Yes, folks, it is true. You can buy those attractive Crocs shoes for your kids all over the world (I picked up this flyer in Shanghai.)

Then again, I’m not sure that this is a good thing….

While we were in Shanghai together on the China 2.0 Tour, she took me to the chain place that offers her favorite version of the drink.

The drink/light food restaurant rbt (“real brewed tea”) has a little green rabbit as a mascot and modern green decor (plus a couple of swings to hang out in.)

Its menu features a variety of tea-based drinks that I enjoyed and that I think would appeal to kids.

rbt brings Taiwanese-style tea drinks to much of China, with the added fun of little liquid-filled “boba” or bubbles/balls made of tapioca.

You suck them up, along with the milky green tea, through a special large straw.

Kids will like the juices and smoothies as well, so stop by rbt for some refreshment if you happen to spy the little green rabbit.

Here are the locations in Hong Kong, in mainland China (listings in Chinese) and in Malaysia and (wow) Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In China, perfect strangers share four-person compartments (both men and women together) but we re-jiggered compartment assignments as much as we could to have at least a few of our 2.0 Tour bloggers in the same compartment.

I shared with two very nice Chinese passengers and the ever-buoyant and enjoyable David Feng.

We had dinner aboard the train and I slept like the proverbial log. Something very soothing about that clickety-clack….

For my RSS readers and anyone else who can’t see the video box below, here is the URL for the video on YouTube.

We don’t have time to blog when we travel.

I mean, we do only if we don’t sleep.

Sure, just gather info all day, take notes, shoot video, shoot photos, then spend all night drafting blog posts, uploading/grooming/tagging video, uploading/grooming/tagging photos and launching all of that info out into the blogosphere.

Just add a lot of Red Bull to your life, right?

I’ve been here in China (on the China 2.0 Tour) since November 9, in both Beijing and Shanghai, and have oodles of material for the Family Travel blog and other blogs/publications, but either no time to craft posts or no WiFi to upload it to the world.

All of us on the Tour have been actively covering Tour events on Twitter, but it doesn’t quite have the richness of a full blog post.

So, I ask for your patience until I can get some combination of time and connectivity. Meantime, here I am at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, under the watchful eyes of Chairman Mao’s portrait, and having the time of my life.

You’ll just have to trust me on that until I have time to tell you more.

We ended up in a three-story foot emporium, a chain business in China, called Liangzi.

We split up into groups of three.

Elliott Ng of travel search site UpTake, Ernst-Jan Pfauth the Dutch ProBlogger and I went into a nice, comfy small room where each of us had a foot masseuse work the living daylights out of our feet and legs for about the next hour and a half.

Heavenly.

Elliott speaks some Chinese, so we spoke back and forth as well as we could (the two guys had women masseuses, I had a man) and talked about where we were from and what we were doing in China.

My masseuse was “Number 87;” I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t know his actual name because I had no pen and paper handy. He was only 19, said that he works the 10:30 am to 1:30 am shift and that I was his 7th client.

He was super-nice and efficient and by the end of our session, I had had my toes, arches, heels and calves pretty thoroughly mooshed, rubbed, prodded and smacked.

Each masseuse was very sensitive to discomfort, the room was soothing and I drank lots of hot water with lemon and honey (supposedly to help flush out toxins.)

On the way out, we also had a short shoulder and back massage.

After a 20 hour flight, carrying luggage and schlepping a laptop on my shoulders, this was MOST helpful to my mental attitude.

The whole session was about US$15 – a total bargain, obviously.

(This is cross-posted on the Perceptive Travel blog and Every Dot Connects.)

I know that I’m a very fortunate freelance writer and social media/Web 2.0 trainer; I have a military pension and health insurance from my 22+ years in the US Navy. I can ride out the current economic storm (with a lot of belt-tightening) so it’s somewhat easier for me than for others to set fiscal angst aside and go to China next week….to meet a bunch of Chinese bloggers.

That’s probably what the China 2.0 Tour might seem like from a distance, and you might well ask; what is the ROI (business Return on Investment) from getting to know “a bunch of bloggers and tech types?” Is that how I should be spending my limited funds?

Here’s why — as a good friend once said about me, I’ve never been about looking back. I’ve always been about looking ahead to the future.

