Chinese baby............

These are our Chinese friends Andrew and Stella, who I have mentioned before, with their very new son, Xing Xing (pronounced Shing Shing) He is about one month old here and has lovely black hair. He is likely their only child as per the China Policy on children.


When a child is born here the parents will consult a fortune teller to help them choose a name as there are certain considerations to be made because the name must supplement and complement the child's fortune.

First of all when he is born he is aged one (1) and at the first Spring festival (February) after his birth, he will be two (2)........... No wonder there was some confusion at the Olympics about the age of the Chinese gymnasts!!!

Secondly, there are 5 natural elements in Chinese fortune telling, earth, fire, metal, water and wood. (By the way those were the themes of the BC 2010 pavilion in Beijing. They did a good job of it.) If these elements are balanced at his birth then the child's life will be good.

When the child is born his birth year, month, day and hour will combine to give him eight characters, each representing a particular natural element. If all 5 elements are present in the child's eight characters then the child will be more likely to live a balanced and harmonious life.

Generally the eight characters are not balanced and this is where the proper naming becomes important but this task is for the fortune teller's skill. You do not only have to find the Chinese characters that contain the correct or missing elements but you also have to note the number of strokes in the name because the number of strokes has to fit with one's elements, otherwise it will adversely affect his/her fortune.

Hence, this little boy was determined to be deficient in metal and so his name Xing Xing was chosen as it means gold and when written in Chines characters has the 'right' number of strokes. He has a formal name as well and his English name is Aidan.
So here is is with all these names at two months old but he looked very different because, while we were away, they had the 'Babies' Barber' come and shave his hair off - and his eyebrows too. I could not discover why they do this but no doubt I will get to the bottom of it before I leave.