”You can’t afford to lay down work, and you can’t take up work to accompany you”, whether to accompany their children or choose a career is a difficult problem faced by many parents. However, in Chengdu, a pair of young parents played their own business while accompanying their children.
”Dad, look at me!” In the forest, bean sprouts stood upside down neatly against the big tree, following his father’s appearance. “Mom, I caught a cute big bug!” Douban grabbed an earthworm and ran over to offer the treasure.
Dad Tiange and mother Wanzi have long been accustomed to the “wild” performance of their two daughters. “We hope that every child has a wildness in his heart and grows an independent self in nature.”
Looking for “Pill Companion” to accompany the children to grow up happily
In 2009, the eldest daughter bean sprouts was born. Novice Mom Maruko wants to take a full moon photo of her daughter. She really disliked the stereotyped studio style, so she found out the SLR she bought when she got married and said to her husband: “The photos you took have no technical content, but they are very creative.” Encouraged by his wife, Tian Ge was very motivated and went to study with friends. I will teach my wife a little bit of photography skills when I get home. Every day, Maruko practises photography while playing with her daughter. Bean sprouts are the eternal princess under the lens of her mother.
With the improvement of photography skills, gradually, the photos taken by Maruko for bean sprouts became more unique and interesting, and they won praises from the mothers: “Your baby’s photos are so beautiful! Can you take them for us?” At the beginning, they helped their friends. We take free parent-child photos. Later, friends of friends also came here admiringly, and they charged appropriately.
One day, Maruko happily told Brother Tian that her income from taking out-of-home orders on weekends was the same as her income from work. “Why don’t you resign, let’s start a business together!” Tian Ge, who resigned from the Housing Management Bureau to start a design company before marriage, also moved out the lines in the movie “Death Poetry Society” to instigate her: I step into the jungle because I want to live. Meaningful, I hope to live deeply, absorb all the essence of life, and defeat everything that is not life, lest when my life ends, I find that I have never lived. At that time, Maruko worked as a screenwriter on the TV station and worked very decently. But after her husband’s encouragement, she resigned decisively. In 2011, the couple’s first entrepreneurial project on photography came into being.
Both husband and wife are engaged in freelance work and have enough time to accompany their daughter every day, but no matter how good parents are, they can’t replace playmates. The bean sprouts have grown up, and the demand for playmates has become stronger and stronger. When shooting outside, the balls often carry bean sprouts. In this way, you can not only accompany your daughter, but bean sprouts can also meet some small playmates of similar age.
Every time when it gets dark, the friends have to go home, and no playmate can accompany her all the time. Therefore, Dou Sprout begged her mother: “Give me a younger sister!”
In 2014, the second daughter was born, named Douban, which means Douban’s playmate. However, the 5-year-old Little Bean Sprout didn’t know that her younger sister was not born to play with her, but instead took away her mother’s attention. Bean sprouts began to fight for mother with his sister. For half a year, the balls were on the verge of collapse, and they didn’t know how to deal with the relationship between the two daughters. In order to make their daughter feel safer, the couple began to take bean sprouts to parent-child activities.
In the first grade of Dou Ya Elementary School, the couple took her to the forest paradise with the travel agency. It takes 40 minutes to line up for an event. While waiting to play the pedal boat, Bean Sprouts finally couldn’t help but say to Maruko: “Mom, I really can’t wait!” They immediately took their daughter out of the line.
”The experience is too bad, the attitude of the staff is not good, and it’s a waste of time.” Maruko couldn’t help but complain. “Why don’t we engage in parent-child activities by ourselves?” Tian Ge said. Incompetent people only know to complain about the unsatisfactory life; capable people can create what they want. Brother Tian is the one who dared to create, and Maruko had longed for it a long time ago.
In 2017, the second entrepreneurial project on parent-child activities was born under the joint efforts of the husband and wife. For the first parent-child activity, Maruko covered all the lawn of a farmhouse, and more than 10 families played together on the lawn. Blowing bubbles, throwing sandbags, kicking the shuttlecock… the children had a great time, and the bean sprouts returned home happily.
They also built a children’s playground in their three-story building with swings, wooden horses, slides, hanging ladders, and wall ladders… In the eyes of the children, this is paradise.
