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Comment by gbog | Hacker News Reader

Food issues is the very reason for me to raise my kids in China. They learn to use chopsticks before forks and knives. They eat rice daily and have no desert. I sometime had to literally tell my daughter: "if you do not eat this chocolate cake, I'll not give you more bone soup".

There is a very big food problem... in the US.

Also, there is a very annoying problem with people of other colors in the West. I do not want to have to tell my kids to be afraid of "some people" when I take the subway, but I also do not want them to be unsafe. This is another reason to avoid the West for raising kids. (Just one last: in Japan, parents are NOT allowed to take their kids to school, kids have to go by themselves. In the West this would be considered irresponsible. I want my kids to be happy, free and safe.)

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You're absolutely right that from a dietary perspective, and painting with a very broad brush, Chinese people in general eat healthier than Americans. My spouse certainly eats healthier than I do, though I've been a bit of a bad influence.

My point was about food safety, not nutrition. To some extent I can control how healthily my children eat by choosing what to feed them. But while in the US we can be fairly confident that the food and drugs they get are safe, that is less true in China, due in part to some recent food safety scandals like [0]. When we travel to China, there are certain things (like infant formula) that we bring with us rather than buy there. We also bring things like vitamins to my in-laws because they ask us to.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal

One scandal doesn't make a general rule. Also as your wife is Chinese you certainly noticed that Chinese people are obsessed with food. In some place like Sichuan it is the only conversation topic that's ever talked about. With such an obsession, a restaurant won't last a week if it's serving bad food. I have seen it with my colleagues, one had a "laduzi" and told others, the next the restaurant had no more patrons from our company, it's a kind of blacklist.

That's interesting. Would you mind going into specifics? Are you American? How long have you been there, and what are the main challenges? I see you're in Beijing. I lived in Kunming, and it did seem like a pretty appropriate place for having a family. Are you concerned about the pollution levels? What kind of school do you send your kids to, if any?

I'm French, have been in China for more than 10 years, my wife is Chinese, kids go to French school. People over-react to pollution in Beijing: it is only 2/3 days a month and still way below levels of most other capitals in SE Asia. And as the air is very dry, the impact on the lungs is not what it would be in a more humid place, dixit two physicians.

There are downsides obviously, but food, safety, and housekeeping help are on the upside, especially with kids.

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