Does China have the Fourth of July?

The challenge of helping your children maintain a sense of their home culture's identity when you live in a foreign land was weighing especially heavily on my mind this year. With all that we had going on last week with school entrance exams it had escaped me that it is actually July already. So I was a bit unprepared for how to celebrate the 4th.

Last year you may remember we had a big party with our friends from the neighborhood but last year's holiday was a Monday, easy enough to celebrate on a Sunday, the day before. With the actual day falling on a Wednesday, it's very easy for it to get lost in the local shuffle. An American neighbor of ours is having a barbecue but all of the invited guests speak French so she apologized that she could not invite us as well as she thought we would be a bit uncomfortable. True. So with Heinz away in Australia for work and all of our other American friends away, the kids and I are on our own. 

I decided that at 5 1/2 Conrad is old enough to understand a bit about History so we pulled out a globe and talked a little bit about the story of American Independence. I think the best part about having kids is that when you have to revisit topics that you think you know and study them to understand how to present them to childrens' minds, it gives you a fresh perspective. At first I found my little history lesson leading us down the Pilgrim's path and I thought "Oh great! Some history teacher I am; my children will forever have Thanksgiving Day and Independence Day confused!" So instead I changed course and used the "Big Brother Bullying the Little Brother" angle, where Little Brother got tired of Big Brother always imposing more rules and taking more and more of Little Brother's allowance until Little Brother said "Enough! I want to be independent!" Like I said, I'm no History teacher! But I think they got the jist. We talked a bit about Britain, home of our friends Charlie, Henry and Miss Lisa, and with our recent celebration of the Queen's Jubilee, it all had a lot of unexpected layers. (The good news for everyone is that we are friends with Britain now!) I told them about the Pledge of Allegiance. I sang some songs for them. Vivienne liked America the Beautiful the best so we turned on the VPN and found some videos of patriotic songs on YouTube. As usual I teared up over the National Anthem.

We did a United States puzzle on the iPad and talked about how Old Glory has 13 stripes and 50 stars, and why. I drew some flags and we colored them.

While we were coloring them Conrad said "I wish I had a t-shirt with a Flag on it."
My first response was the simple truth: "It's pretty hard to find shirts with the American Flag on them in China." But then, my creative juices flowing, I got an idea. And my blue and red Sharpies. 

Instant flag t-shirt! (Who needs Old Navy?) So today we are all wearing our colors, even me!

Of course China has the 4th of July, as the old joke goes; every calendar does. But Americans are the only ones for whom it has such great importance. For us it is The Fourth, in capital letters. We haven't got any fun fireworks this year and will miss the beautiful show over the Indianapolis skyline, viewed from the comfort of our own backyard but we've learned some things and had some fun. How did you celebrate this year?

Happy Fourth to you all. Freedom, Independence, Love and Peace. We wish these for you all~