Unless I’m sorely mistaken, 245 million Chinese Internet users might be rather important to someone like me who mostly publishes online, and who consults and teaches entry-level workshops in all of this heavily-connected Webby stuff.  Travel writing is only one activity supporting my overall life philosophy, which is to attempt to understand how things work and how people tick.

That’s why Christine Lu and Elliott Ng asked me to join China 2.0….from the Web site, here is what they’re trying to accomplish:

“Led by The China Business Network and co-organized by Web2Asia and CNReviews, the inaugural China 2.0 Tour is sponsored by Edelman Digital China and represents a unique opportunity for companies and individuals to gain a deeper understanding of China. Unlike a typical business conference or large trade delegation, we seek to go ‘one-level deeper’ by creating a series of small-scale, exclusive meetups where people can share more openly about their business successes and challenges, and provide a deeper view into the nature of building a successful venture in China.

We also are taking an interdisciplinary approach by looking at social media, clean technology, gaming, wireless, and other areas where trends in China will affect markets around the world.

We also seek to provide informal opportunities to go off-message and off-the-record, so that long-lasting relationships can be built….”

Not only will I meet all sorts of key people in China, including many directly related to my travel and social media work, but I’ll also get to know my fellow Tour attendees — people like:

• Shel Israel, co-author with Robert Scoble of one of the seminal Web 2.0 books, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers.
• Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software and enterprise 2.0 influencer behind Go Big Always.
• Mike Butcher — Editor, TechCrunch UK and Ireland.
• Ernst-Jan Pfauth — Editor-In-Chief, The Next Web and Co-Organizer, Blog 08 in the Netherlands.
• Melissa Sconyers, who won a contest sponsored by Mashable to create a new kind of online resume, called VisualCV. She’ll blog for Mashable in China.

How much I’ll be able to post here while in China will depend upon Internet connectivity and more importantly, time available.  I’ll certainly do my best, although this is more of a tech visit than a travel visit.

I’m not going to be able to make the Guangzhou leg of the Tour (and will miss the Chinese Blogger Conference where Shel is a featured speaker – phooey) because finances wouldn’t allow it, but I will spend extra days in Shanghai and will have more pure-play travel goodies from there, I would think.

Thanks very much to my sponsors Every Dot Connects and UpTake – Your First Step to a Great Trip, and the support I’ve gotten from BootsnAll’s Cheap Air Tickets in order to get me there and back.

One of those friendships just brought me a stupendous opportunity – Elliott Ng of the travel research site UpTake and Christine Lu of the China Business Network have kindly invited me to be a participating blogger in the China 2.0 Tour in November, which ends with attending China BloggerCon in Guangzhou.

It’s hard to even type that, I’m so excited!

Other participants include author Shel Israel, tech expert Robert Scoble and Sam Lawrence of Jive Software.

This is certainly not a family travel opportunity, per se, nor is it really travel at all although we will have a little time for that. It’s mostly a tour to plug into what’s going on in social media in China, and meet many of the major players face-to-face. Since I teach Web 2.0/social media workshops and do consulting with Every Dot Connects, it’s a wonderful fit for me.

More information to follow as soon as I have it, and thanks for the support!

In April 2008, we explored Beijing, China, with our daughters, ages 3 and 5.

We played hackey sack at the Temple of Heaven and hustled away from adoring crowds at Tiananmen Square.

We motored by Beijing’s National Stadium (dubbed the Birds’ Nest,) paddled boats on Lake Kunming at the Summer Palace and hiked the Great Wall.

Our daughters ate fried rice and ice cream at Golden Tripod Attic in Chaoyang (and twice, chicken nuggets at McDonald’s — I admit also drinking Starbucks coffee a few times.) We ate a fabulous Peking duck meal at the famed Li Qun Roast Duck restaurant in a hutong southeast of Tiananmen Square.

While we planned our trip, friends often asked, “Why China?” (roughly translated: “If you’re spending $4,000 on airfare and visas, shouldn’t you end up by a pool with a swim-up bar?”)

I realized that I’d hear that question for years, and it reveals both anxieties and curiosities about international travel generally — and specifically, about traveling with children.

People familiar with China worried about environmental and other health hazards including public toilets, Asia’s notorious “squatty potties”. Other friends were concerned about food (because kids are reputed to be picky,) homesickness and entertainment. How would we keep the kids amused?

Anxieties: yes, I had them all. But the bottom line is that there is plenty for kids to do, see and eat in Beijing. And we found a great solution for squatty-potty fears.

