Little Empress

Forget Chris. Everybody loves Amira! All this time I thought for sure that all the stares and smiles of admiration we've been getting from the Chinese were for me. If only I had a nickel for all the times on this trip that I've been wrong! It's all about Amira over here. Yesterday at Kung Fu Panda (I wasnt there), Amira accidently started eating popcorn from the wrong woman's bucket and the lady just let her eat it all up. Even some of Shanghai's grimiest taxi drivers soften and sweeten up when she's around. What the deally yo?

Seeing as though Black people are a rarity round these parts, and Black children are virtually non-existent, it's really not surprising that people in Shanghai are curious and fascinated with her. Sometimes all the attention is a little unnerving though. So far people have asked (and not asked) to touch Amira's hair, give her things and take pictures with her. I'm going to go ghetto if another person touches her, especially without asking.

In 1979, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping enacted a law restricting couples to only one child. Given that China is an extremely populous nation of over 1 billion people, the idea was to put the slow down on all those babies. So what was the result? Well, within a nation full of only-children, you can imagine that it is more than common for Chinese families to spoil the heck out of their one kid. Yep, all that doting and attention ends up creating what the Chinese refer to as "little emperors (or empresses)."

It certainly does appear to me that Amira is developing a "little empress" attitude of her own. In less than a week she's become more defiant and driven to have things exactly her way. I guess all the attention has really gone to her royal little head. Oh well. Why ruin a good thing? I'll wait until we get back to Philly to bring my little empress back down to planet Earth.