Baseball is 10-year-old Fang Yen-ping's (方彥彬) number one passion. The fourth-grader's favorite team is the Brother Elephants, one of Taiwan's six professional teams, and he dreams of becoming a player. Ask about the most exciting experience of his life, and Yen-ping, nicknamed "Bingo," will recap the game he saw at Yankee Stadium last summer. "When there's a home run, an apple comes up on the scoreboard," he says. "Some fans painted their faces, and people were flying paper airplanes made from the game programs." In his free time, Bingo collects baseball cards and clips sports articles from papers and magazines.
Does he play ball himself? His parents let him toss the ball against the cement wall in his bedroom, but Bingo has little opportunity to play outside. Like most local elementary-school students, he spends forty hours a week in school. Six days a week, he gets up at 7:00 A.M., ar rives at school an hour later and, except for half-days on Wednesdays and Saturdays, he stays until 4: 10 P.M. The school curriculum includes just two hours of physical education per week, and his school does not have Little League. As an extracurricular activity, baseball is offered at only 30 percent of Taiwan's primary and junior high schools and 7 percent of the high schools.
Even if Little League were offered, Bingo would have little time for it. After school, he walks to his grandmother's nearby apartment to do his homework and wait for his mother, Tseng Wen-chi (曾文姬). Tseng, a stockbroker, arrives around 6:00 P.M. and they make the half-hour commute home together. After dinner, Bingo finishes his homework, which usually takes ninety minutes to two hours. That leaves less than an hour for playing Nintendo or reading comics before bed.
After-school solution - Kids' programs such as this arts-and-crafts class are booming in popularity with families where mom and dad both work.
Where does baseball fit into this schedule? It is tough to find time even on Sundays; since there are no fields near Bingo's apartment, he must convince his parents to drive to a park or school playground. But the boy has become a master at finding time for his favorite sport. "Between classes," his mother explains, "he and his classmates grab their bats, gloves, and ball, then run down four flights of stairs to playa ten-minute game. They do it every break."
Like many parents, Tseng sees a vast difference in Bingo's lifestyle and her own childhood. The biggest contrast is that Bingo must finagle for a few minutes out side. "As a child, I spent most of my leisure time outdoors," she says. "Bingo's generation, they do more indoor activities." Tseng, who grew up in Taipei, remembers that her parents often arranged outings for the seven children in the family. During holidays, the family picnicked in nearby parks, and on weekends her father took the kids swimming in the Hsintien River.
But Tseng's swimming spot is now surrounded by housing prolects, and driv ng there from her downtown apartment would take hours in weekend traffic. She rarely takes Bingo swimming because the rivers near Taipei are too polluted and the public pools are so crowded that many parents deem them unsafe. The only option is to enroll Bingo in swimming lessons at a private, indoor pool.
For Taiwan's children, leisure life has changed drastically in the past couple of decades. Huang Ang (黃安), a 37 year-old father of two primary schoolers, explains that even getting to school is vastly different today. "Me and my gang would leave home early, so we would have extra time to play on our way to school," Huang says. While growing up in the countryside in central Taiwan, walking to and from school was part of the day's play time. "There were few cars, so there weren't as many traffic accidents," he says. On the way home, he and his pals often made a detour to a river for a little swimming or to the rice paddies to barbecue sweet potatoes.
His sons have never played on the city streets leading to and from school. "Traffic is just awful and the threat of kidnapping is frightening," says Huang, referring to the oft-reported cases of disappearing children. "It's no longer safe to let kids walk to school by themselves."
As a result of the new hassles and dangers, children spend much more time at home, playing video games or other indoor activities. Bingo is a typical child of the video generation. Illustrating his skill, he deftly hooks a Nintendo game board to the TV and pops in a Super Mario cartridge. As the game begins, his fingers flash and he frowns intently, determined to hit a high score. Bingo started playing video games at age six.
Portrait of a typical 10-year-old - A lot of "Bingo" Fang's free time is spent inside. He even practices pitching his baseball against the cement bedroom wall.
"Kids today have many more ready-to-use toys to play with - we never had electronic toys, not to mention computer games," says Tseng. As a child, she and her sisters entertained themselves by making necklaces out of paper and dressing up as Chinese opera stars. For toys and props, they used furniture, bedding, old clothes, and household items. Such common play things wouldn't interest Bingo.
Television is the other primary indoor activity for kids. Since there are few children's educational programs on the three TV channels, most watch variety shows and serial dramas. Many youngsters are big fans of television personalities. Bingo, for example, collects photos and autographs of his favorite stars, especially baseball players.
Changes in family life also have affected the way kids play. For one thing, parents are having fewer kids. Children aged twelve and under make up more than one-fifth of the population, but the percentage is dropping. In 1980, the average married couple had 3.6 children; a decade later, the average dropped to 3.1. And households are shrinking in size as members of extended families break off to move into individual apartments. In 1980, most dwellings held 4.8 people; ten years later, the average was 4 to a home. For kids, that means fewer siblings and more time alone.
And more kids come from two-income families; about one-third of Taiwan's work force of 8.6 million is women and about 1 million of them have children under twelve years old. Many kids with working mothers spend a good portion of their after-school hours at a babysitter's. Another popular way to care for kids, and give parents a bit more free time, is to enroll them in afternoon classes in music, dancing, art, or foreign languages. In extreme cases, parents arrange to have their children spend the week with relatives and come home only on weekends.
For parents who work evenings, the alternative is to have the kids come to the work place. Huang Ang and his wife run a sporting goods store. Their two sons, both in primary school, spend their evenings at the shop; they eat a take-out supper, finish their homework, and watch TV while their parents deal with clients. The family heads home when the shop closes around 9:30 P.M., and the kids fall asleep on the forty-minute drive to northern Taipei.
This is a far cry from the way Huang and his neighborhood pals used to end each school day. He has considered showing his kids where he used to swim and teaching them how to barbecue sweet potatoes, but the idea of fighting traffic to drive to the countryside is daunting. And it is impossible to recreate rural pastimes within Taipei. "We now live in an urban area," Huang sighs. "If I wanted to take my kids to barbecue sweet potatoes, we would have to drive to a big park outside the city, where it is allowed."