(From yzwb) Starting from September, there were netizens posting on xici.net discussing about a strange scene they encounter every morning on Zhujing Road, Nanjing City: a foreign father riding a tricycle with two adorable kids bubbling in the back and their mother escorting from behind on an old bike. Many netizens adored how sweet the scene was and soon led to the discussion of lifestyle difference between foreign family and Chinese ones where car is always first choice against bike.
“Did anyone notice in the city there is a foreign man riding tricycle with his kids in the back and his wife following behind on an old bike? I am sure it is not that they can’t afford electric bikes!” A netizen started on xici forum.
Comments soon followed, “Yes I saw them too the other day, the dad is buying barbeque at the alley, his two beautiful kids are as adorable as dolls, I think they are from northern Europe.” “Indeed, very sweet scene.” “I don’t know how to ride a tricycle, always end up in gutter.” “True, I tried to ride one when I was little, very hard, toke me lots of practices to get the hang of it, how did a foreigner manage to pull that off?”
Then some others praised at the foreigner’s green lifestyle: “it’s good to the environment, save money and by the way some exercises for them too… Our kids in kindergarten nowadays are already sensitive enough to compare whose dad’s car is fancier. Those who doesn’t have car often feel inferior.”
On Oct 27th, a journalist from Yangtze Evening News interviewed the couple, Erik and Angina Herrmann. It was 5 pm when the journalist reached their home and the couple just got the kids home from kindergarten. Erik’s shoes were covered in mud, he explained that it was from the road in the new school yard. They don’t worried that the kids will get chilled from the rain, “it is from the nature, we like to let them get in touch with the nature more. When we were in Finland, we spent hours playing in the rain, they can play as long as they want… What fun there is to sit in the car? You don’t move, you don’t get the exercise, and you don’t get to enjoy the view on the street.”
According to Erik, 34 years old, they moved from Finland to Nanjing in May to teach and carry out his physics research in Nanjing University; his wife quit her job and came along to look after their children. “We spent 370 yuan to get the tricycle and bike for sending our kids to kindergarten, takes about 20 minutes to drop them off school. It is cool to ride a tricycle, convenient and good exercise, and the kids love sitting in it.” Speaking of people’s attention on the street, Angina immediately put on passers-by’s surprised face, “they were walking and walking, and suddenly they spot us and turn their heads back even they have already passed and give us all kinds of surprised look.”
They send their two little girls to kindergarten to learn Chinese, they even have their own Chinese names – Mi La (米拉), 5 years old going to middle class and Lei La (雷拉) 3 years old at little class. To the journalist’s amazement, they have never talked to the kindergarten about how their girls are doing in class. Angina said: “I was a bit worried at the beginning, but they seem quite happy everyday after school. They don’t understand what the teachers are saying of course, but the teachers will use body language while playing with them; as for with fellow children, there is even less to worry about, kids have they own way to communicate.”
The couple said they won’t require their kids to learn extra things since learning Chinese is hard enough. They did sign up for a dancing class, but only for fun, didn’t care about what kind of dance it is.
Besides dropping the kids to school, their tricycle is also very helpful for family outing and shopping. They find it very nice that Nanjing City has set up bike lane, wide ones that they don’t have back in Finland. It is a bit annoying sometimes though when cars park on bike lane. But overall they are having fun and their kids like the city a lot.
29 comments
One smart dad.
No. A retarded Nordic squarehead. Why would he subject his blonde Children to those savage Chinks? They will probably soil his children with their mud genes.
Isn’t he afraid the CCP will kill and enslave them?
you are a racist, have you ever been to china? i have lived here for 3 years, and i have yet to meet a “savage Chink who will probably soil children, with their mud genes” posting remarks like this makes you look like the savage.
I would do the same thing If I had kids and lived in China still. I had two bikes in China and they were both stolen. I wonder if he has had any problems with theft.
these are the kind of hard hitting questions people need to be asking
I would major sure everyone wears their protective devices (helmes, chest armor, knee protectors, etc.) and make sure my life insurance is up to date and paid for…if I am living in China and riding a bike.
Filthy Finnfags
If a dark skinned person did the exact same thing people would be laughing at them for being poor
Shut up racist shitass; finns are nice people !! What’s wrong, your skin too dark? Jealous much?
poor kids to breathe healthy Nanjing air more than is necessary, not speaking about how cool idea it is until some great tolerant chinese driver crash into their tricycle
if it was in civilized country with normal drivers and normal air I’d be praising parents, but bring young developing children to China when someone doesn’t have to…
This white guy is better than 90% of those shitbag chinks.
I just pray this guy doesn’t get effin clobbered by an S.O.B., cocoksucking Chinaman driver of some big truck.
Speaking of which, I feel they’re totally unsafe from moron Chinese drivers.
Do you need to be so vulgar and offensive when stating your opinion on the internet?
