We lived in Shanghai for a couple years, in a small apartment down a traditional lane. Our building and lane housed a number of multi-generational families, and one of the great pleasures of life there was walking out every morning and seeing elderly grandparents chatting and soaking up the sun, parents hurrying off to work, schoolchildren scampering around in their sweatsuit school uniforms...and the babies. You never really saw
newborn babies (Chinese babies are usually kept at home for the first few months), but there were plenty of slightly older babies. And many of them were especially adorable because of their butts.
Yes, their butts. Were adorable. How do I know this? Because they weren't wearing diapers. And their pants, in a wise nod to practicality, were split down the crotch, so that if baby squatted or was held over a pot or toilet, he or she could pee or poop with impunity. Nothing would get on the pants. They looked like this:
