It’s been many years since anyone knocled on my door and asked me to come out to play. In fact, livng in a remote house down a lane in the middle of nowhere, friends had to make a big effort in order to get to my childhood home, so callers were rare. But here in a city of 25 million, I find myself being transported by the children in my community, back to my childhood.
The knock on my door what so light at first I thought it was a rat scratch on the floor and opened it slowly in order to see it. Luckily then that I was looking down at the floor because that’s where I found the girl, biting her lip and working up to asking me.
She made polite conversation first, well a few introductory sentences and couple of the usual questions. Where are you from? Are you a teacher? Then, after a pause, the invitation came. “When are you coming out to play?” I laughed, and not wanting to appear to be at their beck and call, said I would come out in 10 minutes. She skipped away down the stairs. Ten minutes later I found myself running around playing something called ‘Red traffic light, green traffic light’ which was a similar idea to blind man’s buff.
We only played it once – I think she thought I wasn;t very good at fast running (I’m not!). Then a few days later, more callers, this time bringing gifts and asking whether they could borrow the wooden dragonflies I had shown them a week or so earlier. I lent the creatures on the understanding they would come back in an hour. 
And after an hour I opened the door to find that, indeed, the dragonflies had been returned, but alas, one of them had a broken wing. I guessed this is why they had decided to leave them on my doorstep rather than hand them back to me. I glued it back together again – no harm done. But since then, they have been avoidng me. I think they are frightened of being told off for breaking it.
So, just as my friends have grandchildren running around playing with their mates, I am running around playing with my neighbourhood kids. And the great thing is that in China, nobody views your interaction with children as anything more than it is – friendly and innocent. This is how it should be. Children should not be frightened of speaking to adults in their community and should not view all friendly neighbours as having ulterior motives.