Elisa says she wants to watch “that boy”. She leads me into the den where I search for Justin Bieber and from the list of music videos she picks one. The song called “Baby”. The video starts to play and then she says “baba, go now”. She wants to watch the video alone. As I leave I see Elisa immersed in the video, picture below.

This is her new routine, at least for the past couple of nights. I’m not sure what caused the three year old’s Bieber fandom or the need for privacy when consuming but I know the progression. It started when we were in the US last October and with Aidan’s iPad I showed Elisa a screen full of singer and band photos. We scrolled up and down the list but pretty much immediately she tapped on the picture of Justin Bieber and watched the video. This was pretty much all forgotten when we got back to Beijing until the song “Baby” came on during a cartoon. Elisa immediately dug out the iPad and asked me to play “that boy”.  Vevo – the app used in the states is incredibly slow here so Elisa got incredibly frustrated, hence the switch to the computer in the den and the music video from a local site.