Oops, Wrong Dorm--Chen Hao's Story

Chen Hao, senior vice president of Cti Television, was known in his younger journalist days as a heartthrob. But these days, he's a loving dad.

"Women were always an enigma to me," says Chen, who grew up one of three brothers. From childhood, there were never any women around other than his mother. But now with his wife and daughters, he's found himself living in a women's dormitory, a stranger in a strange, feminine land. "I never knew about how girls grow up. There's something amazing every day, but it's also like walking into a china shop, afraid to break something you can't pay for. It's not something you can learn about, it's like a radical transformation in life."

With his wife working in Shanghai for the last few years, Chen Hao is alone with his two daughters. But this is not a hardship for him, it's a pleasure. Though he is very busy with his work and often stays up late writing, he is sure to get up at 6:30 every morning in order to make breakfast for the kids. "Danbing, French toast, spaghetti-I've mastered them all," he says. He likes to cook, and besides, all the readymade foods available in the market make it convenient.

The older daughter is in her sixth year of elementary school, and the younger in her third. Chen describes their differences in terms of their astrological signs: The older, a Pisces, loves to read, and has read an amazing amount. The younger, a Leo, loves to dress up, sing, and perform, and gets others to read aloud to her. "I never had girlfriends that were either of these signs. They are really different."

Even in choosing gifts, Chen Hao puts his all into pleasing his daughters. A few days previously, during a business trip to Beijing, he made a point of going to a bookstore to get books on birds for the elder girl, who has recently become fascinated with drawing birds, and he picked up a beautiful Tibetan bracelet for the younger one. In the same way, he lines up activities for them every Saturday, according to their interests. In the morning, he takes the younger daughter to Cloud Gate dance class, and then takes the older one to bookstores to browse around. In the afternoon, he finds a nice restaurant for lunch with both his daughters.

The girls are quite reliant on their dad, so no matter where he goes, he takes his cell phone. If the girls are unable to reach him at any given moment, they burst into tears, and at times like that this "tough guy" becomes even softer than the girls. In the year 2000, Chen Hao was invited to Washington think tank the Brookings Institution as a visiting scholar, and was away from his daughters for ten months. Chen describes this as "the most vulnerable time in my life."

Chen couldn't help but think about his daughters, and often missed them so much that he came to tears. "Even calling them on the phone was of no help," he says. To ease the pain, he decided to translate some children's books to send to them. The first one he worked on was the story of a cockroach, in the hopes that it would ease their fears of the insects. Through those ten months of expat life, he translated ten books-an unexpected upside to their separation.

However, despite their closeness, there are some places where dad just can't lend a hand. Chen Hao tells of the time, after the elder one had entered puberty, when they were whispering about something and wouldn't tell him what it was. He tried to probe them about it, and the elder daughter answered, "You wouldn't understand even if we told you!" Chen, curious, pressed the issue until the youngest blurted out, "We're talking about periods-got it?" Chen feels a sense of resignation concerning these topics that are bound to be off-limits to dads. Luckily, the girls keep in close touch with their mother, too: They chat online every day, and she comes home to visit once every two months, so there is someone to teach them about women's private issues.

But soon the girls will come to the age where they will become interested in the opposite sex. Chen Hao says his elder brother has already run into this scenario. "My elder brother is a coach at a police academy. One time he accidentally spotted his daughter in the alley holding hands with a boy. He didn't know what to do, so he just hid! He was afraid his daughter would feel embarrassed," he laughs. He says that he and his brothers are all "rednecks," but when they run into their daughters, they suddenly become very tender. When he thinks of his "little love" dating and getting married in the future, this "big softie" of a dad says he's not yet sure how he'll take it.