• Chinese Family Life,  Living in China

    Finding an ayi in Guangzhou

    After more than six years in Guangzhou, I have finally hired an ayi (housekeeper) to help me with household work and to take care of the baby when I work. Finding the right ayi wasn’t easy, but now she has worked for us for one month and become like a family member to us. The first question that locals as me is why I need ayi when I live next door to the grandparents. In China is common for the grandparents to take care of grandchildren when the parents are working and earning a living. Well in our case nainai (grandma) already has a 10 month old grandson to take…

  • Chinese Family Life

    Chinese New Year 2016

    Chinese New Year starts with preparations that I usually take part, but now taking care of our baby girl was more than enough this year. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law prepared the ghost money to be burned. On the eve of the new year, decorations are put up the doors, doorways and where ever you want to create a festive feeling. In the photo above is our front door with spring festival couplings that with the feeling of an older house. In Guangzhou it’s a tradition to visit Flower Markets before the new year and decorate your home with fresh flowers. I’m terrible at taking care of flowers, so we decided…

  • Chinese Family Life

    Happy Chinese New Year

      Once again it’s time for a brand new year, the year of the monkey. This past year has been especially exciting for us as we welcomed our baby girl and we can’t wait to see what monkey has in store for us! I’ll be sharing photos when all the festivities are over, right now we are planning to have a late night snack, exchange lucky money and put out small fire crackers. Happy Chinese New Year to all readers! p.s. You can find the same video on my Facebook page as well!

  • Being Pregnant in China,  Chinese Family Life,  My Life,  Raising a child in China

    May I introduce…

    Today I want to introduce you to someone special, someone who has totally taken our hearts and made us fall in love with her. May I introduce our precious baby Anna! She was born two weeks ago and there are many stories and blog posts to be told about how it’s like to give birth in a public Chinese hospital. What kind of posts would you like to read about being pregnant and giving birth in China? As a funny anecdote I need to mention that where I’m comfortable talking to our baby girl in Finnish, my husband still feels weird speaking Cantonese and has been mainly using Mandarin with…