Sweet, Sweet Continuity

I could go on about the things that are different here, such as the proliferation of foreigners or the curious predilection for cosmetic, lensless glasses, but instead today I’d like to focus on something that’s stayed exactly the same since I was last here in Beijing: the ostentatious ubiquity of naked baby asses. I’m not the first person to mention this but, instead of wearing diapers, little kids who haven’t been potty trained yet simply wear pants with holes cut in the crotch so if nature ever comes calling the answer is immediate. As a result, you can’t take more than three steps without being assailed by custardy hemispheres of baby buttock just about everywhere you turn. I imagine this must be very liberating for a small child and indeed one finds that little kids toddle around with that look of proprietorial contentment that can only come from the knowledge that everything on this Earth, from the rolling, green hills to the forbidding arctic wastes, from the animals that creep along the land to the fishes that dart in the depths and to the birds grandly soaring in the airy dome of the sky –– essentially, the whole of God’s majestic creation –– is, at the end of the day, their personal toilet. Bless their little hearts.