Beijing has been invaded by little people.

The hutongs in my area now ring with the peal of baby giggles and echo with the thud of footballs as spring finally starts warming the cobbles.

For months, these streets have been eerily quiet, but it wasn't until they reappeared that I could put my finger on why.

Where have they all been, these little folk? I know it's been winter, but it hasn't been so cold this year -- and anyway, surely they still need to go outside occasionally?

The disappearance is of course partly due to the "little emperor syndrome" here, as the one-child policy ensures each little darling ranks with royalty -- thus winter is considered that bit too harsh to inflict upon them.

But it's not just the policy that determines how children here are brought up.

Tradition, custom and pure myth also play significant roles. I had been forewarned, having been told when pregnant I was sure to be carrying a girl, since she had taken all my beauty. Any looks may have gone, but the culprit was certainly not female.

And no matter how shy the Chinese might claim to be, any coyness disappears whenever a chance presents itself to offer some advice about child rearing.

All winter, as we wandered the lanes, we were greeted by cries of consternation that he was too cold. I have been told off like a schoolgirl if a square inch of his flesh is unswaddled.

I have been told that if babies breathe cold air, their digestion will suffer. They will get flu. They will become angry. They will have nightmares. They will turn into mice.

Okay, perhaps not the last one.

I was once told I shouldn't let him crawl, though I never did discern exactly why.

When he started standing up, I was told his legs would become bandy.

The beliefs are universal. One day I was chatting to a neighbour, a distinguished woman with a couple of university degrees and a grown-up child.

I laughingly mentioned being warned that exposing my baby's belly button would cause diarrhoea.

"Yes, you must be careful," she said. "The air enters the body through the navel, you see, because it's a hole, and then it goes into the stomach and they get the shits."

There is a fear verging on paranoia about the wind, and I am still no clearer what exactly it is about it that is so sinister.

I was once told my chubby xiao laowai was too thin -- by a mother whose charge was so fat she could not smile.

The very next day I was chastised by someone else for giving him too much to eat.

When he was just a month old, I was scolded several times a day for taking him outside before his 100 days were up.

I then heard of a Chinese newborn, kept in for the traditional term, who screamed his house down until in desperation the parents took him to a doctor. They were told that because he never saw sunlight, his body was getting no vitamin D -- which meant he could not absorb calcium.

They started parading him outside every day -- and he stopped screaming.

To begin with, the advice was unwanted. In my country, Britain, no one would ever tell me my pushchair was uncomfortable, or I was putting him to bed at the wrong time, or the food I was giving him would turn him into a dragon.

We foreigners take persistent cries of "Leng ma?" (Cold?) as criticism.

But I have now become used to the interest and come to realise it is simply a symptom of the adoration simply everyone has for children in a country where a one-child policy makes them so priceless.

And anyway, it's easier for me as a laowai parent, because I can simply pretend not to understand.

Well, wherever they have been, and whyever they have been there -- it's been a long winter, so welcome back, little ones. The lanes are now a far cheerier place.

Contact the author at Debbie_jmason@yahoo.co.uk

(China Daily 03/17/2006 page15)