On Saturday, we were at the Summer Palace, and while there in the afternoon, Martin, The Tea Prince, worked with Isaiah Wood, also The Tea Prince, making a little Vespa type scooter model out of oddly shaped plastic pieces that when bent together and interlocked in just the right way would allow it to stand upright, however gingerly.
I noticed that Izzy was actually perched right on the steamer trunk, adjacent to the work area, in a very Chinese way. The word for the position of his body in Chinese is "dun" and it's something that most people in China, young and old, are able to do with very little effort.
The world in China is often chairless, when one might want to sit, and the ground in much of China is not especially suitable for sitting. So the ability to dun can be extremely useful and more frequently than one might imagine. My observation has been, over the last twenty five years, that we do not squat very much in our world, nor for very long. In China, one will see an adult dun and read a newspaper, perhaps while waiting for a bus that is not due to arrive for quite a while.
I think that children are naturally able to dun, but that it's a skill which atrophies, perhaps from excessive chair reliance in schools, perhaps coupled with nearly ubiquitous seating options-- couches in front of televisions, chairs in front of desks and at dining tables, benches at bus stops and at school sporting fields-- if you think about it, there are rather few places where one would be inclined to simply be, still, that do not have provision for sitting.
I have no idea whether that's a good thing or not, whether the Chinese should have more seating options, or whether we should have fewer, or whether the status quo is somehow, weirdly, optimal. But I envy Young Master Isaiah his talent, his natural ability, which I most certainly at this point lack in spades.
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