Pei Pa Koa

Delivering a baby in China is kind of a crazy experience. And that’s as much as I’m going to say about that on this blog.

But I will tell you about the coolest thing I brought home from the hospital, besides the baby of course.

It just so happened that I was coming down with a cold right before going into labor, and so by the time Avery was born I had a constant tickle in my throat and the strong desire to cough. This isn’t the most pleasant experience in recovery from a c-section. And between my other meds and breastfeeding, my treatment options were limited.

Luckily, Traditional Chinese Medicine includes hands-down the best cough syrup I’ve ever used. This stuff is legendary; I’ve heard of expats returning to their home country with stashes, or desperately visiting their local “Chinatown” in search of that amazing remedy they remember from their days abroad.

the box

It’s called Pei Pa Koa and it’s magical. It tastes, well, like typical cough syrup actually. It has the appearance and consistency of molasses, and contains a bunch of Chinese herbs and extracts mixed with honey. One tablespoon of this incredible elixir and I didn’t have the urge to cough all night long.

the syrup

I guess I'm joining the ranks of the crazy repatriates who are hooked on their TCM remedies.

May Mei

Today we welcomed our newest member of the family, baby Avery Mei. It seems fitting that she should be born on International Labor Day, since Val was doing plenty of laboring. The other holiday – May Day – is fitting too, since that’s how her middle name is pronounced.

But the name really has more to do with her birthplace (Shanghai, China) than her birthday.

In Chinese, the word we would write as mei has many different meanings, depending on what tone you say it with or what character you write. 

We had several in mind when naming Avery, including:

妹妹 (mèimei) means “little sister”, which is what Tyler was calling her from the time she was still in my belly.

美 (měi) is the basic single character for “beautiful”, and is often used in combination with other characters to become another positive adjective (like “wonderful”, “splendid”, “glorious”, etc).

It also just so happens that it’s the character for the United States, as in

美国 (měiguó) where guo means “country”, and if you add the character for “person” to the end, you get

美国人 (měiguórén) or “American”.

So all of those are pretty fitting I’d say. She’s a little sister, certainly beautiful and wonderful, and also American.

But if I was going to pick one hanzi (Chinese character) for Avery’s name, I’d probably pick this one:

梅 (méi)  which literally translates as “plum (blossom)”, but is a common second character in Chinese girls’ names. For example, Pat’s friend’s name is DongMei (“winter plum”), and our obstetrician who helped bring Avery into this world is HongMei (“red plum”).

Plus, I like that it’s just a radical (first part of character) away from the character

海 (hăi), as in 上海 or SHANGHAI!

So there you have it. Short name, long meaning. And hopefully a unique story she can carry with her for the rest of her life about her rather eventful start to life in this crazy place we currently call home.