What’s interesting is that among the children participating in parent-child activities, there is a girl named Xiaoya who likes to play with bean sprouts very much. Every time she went home, she talked to her mother, “Looking for sister bean sprouts.” As long as there are activities, Mom will bring Xiao Ya to participate, and Dou Sprout finally finds her favorite playmate. Mama Xiaoya is a food expert, and she often shares food with everyone. She has become friends with many mothers such as Maruko.
The parent-child activities that Chinese parents need are not only the communication and getting along between parents and children, but also the friendship and learning between children and children. Because they are parents, Tiange and Wanzi understand their parents’ needs better. Later, the activities of the Maru family even developed abroad: open outdoor classes in Australia, wrestling in Bali…Countless families spent good parent-child time together.
Life is not set limits, create free space for children to play
spare time, they are a family of four with a 7-year period, spanning five states travel more than 10 countries. “The curiosity in childhood is the beginning of exploring the world.” This is the principle of Maruko couples doing parent-child activities, and it is also the educational truth they believe in.
The growth of bean sprouts and watercress is free and independent. When they were two years old, they were allowed to use needles, scissors and other tools; when they were six years old, they could cut vegetables with a kitchen knife in the kitchen. At the beginning of 2020, the Maruko family took a group to travel to Australia, but they were forced to stay abroad for 3 months due to the epidemic. Every day, the 10-year-old bean sprouts are responsible for cooking and washing dishes. She is good at dealing with problems, arranging her own affairs properly, and never let her parents worry about it. Maruko said: “You should give your children free space, and you can’t arrange them too full. Children’s growth does not come from compulsion or knowledge indoctrination, but to cultivate self-drive, so that they can find favorites that are worth pursuing for a lifetime.”
Trapped in Australia’s Tiange can only write courseware, make videos, and teach online. He is also thinking about what to do next. I thought it was a turning point in my destiny, but I didn’t expect God to throw an olive branch. Upon returning to China on March 4, the Maru family received an invitation to set up a camp to settle in Luhu, Chengdu. More than a month later, Tian Ge and his partners signed the project together, realizing the dream of building an “urban camp”. These more than 40 partners were all met by the couple playing together.
In July 2020, the “city camp” project began trial operation. There is a spacious and clean camp kitchen where parents can experience the fun of cooking food with their children. There is a children’s play area in the open space outside the kitchen, where you can draw, archery, play ball, slide…there are beach tents, RV parties, and a jungle that resembles the Maldives.
The VI that Tian Ge designed for the camp is a rabbit, and he and his daughters also created the camp construction fence pattern. “The nature of rabbits is to run.” Brother Tian proposed an “iron rule” to the camp: In this camp, children must be able to run around with bare feet.
In the crab hunting activities in Luhu Lake, Tian Ge will also guide parents to tell their children: how to catch crabs so that they will not get hurt; care for the animals and not torture them; if you catch juvenile crabs, please return them to the lake In… Taking nature as a classroom, while teaching children to learn outdoor skills, he also hopes that children can learn to live in harmony with nature.
13-year-old Guoguo is an introverted boy. During a camping by a bonfire, all the partners lit the torches in their hands, only he was left unlit. “I will accompany you!” The facilitator encouraged him while comforting him. Finally, Guoguo looked at the torch he had personally lit, with excitement in his eyes. The facilitator applauded for him, and the parents said “thank you” in a touched voice. It was the warm atmosphere of the camp that made Guoguo finally open up. “I hope that every confused child can realize self-exploration here and complete his own life mission in the future.” This is a small wish of Tiange and Wanzi. In their view, the city camp is a carrier, a link, an encounter of countless interesting souls.
On the afternoon of July 3 this year, the camp held a lively anniversary celebration in the form of the Songkran Festival. There are 10 swimming pools in the camp of 16,500 square meters, and children can play in the water anytime and anywhere. Tug-of-war and other games on the slide made parents and children too happy, and the sisters Dou Sprout and Douban had a happily fighting…
It has been a year, and the couple are very emotional. At the beginning of the business, they did not consider the market, nor did they deliberately plan and design. They just followed their children’s growth step by step. Brother Tian said that their entrepreneurship is more meaningful in life than business. Who could have imagined that playing with a child would create a career?