YES, he does and we all do. Not only that, this is the internet – have you been here before? LMAO !!
P.S. It’ll be another Yue Yue except with poor little white kids.
wow those westerners are such free spirits. how do they do it? just decide to do something and then just do it. oh it is because they are so simple. we chinese need to make the situation complicated first, waste some time, make sure someone gets hurt, and make sure we come out of it with some money or the option to tell someone they are wrong according to a single perspective sweeping generalization. its so strange a foreigner is riding a bike in china and sending their kids to school. a car is a much better way to show people you are a rich a foreigner, don yu sing sooo?
Yes. Just decide and then do it. Chinese people think about face in every situation and think it’s better to have a BMW than a bicycle (Remember that girl in a dating show said she would rather cry in a BMW than smile on a bicycle!). But for example for us Finns, we don’t have the same concept of face. We think it’s great if someone chooses to ride a bicycle rather than drive a car, it’s good for your health, it’s good for the environment.
actually what you stated applies to every citizen from non-Asian, non-Islamic country. With the French and British being the exceptions. 🙂
I disagree 100%. I grew up in the U.S. and now live in Sweden. The Nordic countries are the only ones where people consistently choose bikes over cars. People can say they think it’s great, etc. etc., but places like Finland & Sweden actually DO it. Every apartment here has bicycle ports (like a carport, but for bikes) out front.
When I go to the small ‘centrum’ of my suburb (which is a small mall for grocery, shoe, small clothing items shopping) there is an entire downstairs level of the parking garage that is for bicycles only, and there are hundreds parked there.
I went to the hospital recently for a test, and it was blisteringly cold, out front, hundreds of bicycles under a very large parking shelter.
I have never seen these type of accommodation for bicyclists or this much belief and consistency in riding them anywhere else in the world.
When I had a car in the U.S., shit I would drive even if it was to the store a block away LMAO — NOW I ride my bicycle even to grocery shop, which means carrying food home in my backpack and small basket on the bike, etc. and that is even when the weather is sub-zero and the snow is 4 feet deep (of course they clear the walk – bicycle paths with a tiny snow plow) OH YEAH the entire suburb is walk/bike only (cars can come in for loading or unloading only, and only part of the area is accessible by car). The rest of this area is surrounded by broad walkways rather than streets. It’s completely different than what I was used to, which was “if you ride a bike in Memphis, you will die” XD XD
Not bad considering I’m almost 50 years old now.
Cool story bros
China hush your story are trash. Do you know people just come here to read the comment section. And Oh improve your English in the story you report. You English sucks.
“You English sucks.”
hahaha well done… the irony…
Your English is SHIT. So how would you know whether the English on the articles is good or not?
The stories here are fine; the English ranges from perfectly correct, to only slightly off. So piss off.
How admiral of the foreigner giving little Chinese children a ride on his tricycle. Seems to me to be an act of love and great for international relations.
More white worshiping. Just because a white guy decide to bicycle his kids to school doesn’t make him any special. It is Chinese inferiority complex that make any thing like remotely fascinating. Many chinese dad bicycle their kids to school all the time.
Since this website is designed to make china look bad and make white men looks good. I am not surprise by the type of story here.
I wonder if Chinese have a Americahush.com website and keep posting stories about how white men rape their children. Maybe the Chinese are not that conceited,. but who knows I don’t read Chinese.
Harry,
Wrong. ChinaHush gets its material from the Chinese internet. It merely translates Chinese articles. This article was first posted on the Chinese internet. An applicable message to you: “Don’t shoot the messenger”. Since you probably don’t get it, I’ll explain. ChinaHush is the messenger.
>Everyone on the internet is white
haha oh wow
I’m pretty sure most of Chinahush’s staff are Chinese
FUCK you. White men don’t ‘rape their children’ any more than any other race, and MUCH less than blacks!!
Nobody gives a fuck what you think is a ‘story’ or not a story, because you’re a sack of shit.
This website is NOT designed to make Chinese people look bad or white people look good. They probably wrote this article because china is 98% Han Chinese, so I presume that seeing white people riding tricycles with their kids in the back is a rare phenomena.
However, you are still a sack of shit. Why don’t you get the hell off this site if you hate it so much?
They could be germans because:
1. They do look like germans.
2. In germany it is normal to tricycle their kids or alone because germans think that it is healthy to go by bicycle. A bicycle is a “must-have” in germany!!!
Just like whites to show off to Chinese by riding a bicycle on China’s streets, and when he knows that the Chinese are trying to catch up to western standards.
@ Bittered Commenters: what the heck is wrong with you people? I am so glad I don’t know you. I would be so ashamed for your simple meathead comments not making any sense but showing unreasonable passive-agressive frustration with life. Soon, mind me, you will explode of frustration. Do something about it before you start excreting vinegar.