First, why China?

• Reason No. 1 — Friendship and opportunity

Our trip to China was motivated by my childhood friend who moved to Beijing last year with her family. When she and her husband began preparing for their expatriate life together, I said that we would visit them anywhere as long as we didn’t need a dozen vaccinations or bodyguards. When she announced that they were headed to Beijing, I said, “We’ll come.”

So, while preparing for this opportunity of a lifetime, we were both practical and pragmatic.

Here’s my one practical tip to allay health fears: if you choose vaccinations for your children, make sure they are up-to-date with current requirements. My husband and I chose to have Hepatitis A vaccinations. The Centers for Disease Control Web site has more information. We didn’t drink tap water on the advice of our friends; they have bottled water at home. We bought bottled water at the store while out and about. Done.

About squat toilets; yes, they are a little intimidating. They have a fearsome reputation among women travelers and expats because of the likelihood of peeing all over yourself if you’re not positioned just right. (My kids also figured that out — fast.)

So here’s the good news: when the Chinese government began preparing Beijing for the summer 2008 Olympic Games, they put a high priority on improving public toilets. There are 1 or 2 “Western-style” toilets in nearly every public restroom. (The public restrooms near Tiananmen Square are pristine.) There, Chinese attendants saw our non-Chinese faces and politely guided us to the right stalls. You can buy some cheap souvenirs upon exiting the toilets (really.)

But in restaurants and in public spaces like Ritan Park, Houhai and Chaoyang Park, nearly all potties are “squatties.”

Enter a wondrous creation, the portable toilet. My husband carried it in his backpack, and voila, my kids could squat contentedly. We even placed it over squatty toilets a few times and didn’t use plastic bags. Done.

If you solve for those minor anxieties, the opportunities to enjoy Beijing with your kids are everywhere. You’ll find yourself:

** Jostling along in rickshaws around Houhai, riding the rides and walking the great rocks at Ritan Park.

** Absolutely captivated for a full hour watching acrobats at Chaoyang Theatre.

** Posing for photos in front of the Gate of Heavenly Peace and Tiananmen Square.

** Shopping the stalls at Hongqiao Market, where I haggled on the price of pashminas and eager sellers dangled Hello Kitty watches at my daughters.

** Peering into the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and seeing a 4-minute friendship bloom with a sweet-faced Chinese girl at the Temple of Heaven.

** Hiking more than a mile on the Great Wall at Mutianyu, their little legs pausing to rest at the guard stations.

And more.

These brown-eyed, blonde girls were minor tourist attractions nearly everywhere they went. Nai-nais (grandmothers) and college students wanted to sweep them into their arms. (My friend calls this awkward celebrity status the “Brangelina effect.”)

There’re not a lot of 3-feet-tall, pink-skinned children in China.

Truthfully, the adoration was not always welcomed; my 3-year-old began burying her face in her hands when a stranger approached and a camera came out. We politely declined a lot of requests to photograph and hold our children. Even when we felt a bit hassled, I was touched by how Chinese people simply adored having children around them.

That memory is a sweet souvenir, which brings me to Reasons No. 2 and 3 why we wanted to go to China….

• Reason No. 2 — Regret

We missed our first opportunity to go to Asia 8 years ago.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law lived in Okinawa, Japan for more than 2 years.

We did not visit.

Enough said. That wasn’t going to happen again.

• Reason No. 3 — Inspiration

One of the most spectacular human beings I ever knew was an American expat raised in Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. His name was Scott Seator, and when we became friends in college, I never tired of asking him about his life growing up overseas. He shared with me a great love of and fascination with Asia. He had a head full of memories and anecdotes (of southeast Asia and many other subjects, like baseball and Stan Musial.)

He opened up my world by simply being one of the kindest, most interesting and talkative people I ever met. Over the years I longed for the opportunity to see Asia through my own American eyes, and that yearning was a gift from him.

Though my children’s memories of China may fade, I believe that my husband and I gave them something else: a story and a seed.

My youngest may protest one day that she doesn’t remember the Great Wall.

My oldest may have watery recollections of the indoor ball pit and playground in Shunyi (her favorite places.)

Here’s my goal: as long as we keep talking about it, the trip becomes part of their “when-I-was-growing-up” story.

Then there’s the seed. It’s already sprouting.

