综合一区欧美国产,99国产麻豆免费精品,九九精品黄色录像,亚洲激情青青草,久久亚洲熟妇熟,中文字幕av在线播放,国产一区二区卡,九九久久国产精品,久久精品视频免费

USEUROPEAFRICAASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
Lifestyle
Home / Lifestyle / View

When the ayi quit work, we started a new life

By Usha Sankar | China Daily | Updated: 2011-05-31 15:39
When the ayi quit work, we started a new life

To ayi or not to ayi.

Every expat in such cities as Beijing and Shanghai has grappled with this question at least once during their stay.

For many expat women forced to play stay-at-home moms, having the luxury of making do with a single income and finding 9-5 domestic help at "affordable" rates is nothing short of heaven.

If at all there is anything that crops up to mar this idyllic picture every once in a while, it is the issue of ayi salaries. It is not uncommon to find ayi in gated compounds being paid the equivalent of what a Chinese college graduate earns. It leaves some with an uncomfortable feeling that something about this whole business is patently unfair.

But more often that not the ayi "seduction" usually works its magic, and everyone ends up being in the pro-, rather than anti-ayi, camp.

Over my nearly seven years in Beijing, I've often veered from one side to the other. Not anymore, though. My ayi of six years recently staged a walkout.

Blessed with a peculiar ability to negotiate only in multiples of 100, she demanded a 500-yuan raise. "Otherwise, you can look elsewhere," she said.

Stung by the suddenness of it all, I refused. And that was it.

And in the month since, I've suddenly discovered life's simple pleasures.

There is something about brushing clothes clean and loading them in the washing machine, watching the drum swirl, the soapsuds popping against the glass, that melts the day's stress. Seeing them emerge smelling fresh and crisp is a heady feeling. It's a ritual I look forward to.

Where once listless veggies would sit in the refrigerator for a week, I now shop for fresh produce every other day and enjoy whipping up a meal. And while I'm at it, my 13-year-old will frequently pop into the kitchen with encouraging sounds of how lovely everything smells, his bright eyes shining. My husband, when in town, will often step in with an offer to chop this or that.

We now eat together as a family around pots of freshly prepared, piping-hot food. I'm now discovering the true meaning of the old adage, "The way to a man's (and a boy's) heart is through his stomach."

A dishwasher sitting silent in my kitchen for the past two years is suddenly whirring to life, yielding cleaner dishes that I have ever seen.

Saddled with a user manual in Chinese, I never made the effort to figure out its workings. But ayi's departure had me on the Internet in a trice and with a printout of the manual in English. That's the new, proactive me.

Gardening, likewise, has become a family thing, and we are carefully tending our coriander, spinach and chilies, besides the flowers and crotons. It is now everyone's responsibility to make sure the plants are watered and the family dog is fed and walked. Not that these tasks were not taken care of by us in the past, but subconsciously we were all well aware there was a safety net, called ayi.

No coffee mug in the kitchen now means the ones sitting on study tables and in various corners of the house will have to be brought to the kitchen sink and rinsed. Missing socks in cupboards mean they will have to be dug out of the deep recesses of shoes and added to the wash pile. The list is endless.

Regaining control of our lives has been the best thing to have happened to us in our great "expat" experience.

None of this, of course, is meant to belittle the work our ayi put in. For her help, I'm eternally grateful and wish her well.

But what she has done for me now is priceless.

Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
广宗县| 泗阳县| 昌邑市| 通海县| 遵义市| 桐乡市| 普洱| 红安县| 扬州市| 贺州市| 巴彦淖尔市| 岳普湖县| 清流县| 林甸县| 瓦房店市| 廊坊市| 深水埗区| 当阳市| 甘南县| 泗洪县| 禹州市| 理塘县| 隆安县| 平江县| 旺苍县| 河源市| 巴塘县| 铜鼓县| 临邑县| 天镇县| 同心县| 阳新县| 博乐市| 邵东县| 清原| 太湖县| 远安县| 五寨县| 怀安县| 安塞县| 遂宁市|