example, there's the hard-to-avoid desire to simply default back to products and services that you know and are comfortable with. Foreigner-made products just look wrong. Can you trust a stroller made in Japan that has a cartoon squid pasted on it? How can that be safe? Will feeding Junior German-produced baby cereal have him singing 'Deutschland uber Alles' before he's two? What about a teething ring manufactured in the UK? Don't they all have bad teeth there? And if it's made in China, well, just forget it. How could a country that's got a billion-odd people know anything about taking care of babies? (Note to any Japanese, German, UK and Chinese readers: yes, I know you feel the same way about American products, and no, American baby food isn't limited to nacho cheese and jelly donut flavors.)

Second, as I mentioned in my analysis of expat traps, we expats are often susceptible to the way the winds of opinion within our community are blowing. If 'all the expat moms' are getting those amazing Swiss-produced, organic-skin-softener-infused, eco-friendly baby buttwipes (attention: hypothetical product only -- don't go looking for them!), how can you admit that you buy dirt-cheap rolls of ordinary cotton wool at the local pharmacy, chop them into bits, and just wet them under the tap? (Oops -- must stop revealing Tall family trade secrets.)

Third, and following on from point 2, if you don't follow the trends in your community, you can find yourself on the short end of some quite competitive exchanges. Subtle put-downs are commonplace amongst parents-to-be and new parents. But being an expat can add extra arrows to your quiver: you can ascend to a higher level of one-up-man-ship by demonstrating how much trouble you were willing to go to in order to ensure your precious one doesn't have to miss out on any of the comforts of her 'real' home. If this means special-ordering a $8,000 hardwood rocking chair from an obscure woodcarver working out of a log cabin in the British Columbian Rockies, well, don't you care about your child's mystical links to the pristine forests of his homeland?

Sometimes these little comparisons are made without a word being spoken. The Talls were out shopping recently, in a chain store representing a megalithic American entertainment conglomerate built upon suspect antics of a falsetto-voiced mouse. Mrs Tall and Toddler Tall were off evaluating the Poohs, and I was standing guard over Toddler Tall's stroller, a sorry, clapped-out hand-me-down produced by an obscure Chinese manufacturer. Just next to me was another father in almost identical pose -- almost. In contrast, however, he was leaning proudly on a mammoth child-moving machine, all tubular steel and oversized spoked wheels. It looked like it had been spawned by the HSBC building. His snide glance at the Tall stroller said it all: bad father. Or perhaps it was pere mal, as he was most decidedly French. Or perhaps my deep-seated insecurities were acting up, and I imagined the whole thing.

But it got me thinking: why does anyone need such an elaborate, heavy-duty stroller? The only possible use for them is pushing your child before you as you jog, which is no doubt good exercise but seems a poor way to bond with the mite. And this particular gentleman (especially his very un-gallic pot belly) showed few signs of having maneuvered this monstrosity anywhere other than around shopping malls. But then, perhaps he felt he was 'doing his best' for his daughter, and it's hard to fault a man for that, I guess.

So if you've got the money, and you don't mind spending a lot of it, it's easy to provide lots of tangible evidence you're 'doing your best' for your child here. But don't get sucked into feeling like 'the best' only has to do with material possessions. That's banal, I know, but it's a constant threat in Hong Kong.

Becoming a parent is stress enough as it is. So it's no good trying to recreate either your own youth, or that of your friends' and relatives' children back in the old country. You're unlikely to need as much stuff, or such expensive stuff, as you're going to be told you will. Look around in local shops, and consider buying cheap imitations instead of the 'real things' for a change -- your baby really won't care, and so many baby products are used so briefly that it's not worth buying things that will last for generations (especially when you don't have any space to store bulky potential heirlooms such as cribs, wooden high chairs, etc.). You'll be trying to give away your baby stuff soon enough, and you'll find you end up having to throw lots away. You can make that bitter moment a bit less painful by just making sure you're throwing away cheap plastic crap instead of 'the best'.

An additional note: here are a couple of tips for places to do baby shopping in Hong Kong.

First, consider heading to a couple of less expat-oriented locations, i.e. shops that don't carry western brands exclusively. One of our favorites is Windsor House in Causeway Bay. It's right across Great George Street from Ikea. There's a huge HMV on the main floor, but then if you take the escalators up there are a number of baby stores on the next level, and then Toys R Us and Eugene (especially good for small baby stuff) on successive levels above that. There are similar concentrations of baby shops, minus the Toys R Us, on the top shopping floor of Times Square, also in Causeway Bay, and in Grand Century Plaza in Mongkok.

Second, if you are willing to look for your own clothes in Hong Kong's many outlet shops, you should redouble your efforts and try to find baby clothes this way. Mrs Tall, for example, favors a number of outlet shops in the crowded little lanes between Des Voeux and Queen's Roads in Central. These shops have rapid turnovers, and stock lots of baby clothes originally intended for export to the US, UK, etc. Prices for outfits rarely exceed HKD40-50. Mrs Tall often comes home with piles of stuff for Toddler Tall and hasn't spent $100 on it -- lots of the items are $10-20.