Yesterday my 5-year-old came to me with a small tin of candy from Jenny Lou’s grocery.

“Mommy,” she said, as she passed through the kitchen, “When we go back to China, can we get some more of these?”

© 2008 Laura Bond Williams

Like this post? Click here to digg it!

Related posts:

• When Your Kids Encounter a Squat Toilet
• Take the Kids to Hong Kong

“Are you going to take the kids?”

That was the most popular question I got when I told friends and colleagues that our family was going to Beijing, China, for most of April.

(The next question was “Why China?” I’ll get to that another time.)

But the answer to the first was simple: “Yes, we’re taking them.”

Our daughters are 3- and 5-years-old. I was a little surprised that the prospect of a long haul flight (~14 hours) to a non-English speaking country with 2 small children was clearly beyond the comfort zone for many people.

I am here today to say “Fear NOT,” dear travelers. You TOO can make a 14 hour flight with a 3 hour connection, nearly 22 hours of door-to-door travel, with your kids. Just follow these 5 easy steps, and you too could be sitting pretty in a Shunyi Starbucks, observing the glistening haze of pollution overhead and watching cottonwood puffs swirl around you like a crazy springtime snow.

Of course, getting there is only a fraction of the vacation. The real work to prepare kids for the flight and the experience starts weeks in advance. So here are my five easy steps to embarking on a successful long-haul trip with little kids. Some are strategic, and some are practical. Mix and match them to make the perfect trip for you!

1) Build curiosity. From the moment we bought our airplane tickets, my husband and I talked about China with our kids. Everywhere we went, we’d say “What do you think the park is like in China?” or “the grocery store?” or “the mall?” “Do you think they have Starbucks? Chick-Fil-A? Target?” “Do they have Chinese restaurants in China, or is it just food?” You get the idea. Build curiosity (including your own) with constant questions.

2) Tell everyone. We told EVERYONE that the girls were going to China. I mean everyone – including the woman at Costco who took their passport photos. Questions from friends, neighbors, classmates and even strangers helped us build our kids’ enthusiasm for the trip. My daughter’s teacher involved her preschool class, and they made a book of questions for her to investigate while in China.

3) Set expectations for the time change. Even though our kids are too young to understand time zones and the concept of the International Date Line, we began talking about the time in China. While our daughters were eating breakfast, we’d talk about our friends eating dinner in China. About a week before we left for Beijing, I started talking about the long flight. I explained we would eat dinner, then a snack, and then breakfast on the plane. And wouldn’t that be FUN?

4) Don’t underestimate their ability to understand. Maps and globes are a must when talking about travel. We also got a great book from our local library, “Me on the Map.” It shows a child in her room, and the room in the house, and the house on the street, street in the city, city in the state, state in the country, country in the world. It helped them understand the radical change of place they were about to experience.

5) Overpack for the flight. I seriously overpacked amusements for the flight. I had sticker books, coloring books, dominoes, card games, pipe cleaners and beads, story books, an iPod with my kids’ favorite songs on a playlist, a small finger puppet theatre…and more. Truthfully, they didn’t need all of that. My 5-year-old watched “Kangaroo Jack” 4 times and was happy as a clam. But it made ME feel prepared for anything.

But what about the flight, you may say. The actual sitting-on-the-plane part? What did I do about that? Well, I really believe that building enthusiasm and anticipation helped make the flight bearable.

Okay, so here’s some practical advice, too. My quick list:

• Order kid’s meals from the airline in advance.
• Drink lots of water. No juice; it doesn’t rehydrate you well.
• Take walks around the plane every 2 hours at a minimum.
• Ask your doctor about over-the-counter medication that can be used as sleep aids, (and yes, I did use those, too). Children do need their sleep, if it’s only a fitful 6 hours.

At the end of the flight, I watched our daughters’ shining, excited faces as we landed in Beijing. They beamed – and I knew they were happy to be there. They were eager to see China.

If they had to sit on a plane for a day to do it, that was okay with them. And it was okay with me, too.

© 2008 Laura Bond Williams

Related posts:

• Oh China, Part Two
• Family Travel: Take the Kids to Hong Kong

(photo courtesy silverlinedwinnebago at flickr’s Creative Commons.)

“In the bleak midwinter” there are plenty of cool things to do, like the Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, China.

It’s an entire town built of ice, and illuminated at night. Amazing.